Let us turn to what I consider the stupidest intellectual position to get traction in the last three or four years. That is, the idea that individualism is racist. Yes, you read that right. But this wokie position is utterly incoherent. Let’s look at why.
Here is my thesis: racism only shows up as evil when looked at through an individualist lens. This follows because individualism demands that we understand a person primarily as an individual, not as a member of a group. In concrete terms, Bob the Racist sees a Black person named Stuart. Cindy the Individualist, sees Stuart who is a Black person. Let’s look at why this distinction is key to understanding why racism is evil.
The Neutering of ‘Racism’
Ah, there’s that word again: ‘racist’. The wokies have done a bang up job neutering the word. ‘Racism’ and its cognates have until recently denoted the marriage of racial bigotry with disparate treatment arising out of that bigotry. In the context of the United States, this often means Black people are placed in danger and suffer on account of the the color of their skin. This is rightly condemned as evil. (This is the major point of this essay; keep it in mind.) Thus, when you call something or someone racist, you are making a strong condemnation. The word ‘racism’ rightly has a strong emotional impact when used.
Wokies recognize the strong emotional impact of the word ‘racist’ and want to exploit that strength in their rhetoric. Unfortunately, every day brings us another wokie calling out ‘racism’ on something or someone who is not engaging in actual racism. Cleanliness, for example, is now racist according to the wokies. The rhetorical strategy wokies want to employ is to link more and more things that have nothing to do with racism (i.e. disparate treatment rooted in bigotry based on skin color) to the term ‘racism’. This works for awhile, but eventually the audience sees that the word ‘racism’ is being exploited to import its emotional impact into situations where there is no actual racism.
The result in my case is that, for the past year or two when I hear or read the word ‘racism’ the question immediately comes to mind “are we talking about real racism or the wokie version?” If you expand your use of a word to meaninglessness, that word loses its punch.
As we are about to see, calling individualism “racist” is yet another case of wokies misusing the word to cast dispersion on something that’s not actually racist but that they don’t like.
Thesis: Individualism is the Lens That Reveals the Evil of Racism
Let us return to my thesis: racism only shows up as evil when looked at through an individualist lens.
Individualism posits that individual people have intrinsic worth; that individual people are more important than the groups to which they belong. From this starting point it follows that groups exist to serve the individuals that form its membership. From this perspective, every individual should act and think according to the dictates of their conscience, with the burden falling on the group to justify any constraints it wishes to impose on individuals.1
By ‘impose’ I mean by force or threat of violence sanctioned by the group in question. (As in the state has a monopoly on violence.) Compare the medieval Catholic Church with its attitude of “believe what we tell you or we will publicly burn your ass to a crisp in the town square” with the modern Catholic Church “believe what we tell you or no wine and crackers for you, and if you go too far afield we will revoke your membership.” ‘Impose’ describes the actions of the medieval Church, not the contemporary Church. We are talking constraints enforced at gunpoint, not voluntary constraints to which one agrees in order to be a part of a group.
Compare this to collectivism, which posits that individuals are subordinate to the group, even that individuals exist in order to serve the group. Under collectivism, the constraints the group imposes on the individual are presumptively valid. If an individual disagrees with any of the constraints, it is up to the individual to appeal to the group and show that an exception should be made.
The medieval Catholic Church is again a good example of collectivism, there was no other choice but to belong and permitted deviations from orthodoxy were rare.2 Of course, the authorities would say that those who deviated from orthodoxy (i.e. heretics and apostates) had to be suppressed lest the people began to question the Church and thus put their own salvation into peril. Not that the Protestant Reformation did much to help. Once the Protestants showed up on the scene, the local ruler decided to which church you would belong.3 Why? The individual was expected to conform to the religion imposed by the group.
The same goes for medieval social class. If you were born a serf you stayed a serf and you were a fixture of the land.4 Serfs till the soil and you better reconcile yourself. Free men (and we really do mean men here) were expected to join the guild or profession of their father. Even aristocrats were expected to conform to their roles if they wanted to keep their lands and titles. Don't forget the great equalizer for all social classes: your family determined who you would marry and you were expected to shut the fuck up about it.
That is collectivism then: you are given a role often based on your birth and you are expected to play that role. The only enjoyment and fulfillment in life is to be found in that role, so you can like it or lump it.
This brings us to racism. At its core, racism posits that your race determines who you are and will be. In the United States, the predominant racist narrative tells us that being white makes you moral and industrious while being Black makes you lazy and immoral. Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans get a mixture of positive and negative stereotypes applied to them. I am not going to elaborate on this further, because we all know the stereotypes. This makes racism a collectivist philosophy at its heart.
An individualist immediately sees the evil in racism. Racism tells us to define people by the color of their skin and treat them in the social prescribed manner. Racism therefore contradicts the core principles of individualism.
But let me go a step further, an individualist has two options when confronted with racism. They must either reject racism out of hand or they must find a justification for it. (We will get back to these justifications near the end of this essay.) Whichever path the individualist takes in response to racism, the individualist must nevertheless respond to racism.
Racism is a Collectivist Philosophy
Let us continue with another strong thesis: the color of one’s skin has nothing to do with character, ability, or morality. In the context of the US, racism has historically been rationalized by saying that Black people (or Hispanic people, or Asian people, or Native American people) are inferior in some way (the specifics vary over time) to white people. This varies from the paternalistic (i.e. iron fist in a velvet glove) justification of “those poor benighted people of color need the guidance of white people” to the naked iron fist position of “white people need to keep the others in line lest civilization fall to savagery.” What do both of those versions of racism have in common?
The answer is that both reduce individuals to little more (if anything) than their skin color. They erase the individual by reducing a person to their racial category. It’s just a quick jump from thinking Black people are inferior to imposing constraints on individuals for being Black, whether dressed up in happy clappy paternalism or not.
A collectivist has no inherent problem with any of this. A collectivist is happy to place the burden on each individual to prove the racial constraints don’t apply. But even then, don’t break out the good stuff just yet. Sure, a white collectivist might say “oh look, Stuart has shown he is one of the good/talented/moral Black people, let’s welcome him to our neighborhood.” More likely, however, the white collectivist will say, “Sure, Stuart is one of the good/talented/moral ones, but for the greater good we must exclude him so that those other Black people don’t start expecting more.” You might even see, “sure some Black people are good/talented/moral but the transaction costs in determining such are too high to bother with, lets just leave all Black people in second-class status for the good of society.”
An individualist, on the other hand, starts with the premise that an individual should not be subject to constraints based on race. To the contrary, the individualist sees bigotry and racism as evil from the get go because racism reduces the individual to their race. Both MLK Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech” and Malcolm X’s “Plymoth Rock Landed on Us” speech are effective because they take an indivisualistic perspective to call out racism.
Tema Okun (Again)
As with so many silly declarations that something is “racist” when it is not, this notion appears to go back to the great white savior, Tema Okun. Please re-read this essay and this essay to refresh your recollection on Ms. Okun. After reading those go here to read her and her disciples take on individualism in their own words. Go ahead, I’ll still be here when you get back.
Yes, you read all of that right. Ms. Okun is a nice white lady who makes money from her racism consulting business. Funny how all of these white savior types are making money by exploiting the misery of Black people but don’t get called out for it. But I digress.
Nonetheless, if you have had the misfortune of being forced to sit through a DEI lecture (usually billed as a “conversation”)5 in the past several years, you have likely encountered this idea. Ms. Okun and her disciples open with the following salvo:
Individualism shows up as:
for white people: seeing yourselves and/or demanding to be seen as an individual and not as part of the white group […]
for BIPOC6 people: individualism forces the classic double bind when BIPOC people are accused of not being "team players" - in other words, punishment or repercussions for acting as an individual if and when doing so "threatens" the team7
Yes Ms. Okun, how dare I insist that you do not reduce me to my skin color.
On the other hand, I am not sure where Ms. Okun and her wokie disciples are going when they start talking about people of color. Being punished for acting like an individual is not “individualism;” it is in fact the opposite of individualism. The best possible gloss I can put on her statement would be that she is saying that only white people get to take advantage of individualism, and that people of color do not. Of course, if this is what she meant she could have stated this clearly and explicitly.8
If this is what she meant then she has made a fundamental error in her reasoning: she is confusing enforcement of a rule with the rule itself. Suppose you have a rule that says everyone must wear read on Wednesday. Wednesday rolls around and Brian and Jamal show up without a drop of red in their clothing. Bob the Enforcer punishes Jamal for not wearing red but does not punish Brian. There is a clear rule (wear red on Wednesday), both Brian and Jamal violate the rule, but only Jamal gets punished. If Jamal complains that the rule is stupid (and it probably is) then he is arguing about the rule. If Jamal calls out Bob for only enforcing the rule against him but not Brian, then he is complaining not about the rule but how it is being enforced.
Likewise, if Ms. Okun is complaining that only white people get the benefit of individualism, then she is not complaining about individualism itself. She is complaining about how the rules of individualism are enforced. If this is the case, then I agree with her on this point. The way enforcement of rules works in our society, white people get more leeway to be individuals than people of color. That is wrong, and as noted previously, contrary to individualism. But if this is her complaint, Ms. Okun is not critiquing individualism itself, only how its application and enforcement are often racist. Thus, it is irrelevant to her overall thesis that individualism itself is “racist.”
Individualism Is How We Know Racism Is Evil
The idea that individualism is racist is nonsense, but I want to make a stronger point here. It is individualism that allows us to see that racism is evil. Not only are the wokies wrong, their position is self-contradictory nonsense.
As above, individualism is the moral theory that it is presumptive that an individual may act as they chose, with the burden falling to the collective to justify any societal constraints and then only add constraints for the greater good.
Take for example, the historical conditions in the West that lead to its development of individualism there.9 A big driver was the intellectual and spiritual tyranny exercised by the Catholic church. Cross the Church and a quick death was the best you could hope for. The introduction of Protestantism did nothing to improve the situation. Rather, it changed the situation from "do as the Church says or else" to do as the church endorsed by our king says or else." Imagine the confusion of the English commoner in the 1500s. One day you are all faithful Catholics. Then King Henry VIII gets ticked at the Church and you are suddenly a loyal Anglican (or burned to a crisp at the stake). Just as you are getting used to that, Henry dies and Mary I becomes the monarch. Suddenly you are all faithful Catholics again or else its sizzle, sizzle, sizzle. Then Mary is gone and Elizabeth I orders you back to the Anglican church again.
Other than religious tyranny, you also had the more authoritarian aspects of Feudalism. Importantly, with very few exceptions, where you were born was where you stayed; this includes place as well as social station. On the one hand, we contemporary people overestimate our own social mobility, on the other, the people living under Feudalism10 had almost none whatsoever. Serfs were tied to the land. Aristocratic titles were inherited. Even free commoners only enjoyed their status from their hereditary connections to guilds.
In short, society set its expectations for almost every aspect of your life and you had no choice but to comply. But enough shitty leaders who inherited their positions without any concern for their ability, and enough pious church elders demanding that people follow their edicts no mater how contradictory or foolish, leads to a critical mass of people saying “enough!” Instead, people begin to expect that constraints imposed by society be justified.
The intellectual underpinning for freeing individual autonomy is a simple question of fairness - why should the accidents of one’s birth force determine the whole course of one’s life? If the doctrine of a religion is so self-evidently true, why do the authorities prohibit questioning it? These are good questions. This is also the foundation of classical liberalism and its insistence on respecting the rights of the individual.
Now fast forward to the civil rights movements in the post-slavery United States. You find the same argument being made - why does the color of my skin determine the whole course of my life? How does my skin color justify keeping me out of the public pool or excluding me from many places and lines of work? As MLK Jr. notes in his “I Have a Dream” speech, why are we judging Black people by (or by implication crediting white people for) the color of their skin as opposed to the content of their character, their ability, and their actual deeds?
This was a powerful argument precisely because it goes to the root of classical liberalism - pointing out that racism is the negation of individualism. It ignores the characteristics and deeds of an individual in favor of reducing them to their race. This manifests in prejudicial stereotypes in which members of society won’t even consider the individual merits and flaws of an individual. Rather, prejudice says that because you are Black you are lazy but good at sports, because you are Asian you lack emotion but are good at math. Because you are white, prejudice says, you must be trustworthy no matter how many times you as an individual have lied. In short, racism is a collectivist philosophy.
And if we can judge the totality of you by which racial collective you belong, society is justified in imposing restrictions on you based on your membership without meeting any further burden. Thus slavery and Jim Crow need no justification for the collectivist who believes you can be reduced to your race. Congratulations, Ms. Okun! You have reinvented the intellectual underpinnings of segregation.
Individualism, on the other hand, puts the shoe on the other foot. You want to impose restrictions on individuals because they are Black? Individualism then demands that you justify societal constraints on Black individuals.
Turns out, all attempts at justification by racists failed. See The Bell Curve11 for the most spectacular recent example of a failed justification for racism. Why? Because skin is an accident of birth that has noting to do with an individual’s character or ability. But flimsy justifications of racism made in the context of individualism are no indictment of individualism, the indictment falls on those offering the flimsy justifications. In the end, we reject those flimsy justifications because individualism gives us the intellectual framework to make that rejection.
It’s About Control
So what is going on here? Sadly, it’s all about control; that is, the wokies getting to control everything we think, say, and do. It’s about repalcing the Sunday harrangue at church, with the mandatory DEI sermon in the workplace. The wokie set has their philosophy and wants to impose their view of the good society on all of us, whether the rest of us want that society or not. The wokie vision of the future also sucks. It sucks so bad that it collapses when confronted with even a modicum of critical thinking. Because wokies cannot argue in favor of, or even defend, their vision against the most basic of objections, they must adopt a collectivist framework. Because they cannot justify the societal constraints they are demanding, as would be required under individualism, they want to start from a collectivist viewpoint so that you must argue your way out of their constraints. Of course, one of their constraints is that you can’t argue about the principles of woke. The want obedience, not a discussion.
Thus our wokie friends tell us that individualism is racist. That’s their one rhetorical move. The truth is that they hate individualism because they cannot justify their own ideas. They label individualism racist so that you won’t support it on pain of being labeled a “racist.”
Don’t fall for it.
This is the individualism that grew out of classical liberalism. But before the wokies come in here and start whining about Western chauvinism, check out section one of The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. In which you will find that our contemporary view of individualism takes from both Western Enlightment traditions and Iroquios philosophy.
A good example here are Jewish communities. Yes, they could deviate from orthodoxy at the cost of being stripped of any real power and being subject to expulsion at the drop of a miter. At least it went that way right up until that point when the local authorities decided to force local Jews to convert to Catholicism. Not that the authorities let up on the harassment and violence after the conversions.
Renaissance England is a great example of how stupid this can get. You start with the Catholic Church declaring Henry VIII to be the Defender of the Faith only to have him create the church of England a few years later (of which he just happened to be the head). Everyone was expected to convert over. Then his daughter Mary I takes over and everybody is supposed to convert back to Catholicism. Once Bloody Mary’s reign of terror is over, Elizabeth I advises that everyone convert back to the Church of England.
On the other hand, the life of a serf involved far less labor than a modern worker. See Greer, John Michael, Dark Age America [2016]. So lets not get too self-righteous about the benefits of modernity.
Attempt to engage in any “conversation” however and you will at best be told to sit down and shut up, or at worst sent to your HR department for reeducation. Or even hounded until you commit suicide.
I recommend not using the term ‘BIPOC’. It is a transparent attempt to play Oppression Olympics. Refuse to play that game.
I do not want to belabor this point in the main body, but will take a footnote to berate it. All of us have to set aside our individuality from time to time to be a team player. Want to work at Micky D’s? You have to wear a uniform. Want to be welcome in polite society? Don’t yell racial epithets at the top of your lungs on the street corner. On the bright side, individualism gives us more say in the choices we make. Don’t want to wear a uniform? Don’t work at Micky D’s. The choice is ultimately yours as to the trade offs you will make.
My own take is that Ms. Okun is intentionally unclear here because she wants to attack individualism but realizes (whether she is aware of her realization or not) that her position is inherently self-contradictory. Read on to see why.
See also the first section of The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow for an extended discussion of Native American conceptions of individualism. Spoiler alert, Native Americans had a far more robust individualism than the invading Europeans.
Again, as John Michael Greer notes, we allow ourselves to be worked to death in a way that would have fomented a serious rebellion by medieval serfs. See Dark Age America [2016]. Again, let us not look at feudalism too smugly.
Herrnstein, Richard and Murray, Charles, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life [1994].