Editor's Note

Sociobiology and the End of Racial Egalitarianism

More than a quarter of a century has passed since the publication of Edward O. Wilson’s landmark text Sociobiology.¹  The book’s emphasis on genetic influences on within-group social behavior and its linkage of kinship and biology to man’s behavioral norms inspired a scientific revolution—one that fused together critical strands of the biological and social sciences, even though only the last chapter addressed these issues as they pertained to mankind.  This theoretical construct, grounded upon the careful study of kin selection, altruism, and group evolutionary behavior, signaled the beginning of a paradigmatic shift whereby the influence of biology in shaping human nature was once again recognized.  Kin-based altruism has profound implications for explaining social cooperation and group cohesion among cultures, races, and tribes.

Wilson’s book ignited a firestorm of protests.  Egalitarian ideologues in the social and behavioral sciences vigorously attacked Wilson and have over the years tried to discredit sociobiology and its offshoots.  These ideological critics have intuitively understood the tenuousness of the assumptions that underlie what psychologist Henry E. Garrett, former chairman of the psychology department at Columbia University, once termed “The Equalitarian Dogma.”  Garrett predicted that this modern dogma would eventually unravel and become exposed “as the scientific hoax of the [twentieth] century.”²   The doctrine of human equality—that races, cultures, and individuals have equal genetic potential for intelligence and other traits valued in human society—has not only unraveled but has been thoroughly demolished as a viable theory of human nature.  As Garrett Hardin recently argued, “No two Human Beings are created equal.”³  Individual, and thus racial, inequality is simply an iron law of nature.

Although sociobiologists have for the most part soft-pedaled the matter of race and ethnicity, the persistence of group differences has undermined the fable that all races and ethnic groups are created equal. Despite overlaps in the trait distributions for IQ and other valued traits, there are large and persistent differences between races and ethnic groups in the ability to create and adapt to the advanced civilizations of the modern world.  Ethnic group competition merely confirms the maxim that men are inherently unequal.  A few innovative researchers are beginning to connect the strands between the biological and social realm through their examinations of the role that ethnic and racial differences play in economic, social, cultural, and political endeavors.  The research of Dr. Frank Salter, political ethologist at the Max Planck Institute, is plowing important new ground by drawing together findings from ethological research and fitting data on ethnic group competition into a comparative political framework.  Mike Rienzi’s article in this issue highlights the implications of Salter’s work.

Human inequality in general, and racial inequality in particular, is the overarching theme that connects the articles and reviews in this issue.  From Spearman’s g factor to the historical threads of Social Darwinism, each contribution touches upon some facet of this natural condition of human existence.  One of the primary objectives of The Occidental Quarterly remains the critical re-evaluation of racial egalitarianism to examine the possible political consequences of the latest research in various academic fields—from physical anthropology to population genetics and behavior genetics to sociobiology—in order to end the ironclad dominance of what might well be the most destructive social dogma among the utopian ideologies.

In his 1998 book Consilience, Wilson put his finger on a disturbing trend that should concern all who value their own racial and ethnic survival:

The big story in recent human evolution is not directional change, not natural selection at all, but homogenization through immigration and interbreeding.  Populations have been in flux throughout history.  Tribes and states have pressed into and around the territories of rivals, often absorbing these neighbors, occasionally extinguishing them altogether.  The historical atlases of Europe and Asia, when their pages are flipped chronologically through five millennia, become film clips of changing ethnic boundaries. . . .

The mixing sharply accelerated when Europeans conquered the New World and transported African slaves to its shores.  Homogenization took a smaller leap in the nineteenth century with the European colonization of Australia and Africa.  In more recent times it has quickened yet again through the spread of industrialization and democracy, the two signature traits of modernity that render people restless and international borders porous.  Most human populations remain differentiated on a geographical basis, and some ethnic enclaves will probably endure for centuries more, but the trend in the opposite direction is unmistakably strong.  It is also irreversible. . . . Its main consequence is the gradual erasure of previous racial differences—those statistical differences in hereditary traits that distinguish whole populations. . . .

Continued over tens or hundreds of generations the present rates of emigration and intermarriage could in theory eliminate all population differences around the world.⁴

Wilson overlooks the obvious implication for Europeans: These trends mean a catastrophic loss of biological fitness for European populations.  Since World War II, immigration has been almost exclusively by non-Europeans immigrating to lands that have historically been controlled and populated by Europeans.  For nations with a large European-majority population, the reality of these racial and ethnic demographic trends, aggravated by the ongoing rates of emigration and intermarriage, presents some of the most difficult problems to surmount. It will require new ways of thinking about the future of nation-states, devolution, and the likely balkanization of peoples into ethno-states and ethno-political enclaves.  We should remember and take seriously the dire warnings of the distinguished geneticist F.A.E. Crew:

The future survival of Western civilization hinges on the continued existence of Western peoples; the challenge of future generations is to establish social and political structures that maximize their own group interests while respecting the legitimate interests of other groups.

End Notes