Steve Sailer’s Citizenism

A review of "Noticing"

Steve Sailer is an American classic. The unassuming Californian made his name noticing the many absurdities in American life. Because his observations violated numerous taboos around race and gender, he was never given his proper due. Rather than being a star columnist for National Review, he labored away at dissident publications such as VDARE and Taki’s Mag. Thankfully, Sailer is now getting some of his much-due respect. His polite evisceration of journalist delusions on Twitter/X has made him a folk hero on the Right. Conservatives who would’ve once avoided Sailer like a leper now retweet him and openly cite his work.

It’s appropriate for this moment that Passage Press releases a collection of Sailer essays, naturally titled Noticing. The book includes many of his most incisive writings. The topics range from analyses of the Great Awokening, human biodiversity, America’s ridiculous foreign policy decisions, politically incorrect truths about crime, and much more. All of this is delivered in a common sense, unpretentious style that can easily appeal to normies. There is no bombast or pretentious scribbling here. This makes the writing more digestible to ordinary Americans who are trained to retch at the mere mention of Sailer’s favorite topics. It’s hard to disengage with the subject matter when the author writes in such a reasonable and affable manner.

In this review, I want to respectfully challenge one of Sailer’s core ideas, which is citizenism. This is his principle for why America should reduce immigration. Sailer defined this concept in the first essay, which was written for The American Conservative in 2006:

Americans are idealists. This is both one of our glories and curses because it makes us particularly vulnerable to manipulation by self-interested word-spinners. Nowhere is this more evident than in the immigration debate, where the restrictionists have most of the facts and logic on their side, but the beneficiaries of the current system have succeeded in blocking reform largely by defining themselves as the holders of the ethical high ground.

If you want to win at American politics, you need a moral theory. Fortunately, there is a concept that is both more practical and more attractive to American idealism than either liberal “multiculturalism” or neoconservative “propositionism.” I call it “citizenism” because it affirms that true patriots and idealists are willing to make sacrifices for the overall good of their fellow American citizens rather than for the advantage of either six billion foreigners or of the special interests within our own country. The notion is sensible, its appeal broad. Yet it has seldom been explicitly articulated.

It’s sensible enough. It’s virtually the same as Donald Trump’s calls to put Americans first. Rather than defining American interests by abstract ideals, as propositions do, or by its diversity, as multiculturalists do, citizenists say America should prioritize its people above all else. Since immigration negatively affects the people, it’s best to limit it. 

Since the majority of American citizens are white, citizenism would act to preserve their interests–without explicitly saying so. One could say it’s an implicit form of white identity politics. Sailer emphasizes that citizenism is completely different from “white nationalism”:

Nor does citizenism suffer the fatal paradox dooming the white nationalism advocated by Jared Taylor and others who encourage whites to get down and mud-wrestle with the Al Sharptons of the world for control of the racial spoils system. Unfortunately for Taylor’s movement, white Americans don’t want, as he recommends, to act like the rest of the world; they want to act like white Americans. They believe on the whole in individualism rather than tribalism, national patriotism rather than ethnic loyalty, meritocracy rather than nepotism, nuclear families rather than extended clans, law and fair play rather than privilege, corporations of strangers rather than mafias of relatives, and true love rather than the arranged marriages necessary to keep ethnic categories clear-cut.

This caricatures Jared Taylor’s beliefs. He doesn’t want whites to be just another minority group begging for handouts. Taylor wants whites to be in control of their own countries and their identity celebrated and preserved. Of the characteristics Sailer describes, only ethnic loyalty over national patriotism would come close to describing Taylor. 

Both men agree on a lot, especially on the need to curb immigration. The two primarily disagree on the rhetoric to achieve these ends. Taylor believes we should explicitly appeal to racial interests; Sailer says it’s better to avoid race and focus on the interests of our current citizens. 

Citizenism has some, shall we say, problematic implications. As Sailer’s essays indicate, it stresses the interests of blacks, making it a potential case to keep affirmative action. It was formulated at a time when whites were still nearly 70 percent of the population. Prioritizing citizens could still amount to a more digestible form of white identity politics at that time. We’re well past that point. Whites are heading toward a future as a minority. By stressing citizens above all else, it pushes whites to abandon any remaining racial consciousness and embrace everyone in this country who has the right paperwork. It’s not an inspiring formula. It’s better to stress the nation rooted in its founding people and culture as our ideal rather than the current citizenry. 

There’s an inherent hierarchy to citizenism. It prioritizes those who’ve been here the longest. That would include Foundational Black Americans. Sailer frequently bemoans how immigrants take black jobs. In the American Conservative essay, he writes: 

By cutting pay for the worst jobs, illegal immigrants have made honest work less appealing to many citizens, especially young African-American males, too many of whom have dropped out of the workforce and into the lumpenproletariat world of crime. That’s bad for both black Americans and for our country as a whole.

In another essay published in Noticing, Sailer argues:

The essential fact about African Americans is that they are Americans. They did not ask to come here. At minimum, our nation’s obligation to them is to not worsen their plight by importing competitors that are slightly more competent.

Essentially, this tells Americans they must endure higher prices, lower product quality, and even worse customer service just to keep blacks happy. Sailer understands why Americans prefer Hispanics to blacks: they’re considered more competent and commit less crime. But he feels Americans are obligated to sacrifice for blacks by dint of their citizenship.

There are now more Hispanic citizens than black citizens. The obligation towards blacks upends the interests of other citizens. While there is an implied standard that we favor those who've been here longer, this gets muddled when you realize at least a fifth of blacks now have a migrant background. How do we determine who gets the reserved menial labor jobs?

It also implies that we might need affirmative action–just for blacks. The original point of affirmative action was to give blacks a leg up after segregation. If we’re going to reserve low-wage jobs for them, why not set aside quotas for their highest performers to get into the best universities and professional work? We can’t leave behind our fellow citizens can we?

Sailer strongly opposes affirmative action but has argued before that it’s primarily bad because it includes immigrants. 

We don’t secure a political advantage by favoring blacks over Hispanics. Republicans are now winning 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. The GOP barely cracks ten percent among blacks. Many Hispanics (and some Asians) vote Republican because the GOP is seen as the not-worshiping-blacks party. Sailer himself argued that this was a politically potent message in past columns. Republicans lose this advantage by preferring blacks over these late arrivals. 

Sailer argues for citizenism based on political pragmatism, claiming it’s superior to explicit racial appeals to whites. But if one of its key elements (black favoritism) hurts its political chances, then it’s not very pragmatic.

The Noticing author understands that America’s chief racial issues aren’t caused by Hispanics. Whites were driven out of cities by a group with longer ties to this country. The vast majority of murders, as Sailer well knows, are committed by blacks. The Great Awokening was driven largely by black grievances; the George Floyd revolution was driven entirely by them. 

Sailer understands  this is all bad and deserves a response. But if you want to build a coalition around reversing these trends, a “non-black” identity makes more sense than citizenism. Blacks aren’t going to vote for tough-on-crime enforcement, meritocracy, or really anything else we care about. They won’t even support immigration restriction despite it benefiting themselves. Republicans do better among black immigrants than among Foundational Black Americans. 

Outside of political strategy, citizenism presents an issue with America approaching majority-minority status. In the past, “American” pretty much meant “white American.” The only large minority group were blacks, who were only ten percent of the population and saw themselves as distinct from Americans. It still made sense to advocate for citizenism to defend America’s racial status quo against further disruptions when Sailer wrote his AmCon essay.

That situation has dramatically changed. The majority of Americans under 16 are now non-white. It’s likely America will reach majority-minority status years well before the expected 2042 date. Citizenism in this scenario could just mean whites denying their own interests in the vain hope minorities give up their racial consciousness. Rather than acting as implicit white identity politics, citizenism could inspire whites to become even more colorblind. Deracination becomes complete, and whites abandon any pretense of group identity. Meanwhile, every other group would happily preserve theirs. 

Whites embracing the logic of citizenism as a minority would make them even more obtuse to uncomfortable realities. When told blacks commit more crime, they will angrily insist it’s wrong to single out fellow Americans for their skin color. When told it’s weird the majority of tech CEOs are Indians, they will retort that they only see proud Americans. When informed that the majority of Army recruits are now non-white, they will see that as proof diversity is a strength.

Many white Americans already hold these idiotic views. It’s not our job to fortify these delusions. Telling whites that the paperwork is all that matters for American identity exacerbates this problem.

The better answer to this problem is nationalism. America sees itself as defined by its citizens under citizenism, including the ones replacing us. Nationalism avoids this by positing a myth that we strive to uphold. The nation is that of the people who built it and made it great. It’s their posterity to which we aim to preserve for the future. This America is not the one championed in school textbooks, but it’s the one envisioned by the Founders. It’s a dream that lives on in their descendants and those who want America to stay American.

Sailer is right that Americans are an idealistic people. So let’s give them something more inspirational than a multiracial Volksgemeinschaft.

Jared Taylor is right that whites eventually need to recognize their own identity and heritage. This will not be a campaign platform any time soon, but it’s still something we need to get across to white Americans. Sailer’s writings are incredibly valuable for achieving this goal. 

That’s why, despite my critique of citizenism, Noticing is absolutely a must-read. You should not just get a copy for yourself but ones for your conservative relatives as well. It will wake them up to forbidden truths in an amiable way. Sailer is far from a deranged crank. That’s why he’s the perfect writer for the uninitiated. You won’t have to worry about your loved ones thinking you gave them something that will put them on a federal watchlist. Instead, Noticing will make for a great conversation starter.

In short, buy the book.