White Is Not A Sign Of Deracination

The Right needs to avoid liberal myths about racial identity

Liberals love to say that “white” is a fake identity. But some on the Right also share this view. Normie conservatives insist white is fake in their commitment to “colorblindness.” Racialism is leftist, according to them. However, they will never say that “black” is a fake identity. 

Even those further to the Right will argue that whiteness is artificial. What really matters is your ethnicity, your hometown, and/or your religion. To be “white” is to be “deracinated.” That’s the argument made by Substacker “Kruptos.” He offered this bold claim in response to a tweet expressing the leftist view of whiteness.

One Jay Perk posted: “Tweet for white people ONLY: Pls do your best to define your race’s culture—race, not nationality. Thanks! Not asking about your Irish or Italian or even Jewish culture. What about white people makes them white people? What about your community makes it ‘the white community?’”

Kruptos found this tweet persuasive, arguing in a thread this is why he has no use for the term “white.”

This argument right here is why, for me, “white” is a political construct.

Until recently I have only ever thought of myself as an ethnic minority, a expat Dutch immigrant community bound together by the Reformed faith, Christian schooling, the Dutch language and our Dutch ethnic heritage.  

“White” is a you thing.  Don’t go putting that on me.

He added: 

“White” is what you call yourself when you have become completely deracinated, when your attachment to place and people has been stripped from you and you have been atomized and turned into “mass man.”  “White” is an artificial propaganda construct applied to people.

He went to denounce nationalism as shallow and insisted people should just define themselves by their localities and faith. The user claims that state identity is more authentic than racial or national identity. He says that “black” identity is also fake, despite the clear evidence it’s very real and important to actual black people. 

While trying to be based, this comes off as a contrarian way to agree with liberal orthodoxy. White is a real identity in America. It influences where you live, how you dress, how you talk, what music you listen to, what you eat, and what norms and values you uphold. Most importantly, white is how the world describes white people. No one sees Kruptos on the street and says “That’s a Dutch Reformed man.” They see a white guy. Few people choose schools based on how many Dutch kids go there. They choose schools on how many whites attend. Whiteness is more real in America than ethnicity. Nearly all white ethnicities here have blended into the Anglo-Protestant core.

The alternative proposed to whiteness isn’t very convincing. There are communities that have a distinct identity from the white mainstream, such as the Amish. The Dutch Reformed are not one of them. You would have to go back to the 18th century to find a time when this group was separate from the rest of white America. The Dutch Reformed, like nearly all white Christians, are part of mainstream white America. They intermarried with other whites, formed communities with other whites, and accepted English as their language. This all happened many generations ago. There have not been noticeably distinct Dutch communities in America in the lifetime of anyone still breathing. This is akin to claiming you’re not white but Huguenot in the year of our Lord 2023.

Most right-wingers who deny they’re white go with identities that were around in their parents’ and grandparents’ lifetime, such as Italian or Southron. But these particularist groups underwent the same transformation the Dutch, Swedes, Huguenots, and Scots did. The white ethnics moved to where other whites lived, married outside their demographic, and adopted standard white tastes and habits. Southerners didn’t move to where other whites lived–the other whites moved to where they lived. These identities haven’t completely disappeared. Being southern still means something, and Italians still love to talk about being Italian. But it means a lot less than it did when your grandparents were growing up. It’s an identity now mostly reduced to cuisine. 

State identity is even less real than the disappearing ethnic ones. Kruptos argues that saying you’re a Virginian means something, unlike saying you’re white. Virginian would apply to a white ruralite in southwest Virginia and an Indian programmer in Northern Virginia. Somehow, these two would have more in common than the white ruralite would have with a fellow white ruralite in Montana. Nobody would believe that. The transient nature of Americans have made state attachments thin. Americans move an average of 11.7 times in their lives. This nomadic nature was apparent even back in colonial days. Whites on the move settled this country. Today, Americans share their states with many people who are not like them at all. Pakistanis and Guatemalans now count as Virginians. State identity mattered a lot in the antebellum era when the United States of America was meant to be plural. It has mattered a lot less since the US of A became singular. Whiteness says a lot more about you than the state you live in.

Only whites would buy this. To tell blacks that their state matters much more than their race would be laughed at by everyone. Anyone who experiences America understands that blacks are a distinct ethno-cultural group. Only delusional people on the internet would say otherwise.

To be white is not a sign of deracination. It’s just a fact. Both biology and culture determine race. It’s what you’re born as, and it’s how we organize ourselves socially. Even though we were taught to be colorblind, people instinctively recognize who is like them and who is not. Race is at the forefront of that process.

White identity has always been recognized in America. Settlers of different European backgrounds united against the threat of the racial other on the frontier. The first immigration law mandated only free white men of good character could become citizens. That law remained on the books, with a few changes, until the 1950s. Americans were pretty open about being proud to be white and saying it’s important to them until the postwar era.

The reason why whites no longer emphasize their racial identity is because of the social taboo. They prefer to define themselves by something more socially acceptable, such as saying they’re Norwegian rather than white. But that doesn’t change the fact that whiteness is more important than a quarter Norwegian heritage. 

The Dissident Right emphasizing niche identities over whiteness aligns perfectly with the regime. The system doesn’t want whites to see themselves as whites. The elites would much rather have a white person say they are Irish, a Buffalo Bills fan, or cyclist as their primary identity. It ensures there can be no unity among the nation’s core population and whites attach themselves to harmless identities. 

White identity is much more potent than the niche identities because it’s readily apparent to people’s lives and is shared by the majority of the country. It’s the most capable of affecting real change in the world. It is a real ethnicity in America, and it’s firmly tied to our national heritage. A true American nationalism would be white identity politics by another name. The Left sees the flag, the national anthem, and our history as white-coded. They’re right. The best way to advance white identity politics is to emphasize an American national identity that is shared by Anglos and Italians, Yankees and Southerners, Protestants and Catholics. 

This is how we can create the positive change we want. Waiting around for the collapse and hoping our esoteric identity rises to the top is a fantasy. You can invent or tout any identity you want on the internet. But in the real world, racial identity matters the most.