21st Century Tribalism And The Collapse Of The United States Of America

Yes, I'm back to that again.

Many, many commentators have written of the forces tugging at the threads that baste our national framework together. Some have concentrated on economics, others on political divisions, and still others on "hot button" issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. But all too few have dared to explore the force most likely to precipitate mass violence in the near term: racial tensions.

Follow me from here only if you're certain your heart is strong enough to withstand it.

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"A mechanical process can reverse a unit at random, but motivation acts like a field —elements don’t change until the field does." — James Tiptree, "Faithful To Thee, Terra, In Our Fashion"

I wrote more than a year ago about the genesis of political structures from the phenomenon of the tribe. Allow me to quote myself briefly:

Even after nation-states have formalized their legal systems and all that goes with them, whatever tribes they have subsumed will still exhibit tribal characteristics, at least for a while. In particular, members of a subsumed tribe will continue to prefer one another to the members of other subsumed tribes. In historical studies, this is often called sectionalism, but the geographical connotations of that word should not be allowed to lead us astray. After subsumption by a nation-state, the members of a tribe will often undergo some degree of internal dispersion. Yet they will continue to maintain tribal preferences as they disperse, until interpenetration and the slow process of binding to their new locales have had time to weaken them. Consider the resistance of various religious groups to exogamy as an illustration.

In retrospect, that passage is incomplete, and seriously so. It fails to mention that forces can arise that reinforce tribal bonding and preferences, such that even geographical dispersion will fail to weaken them appreciably. Indeed, sometimes, long after the typical observer would assess the tribal bonds as having dissolved completely, a force will arise that will re-evoke them and amplify them, such that they become stronger than ever before. Such a force is almost always political in nature.

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American Negroes are not of homogeneous origin, heritage, or inclinations. They exhibit a range of characteristics about as wide as American Caucasians. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the liberated Negroes exhibited roughly the same behavior as one would have expected from any other group recently freed from oppression: they formed or re-formed families, undertook various occupations and enterprises, and did what they could to raise their own stature and economic status within the framework of largely laissez-faire 19th Century America. In short, they behaved in accordance with the field-like incentives and disincentives of a free society.

That was then. Today things are rather different. While the great majority of American Negroes are as law-abiding, responsible, and self-respecting as any American Caucasians, a large fraction -- far larger than the equivalent fraction of Caucasians -- are, to put it quite bluntly, layabouts and thugs:

Negroes are:

• Disproportionately consumers of welfare benefits;
• Disproportionately inmates at various penal institutions;
• Disproportionately afflicted with venereal diseases, including AIDS;
• Disproportionately progenitors of illegitimate children in single-parent homes.

Why?

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"Freedom today means something more than being let alone." -- Richard Ely

Gold stars for the Gentle Readers who deduced that the "field-like incentives and disincentives of a free society" have been massively corrupted...in some cases, undone entirely.

The decades between the end of the Civil War and the Wilson Administration were our nation's golden years. It was possible for Americans to ignore government almost completely. With two brief, trivial exceptions, the nation was at peace. The races, though in some sections impeded by Jim Crow laws, were learning how to get along with one another: a process that would take more decades and considerable determination, but nevertheless, a process in motion. The dollar was gaining, not losing, purchasing power. The economy was growing at an annualized rate of 6.2%, a rate unheard of in the century that followed.

But laissez-faire America was about to come to an end.

The first intimations that large changes were coming manifested themselves in the cities of the North. The internal diaspora of the Negro population reached the northern states in force at about the turn of the century. At that point, the established powers -- political and commercial -- of the northern cities decided to "protect themselves" from the new influx. We began to see zoning laws, laws limiting commerce in various ways, licensure laws to limit the number of persons in various trades, and most ominous of all, laws that restrict the possession of firearms.

Those "already there" created a high barrier against those "just come here" -- and the latter group was disproportionately dark of skin.

The new laws and regulations never mentioned race. That didn't change the vector of their impact upon Negro integration into the fabric of American society.

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A group, however it defines itself, that views outsiders as enemies and oppressors will experience pressure to create or recreate tribal bonds and barriers. It's a matter of individual and collective survival. When that group's members wear their "membership cards" in their flesh, the incentives to do so will be near to irresistible. The consequences are easy to foresee:

• Group members will experience pressure to confine their interactions, whether social or commercial, to the group. A special segment dedicated to enforcing compliance is likely to arise.
• The group will become protective about "its own," such that any accusation against a member is viewed as an attack upon the group's status, reputation, and perquisites.
• The group will become a political bloc, which regards the State as a weapon to be wielded either for it or against it.
• To the extent possible, the group will concentrate or re-concentrate geographically.

All these effects have arisen among American Negroes and have been significant enough to be visible for at least fifty years. They're also happening to American Hispanics, accelerated by illegal immigration and linguistic commonalities.

That the inception of this retribalization process lay in racially-formed unease and low motives among American Caucasians hardly matters today. Indeed, Caucasians' sense of guilt about the way their forebears treated Negroes and other minorities is now a component of the problem: well-meant but utterly wrongheaded notions about "cultural relativism" and programs such as "affirmative action" have strengthened the forces driving retribalization.

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A nation beset by internal tribalism is in mortal danger. Unless the process of retribalization can be halted and reversed, it will soon cease to be a nation de facto, and perhaps de jure in the fullness of time. In my entirely personal opinion, the time remaining for America to reverse the trend is growing short:

• Racialist hucksters are everywhere, seizing on events such as the deaths of James Byrd and Trayvon Martin to whip up racial animosity for political advantage.
• Tribalism has become an important force within government, as the behavior of Eric Holder and developments such as this one make all too plain.
• Racially homogeneous mobs -- most frequently, black teenagers -- that physically attack unsuspecting, undefended members of other races are now commonplace in various cities.
• Interracial violence now threatens important public events and festivities, sometimes to the point of extinguishing them.
• Negro and Hispanic retribalization has evoked a trend toward "counter-tribing" among other groups, most notably Americans of Asian descent.

Perhaps there was a time when simple good will and determination to endure would have done the job. It's no longer so. Now that the violence has started and the government has become openly racialist, force will be required...and as sad as it is, if the United States is to remain united in anything but name, the force that must respond will be almost entirely white.

I invite your thoughts.