By • 3/4/09
One of the assumptions common to virtually the whole of the white nationalist or pro-white movement is that human beings are born with an instinct for ethnocentrism, or the inclination to be loyal to and believe in the superiority of one’s own ethnic group. As Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, a white nationalist magazine, has written, “No healthy people ever doubts its own legitimacy—or even its superiority. According to the French proverb, every nation thinks itself better than its neighbors, and every nation is right.” Like most white nationalists, Taylor believes that white Americans have been taught to suppress their instinct for ethnocentrism and must be persuaded to recover it.
We would do well to question this assumption. Although ethnocentrism is common enough to qualify as a human universal,1 it is not necessarily an instinct. It may rather be the product of specific social contexts that prevail in most times and places but are not present in the West today. If white Westerners recoil at the suggestion that they ought to be loyal to their own kind, the cause may not be that they are suppressing an instinct for ethnocentrism, but that they never possessed one to begin with.
Proponents of the theory that ethnocentrism is instinctive can cite a large body of social science scholarship in support of their view. Among the most popular work of this sort is J. P. Rushton’s “genetic similarity theory” (GST). Rushton may well be the most politically incorrect scholar alive today. He is the author of the indispensable Race, Evolution, and Behavior, at once a comprehensive description of racial differences and a powerful theoretical account of their causes. According to GST, which Rushton has been developing since the 1980s, evolution designs us to behave altruistically towards those who are genetically similar to ourselves, and this altruism is at the basis of ethnocentrism. Genetically motivated altruism is also at least one of the reasons that people prefer to befriend and mate with those similar to themselves, a phenomenon that psychologists have dubbed “assortative” bonding. Rushton’s work on GST is very popular in the pro-white movement, as it validates the belief that racial solidarity is instinctive.
While his work on racial differences is compelling, GST, in my view, is not. Rushton fails to convincingly explain why his theory is superior to other explanations of assortative bonding. The theory is also incompatible with the high incidence of interethnic sexual attraction, which would not be common if attraction were substantially influenced by the logic Rushton describes.
Contemporary biology takes a “gene’s eye” view of evolution, according to which genes design organisms to make as many copies of the genes as possible. Biologists call the average capability of a given genotype to reproduce itself its “fitness,” so genes design organisms that maximize fitness. The most effective way for an organism to maximize fitness is by reproducing, so most of an organism’s effort in life is devoted to survival, finding and attracting mates, and provisioning for offspring. However, since the individual’s blood-related kin share genes with him, he can also make copies of his genes by aiding them to survive and reproduce. Since siblings on average share 50 percent of their genes, a man’s nephew or niece will share 25 percent of genes with him. Thus, aiding one’s brother and other close relatives to have children is an effective means of maximizing fitness. Through a process called “kin selection,” organisms often evolve instincts that cause altruism towards blood relations. Kin selection is motivated by what can be termed “genetic altruism,” in that it causes organisms to behave altruistically to blood relations in order to promote the propagation of shared genes. Kin-selection theory has had extraordinary success in explaining the behavior of humans and other life forms and has become fundamental to the biological study of behavior.2
Rushton’s “genetic similarity theory” posits that genetic altruism influences behavior in another way as well. If organisms evolve to behave altruistically towards relatives, why shouldn’t they also evolve to aid everyone who is likely to share genes with them, whether they are related or not? Rushton believes humans and other organisms instinctively detect genetic similarity in non-related individuals and behave altruistically towards them. The theory is superficially plausible: since our appearance and behavior are heavily influenced by genes, many of our outward similarities are indeed the result of genetic ones.
Social scientists have long recognized that people tend to choose as friends and lovers those who are similar to them. Rushton believes this tendency towards assortative bonding is in part shaped by genetic altruism. Rushton has amassed copious evidence of such similarities since he began expounding GST in the 1980s, and he demonstrates convincingly that friends and lovers are more similar to each other across a wide range of traits than they are to the average member of their populations. Friends and lovers are similar to each other in age, occupation, ethnicity, attitudes (conservatism vs. liberalism), personality (extroversion vs. introversion), and even physical characteristics (hair color, eye color, weight, and so forth).3
GST leads quite naturally to a theory of ethnocentrism, as co-ethnics (people who share an ethnicity in common) are almost always much more genetically similar to each other than they are to members of other ethnicities. Rushton has argued that patriotism, charity towards co-ethnics, interethnic conflict, and other ethnocentric behaviors are motivated by the same genetic altruism that causes assortative bonding.4
My criticisms of Rushton’s theory will deal primarily with his theory of assortative bonding between friends and lovers, rather than with his theory of ethnocentrism. Nevertheless, since Rushton’s theory of ethnocentrism is based upon his theory of assortative bonding, criticisms of the latter bear upon the former: if GST fails to account for assortative bonding, it cannot account for ethnocentrism, which is nothing more than assortative bonding on a mass scale.
GST has, by and large, not been received favorably by experts in relevant fields, like evolutionary psychology, behavior genetics, and animal behavior. Rushton’s most extensive statement of GST, “Genetic similarity, human altruism, and group selection,” published in 1989, was accompanied by commentary from more than 30 of his peers, the large majority of which were negative. (All the peer reactions can be read at the link above.) This fact alone should make us skeptical of GST: out of prudence and humility, non-experts ought to defer to experts in their judgment of complex scientific issues unless there is very strong evidence that the expert community is biased.
The criticisms directed against GST are multifarious and often highly technical. Some have questioned whether detectable similarities between people are an efficient means of measuring genetic similarity.5 Others have objected that assortative bonding is a mere by-product of mechanisms that evolved exclusively to detect close kin rather than the result of an instinct for more general genetic altruism.6 Others have argued that Rushton’s theory of instinctive ethnocentrism does not overcome the usual objections to group selection.7
One of the most frequent criticisms is that Rushton does not convincingly demonstrate that GST is superior to competing explanations of assortative bonding.8 There are many different theories of assortative bonding, most of which explain the phenomenon without reference to genetic altruism—I will call these “standard theories.” One explanation that is popular among psychologists is “consensual validation” theory (CVT), according to which we associate with those similar to us because they validate our own opinions about the world. Everyone wants to be right and those who view the world as you do are likely to tell you that you are. CVT has been a robust research paradigm for more than 50 years, generating dozens of confirmatory studies.9 Rushton has never convincingly demonstrated that GST accounts for human behavior better than standard theories or explains aspects of human behavior that standard theories cannot.
Rushton does make some efforts to prove the usefulness of his theory. First, he points out that similarities between friends and lovers are stronger on more heritable, or genetically influenced, traits, just as you would expect if assortative bonding were influenced by genetic altruism. Moreover, assortative bonding occurs in animals as well as humans, a fact that casts doubt on explanations derived from human psychology.10
However, these points are far from convincing. Some scholars have raised doubts about the methods by which Rushton measures the heritability of traits.11 Moreover, Rushton does not demonstrate that standard theories of assortative bonding cannot account for strong similarities between friends and lovers on highly heritable traits. It may be that these traits are particularly relevant to the bonding processes described by the proponents of standard theories. Assortative bonding may have evolved in animals and humans for different reasons, or may be a by-product of mechanisms for recognizing close kin in animals.
On the other hand, CVT is superior to GST in obvious ways. First, CVT provides a better explanation of the data on assortative bonding than GST does. CVT makes concrete predictions about which types of similarities ought to be most relevant in interpersonal attraction. If people seek out similar friends and lovers for validation of their view of the world, one would expect similarities in attitudes and opinions to be among the most important determinants of attraction.
On the other hand, GST makes no prediction about what types of similarity ought to matter most in attraction. If assortative bonding is due to genetic altruism that leads to gene propagation, it should make no difference what genes are propagated: genes for blond hair would do as well as genes for conservatism or extroversion. Therefore, GST would lead one to expect that there would not be large differences in the types of similarities relevant to attraction. If GST makes any predictions about what types of similarities ought to matter most, one would think it was physical similarities. One can detect physical similarities just by looking at someone, but one must get to know someone to detect similarities in attitudes and personality. Assorting by physical similarity would thus be the easiest and most efficient means of maximizing fitness if Rushton’s logic were operative.
According to the research summarized by Rushton, similarities in attitude and opinion are much more important in attraction than others, just as CVT would predict. Correlations between spouses are quite high for attitudes, opinions, and values (0.40 to 0.70), as well as for traits such as education, age, and occupational status, all of which have substantial effects on attitudes. The same pattern of similarities is found among friends.12 Physical similarities are among the least important in interpersonal attraction, with correlations of only about 0.20 among spouses and about 0.10 among friends.
Moreover, CVT and GST lead to differing predictions about interethnic attraction. As a large body of work from population genetics has demonstrated, ethnic similarity is a very strong predictor of genetic similarity because normally people of the same ethnicity share ancestors in common. Ethnic similarity is almost certainly a better predictor of shared genes than similarity in individual traits, like having blond hair or being extroverted. Whereas similarities in individual traits indicate that people may share a few genes in common, ethnic similarity indicates similarity across the entire genome,13 just as kin relationship does. Indeed, the genetic similarity between co-ethnics in comparison to very distantly related ethnicities is comparable to the genetic similarity of siblings in comparison to their own ethnic group: genetically speaking, two Englishmen are like brothers in comparison to sub-Saharan Africans.14 If interpersonal attraction were influenced substantially by genetic similarity, one would thus expect interethnic sexual attraction to be extremely rare. Moreover, one would expect people virtually never to prefer to mate exogamously (outside their ethnic group) if they had the opportunity to mate endogamously (within their ethnic group).
CVT would not necessarily predict that common ethnicity is a minor factor in interpersonal attraction since people who share a common ethnicity tend to be similar in many other respects as well. Nevertheless, CVT would grant ethnic similarity a lower importance for attraction than GST and would predict that preference for endogamous mating would frequently be overridden by other factors, leading to widespread interethnic sexual attraction.
Once again, CVT explains the facts about human behavior better than GST. Interethnic sexual attraction is not at all rare. Twenty-four percent of American college students today report having dated interracially and half say that they are open to interracial dating.15 Of course, interracial dating is only one form of interethnic dating, as members of the same racial group can be of different ethnicities, so these statistics underestimate the prevalence of interethnic sexual attraction. Besides, a 1988 study found that nearly half of Hawaiian men of white, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, and Japanese ethnicity reported that they were more likely to date outside their group than within it.16
Statistics on ethnic intermarriage in non-Western societies also demonstrate the prevalence of interethnic sexual attraction. In non-Western societies with peaceful or moderate levels of conflict, the rate of ethnic intermarriage is in the 10 to 20 percent range.17 A study of ethnic intermarriage in Beijing found that those of Mongolian or Manchu ethnicity had out-marriage rates of about 90 percent.18 Such high rates of exogamy cast doubt on the hypothesis that sexual attraction is substantially influenced by genetic altruism.
Even more damning for Rushton’s theory is the fact that many people prefer to marry exogamously rather than endogamously. Sociologist Zenchao Qian has found that better educated blacks and Hispanics are more likely to marry whites than their less educated co-ethnics, and better educated whites are more likely to marry Asians than less educated whites.19 Education is a correlate of economic success and high social status, both of which are key determinants of sexual attractiveness, especially among men.20 There is little doubt, then, that well-educated blacks, Hispanics, and whites could marry within their race if they chose. These patterns of interethnic marriage imply that many people prefer to marry outside their ethnicity, a phenomenon that would be highly unlikely were sexual attraction were substantially determined by genetic altruism.
Qian believes these patterns of interethnic marriage reflect preferences for assortative bonding by education level. Since Asians are the best educated of the races, whites less well educated, and blacks and Hispanics the least educated, strong preference for spouses of comparable education level would naturally lead to the patterns of interethnic marriage that Qian finds. Highly educated blacks, for example, will find few mates equally educated among their co-ethnics and will consequently be likely to marry into an ethnicity with a higher level of educational attainment.
It would seem then that assortative bonding is not dependent on genetic altruism, as Rushton believes. Rather, standard theories of assortative bonding like consensual validation theory appear to account for human behavior better than GST. This conclusion entails rejection of Rushton’s theory of instinctive ethnocentrism as well because it is dependent on his theory of assortative bonding.
Finally, Rushton’s claim that genetic altruism provides a natural basis for ethnocentrism falls prey to the criticism that can be brought against any theory of innate ethnocentrism: if it’s innate, why do we see so little ethnocentrism among white Americans today? It has been repeatedly documented on this website that white Americans show very low levels of racial partisanship. They do not believe that white people are biologically superior to other races, nor do they disapprove of racial intermarriage. They tolerate the mass immigration of racial aliens into the country with only sporadic protests. They consent to forking over large amounts of money to non-whites in the form of welfare. They allow history textbooks that slander white Americans and their culture to be used in schoolrooms. They vote in large numbers for non-white candidates to political office. While nationalism is stronger in other Western nations, the same lack of racial partisanship among whites is obvious there too. How could societies like contemporary Western ones come into being if ethnocentrism were instinctive?
In order to convince me, Rushton would have to demonstrate that GST accounts for the facts of human behavior better than standard theories of assortative bonding and that GST can be reconciled with the prevalence of interethnic sexual attraction. Moreover, he would explain how his theory of instinctive ethnocentrism is compatible with the apparent absence of this attitude among contemporary white Western populations. He would, moreover, have to answer the other objections to his theory: is assortative bonding a mere by-product of our preference for close kin rather than the result of the broader instinct for genetic altruism that Rushton postulates? Is the detection of outward similarities between ourselves and our fellows an efficient way of measuring genetic similarity? Can GST surmount general objections to group selection? I hope to address more completely some of these problems with GST and other theories of innate ethnocentrism in future articles.
My suspicion is that GST will never be able to surmount these criticisms because it is simply a bad theory. If this is true, we would do well to come up with a new explanation of the sources of ethnic solidarity, as this is a key component of the theory and practice of the pro-white movement.