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Category: Tribalism
Moral Community and Civil War
Malcolm Pollack writes, and I respond in blue:
Visited your blog today . . . and saw this striking passage:
But also: haven't the barbarians forfeited their (normative) humanity to such an extent that they no longer deserve moral consideration? Do they form a moral community with us at all?I am just asking. Or is inquiry now verboten?
It's not verboten – I think it's pretty clear that the foe has already asked it of our side and found us fit for exclusion. (Joe Biden's "Red Speech" made that plain enough.)
BV: Yes. Biden's 'semi-fascist' is a weasel-word equivalent in meaning to 'fascist,' which itself is an abuse of a legitimate term. The Left's favorite 'F' word is a toxic blend of psychological projection and Orwellian subversion of language. Leftists drain the term of its descriptive meaning so as to employ it as a semantic bludgeon.
But it is chilling, nevertheless, to be asking it in serious immediacy, rather than as a speculative, worst-case example of where we might get to if we aren't careful. It seems though, that now we really are pretty much there, and that is – even for folks like us who have been thinking so hard about the road ahead for so long – a grim mile-post.
BV: Yes, we appear to be reaching a critical juncture at which we will either put the destructive Left in its place and start the long march back to comity, or else advance into hotter and hotter forms of civil war, thereby weakening ourselves over against our geopolitical adversaries who believe we are ripe for collapse if the right shocks are administered. (For example, what has the Biden administration done to protect the power grid? Nothing. The ChiComs could easily knock out most if not all of it. The Biden admin, however, thinks delusionally that the non-threat of 'white supremacy' and the very distant possible threat of 'climate change' are imminent existential threats.)
What makes our predicament so dire is that the worst of the threats to the Republic are not external, but internal, emanating as they do from the extreme ('woke') Left which has infiltrated all of our institutions aided and abetted by a vast number of Useful Idiots who do not understand what is happening.
I have read a great deal in recent years about the history of civil war, and when things get to this point – when large numbers of people begin seriously questioning whether their fellow-citizens have forfeited their claim to moral inclusion (which really is the same as saying they are no longer to be seen as fellow humans) – then a nation is approaching the final exit.
BV: Yes, if you are using 'human' normatively and not merely biologically. I am reminded of someone who when asked how many men he had killed, replied in effect, "Not a one, I killed only communists."
What strikes me here is to look back over your own slow and cautious approach to this point over these many years: always thoughtful, always trying to hang on to the better angels of the American nature, and always wary of the most inflammatory and divisive voices on the Right.
BV: You understand me, Malcolm, and I am deeply appreciative of that fact as well as of your gentlemanly conduct even when I was unduly harsh in my responses to you. You and 'Jacques' [a Canadian academic philosopher who must use a pseudonym to protect himself against the depredatory Left which is apparently even more vicious up there than down here] have had an influence on me.
But here you are. (And so am I.) When those who hate you have branded you as unpersons, and make clear that they want you dead and gone, to keep your own circle expansive enough to include them is just unilateral disarmament, and suicidal folly. Woe that we should have lived to see such times in America.
BV: I should make clear, though, that when I asked in the passage you quoted "whether the barbarians have forfeited their (normative) humanity to such an extent that they no longer deserve moral consideration," I was not asking rhetorically. I was not making a statement but genuinely asking a question. And the same goes for the question whether they, the barbarians, form a moral community with us at all. By barbarians I mean the BLM and Antifa thugs and all who would erase our history and traditions together with the criminal element in which blacks are 'over-represented,' as well as all the civilized-looking enablers of the explicitly barbarous from Biden on down, and let's not leave out the hidden operatives who pull the strings of puppets such as Biden.
As a philosopher, my interest in these questions is not just here-and-now practical, although it is that inasmuch as I cannot do philosophy if I am dead or in prison. I am no Boethius. My interest is also theoretical. We are not just clever land mammals, bits of the Earth's fauna. We are also persons, rights-possessors, and as such equal regardless of race, sex, and other biological differences. Here is a mighty bulwark against the biologism of the (true) fascists. To the extent that the alt-Right moves in that direction I must oppose them.
This bring me to the topic of tribalism. I have been strenuously opposing it. Unfortunately, it appears to be the historical norm (statistically, not normatively). If the reversion to the tribal is inevitable, then I fear that humanity is finished given the existence of WMDs.
Still and all, I have been considering that a pro tempore white tribalism might be necessary, though not in itself desirable, given the vicious assault on Western civilization that we are seeing. We should discuss this, Malcolm, practically and theoretically. What is to be done by people like us who are not about to withdraw into the petty particulars of private life, but want to do our bit to preserve a civilization that has made it possible for us and so many around the world to live long and productive lives. You and I are not about to acquiesce in the suicide of the West or accept dhimmitude, whether of the Islamist, Communist, or 'woke' variety. And so it becomes quite the pressing question whether our political enemies have forfeited their normative humanity and can still be tolerated. Toleration, you have heard me say, is a great value of the classical liberalism of the Founders. But toleration has limits, as I have also repeatedly said. We are approaching those limits, and the patience of patriots is wearing thin.
If the USA, as she was founded to be, collapses, there will be nowhere left to escape to. The rest of the Anglosphere is shot.
Tribalism and Diversity
Tribalism is on the rise while classical liberalism is on the wane. Given this fact, does it make sense to admit into one's country ever more different tribes? A piety oft-intoned by leftists is that diversity is our strength. An Orwellianism, that, if tribal diversity is at issue.* For that would amount to the absurdity that the more domestic strife, the stronger we become. It is plain, after all, that different tribes do not like each other, and do not see themselves in the other. Tribal identification is other-exclusive. There is no comity without commonality.
I am against tribal identification. I realize, however, that I am sawing against the grain of the crooked timber of humanity. Classically liberal ideals such as toleration are no match for the ingrained tendency to revert to the tribal. So the realist in me says that immigration policy must favor those who are assimilable to our values and principles and must exclude those who aren't.
There are severe constraints on the diversity of the ingredients that can properly blend and enhance each other in the proverbial melting pot. This was well understood until about the mid-1960s.
Now aren't my points the sanest you've heard all day? They are indeed eminently sane, but not to the destructive and self-enstupidated. They now dominate the Democrat Party here in the USA.
But while what I have said is sane, it has the air of the fantastic. "How can you concern yourself with immigration policy which you intend to have the force of law when the current lawless administration promotes wide-open borders and the elision of the key distinctions without which there can be no legal immigration policy?" The objector has in mind such distinctions as the following: legal versus illegal immigrant, citizen versus non-citizen, asylum entry versus illegal entry. The granting of asylum to a political refuge from another country is an exceptional practice that grants immunity from the extradition that would normally be demanded in the case of illegal entry. To subsume all irregular entry under asylum entry destroys a crucial distinction.
___________
*I grant that some types of diversity could strengthen a body politic.
Christianity and Individualism
Easter is a timely reminder of Christianity’s development of individualism, which is now widely derided by many on both sides of the political spectrum.
Yes.
Many on the post-liberal left replace individualism, which they equate with greed and capitalism, with raucous identity politics stressing communal identities based on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or some other category of victim group. Many on the post-liberal right disdain individualism as self-centered autonomous materialist hedonism disconnected from family, religion and community, degenerating into endless categories of personal expressivism. They propose hierarchy, tradition and subordination to institutions as alternatives.
That's right.
Easter is the supreme example of extraordinary, supernatural inspired individualism. Jesus the individual, as God Incarnate, redeemed the whole world through His suffering, death and resurrection. He was shunned by all, His people, His followers, His family, yet He sacrificially prevailed against all sin, death and hell. Humanity was not saved by the collective but by one individual.
Jesus is the exemplar of the anti-tribal whether you accept his divinity or not. But isn't the God of the Old Testament a tribal god, the god of the Jews who sticks up for them and smites their enemies? Maybe so, but God himself is not a member of the tribe of gods. In himself, God is anti-tribal. His identity is not a tribal identity. If we are made in his image and likeness, then we are meant to be individuals too. Normative individuality is pre-delineated in our divine origin. In simpler terms, God made us to be individuals, and it is our vocation and task to achieve individuation by lifting ourselves out of the social and the tribal from which we must start, but in which we must not remain. Perhaps we could read Christ as the highest manifestation and achievement of radical self-individuation.
This fearsome call to the individual has animated all of Christendom and bequeathed to us concepts of individual dignity, purpose, duties and rights, which ultimately resulted in societies that aspired to equality and opportunity for all. What is sometimes called classical “liberalism” is the respect for individuals and their consciences that unfolded across several millennia thanks to the Biblical God’s summons to each person.
This is my view as well. It is presently under assault both from the post-liberal Left and the post-liberal Right, e.g. Patrick Deneen and Ryszard Legutko, et al.
Addressing one prominent contemporary critic of individualism and “liberalism,” Hanssen warns: “[Patrick] Deneen needs to be more careful, in taking aim at radical autonomy, that he doesn’t cast aspersions on the entire tradition in which Christianity has played a crucial role in elevating the dignity of the individual. It is the individual substance of a rational nature that is immortal: not the family, not the community, not the state.”
Exactly right! Speaking for myself:
1) The individual is the primary locus of value, not the family, the clan, the tribe, any group, association, race, sex . . . .
2) Self-individuation is a task, a project, and for the believer, one presumably extending beyond this life and into the next. We are to become who we are, and to be who we are becoming.
3) Tribalism is tearing us apart. We are on a path toward increasing social malaise as a result.
4) The cure for tribal self-identification is not an opposite tribal self-identification. White tribalism, for example, is not a truly ameliorative and long-term answer to black tribalism. I do concede, however, that tribalism pro tempore may be tactically necesary, here and there, for purposes of self-defense.
Polylogism and Leftist Racism
Anthony Flood sends us to Charles Burris, Polylogism — The Root of America's Divisiveness, Decline and Destruction.
History is repeating itself before our eyes. The widespread controversy surrounding President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson as a “black woman” recalls the editorial in The Washington Times, “A Judge Too Far,” concerning President Obama’s earlier nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. The editorial perceptively observed:
“Judge Sotomayor seems to think that inherent racial and sexual differences are not simply quirks of genetics, but make some better than others. Consider her 2002 speech at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law:
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she said. “I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”
“She also accepted as potentially valid the idea that the “different perspectives” of “men and women of color” are due to “basic differences in logic in reasoning” due to “inherent physiological or cultural differences.”
The brilliant Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, regarded as the greatest economist of the 20th Century, discussed this Marxist nonsense in his magnum opus, Human Action, under the category of polylogism.
This is the bogus idea that the logical structure of the mind is different based on one’s class, race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual preference, etc.
This skewed Marxist concept lies at the root of all “politically correct” notions of cultural relativism and multiculturalism fashionable in academia, the elite media, and critical race and legal theory circles today.
And if President Biden has his way, upon the highest court in the land.
This is more than the widely-accepted idea that our various life experiences shape our world view, or influence our value judgments in making ethical and moral decisions.
Again, polylogism specifically holds that the logical structure of the mind is different based on one’s class, race, nationality, gender, sexual preference, etc. There is no objective reality independent from these fixed determinative factors of causality.
The notion of a Constitutionally-driven independent judicial temperament or impartiality becomes impossible.
The rest is below the fold.
Did you catch the exchange between Senator Ted Cruz and nominee Jackson?
"For example, I'm a Hispanic man. Could I decide I was an Asian man — would I have the ability to be an Asian man and challenge Harvard's discrimination because I made that decision?" Cruz added.
Jackson replied that she could not respond to questions based on hypotheticals.
Lord help us. Yet another indication that leftists are mendacious to the core.
Victor Davis Hanson on Tribalism
I was planning to upload a batch of quotations from Chapter Three, Tribes, in Victor Davis Hanson's latest, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization are Destroying the Idea of America, Basic Books, 2021. But my effort was stymied when the book was recalled. For now, there is this:
The reversion to tribalism that we are now seeing all around us may be inevitable. Collectively, we appear to be 'defaulting' to tribalism. Hanson:
Tribalism is by far the most ancient, natural, insidious, and stronger idea than nonracial citizenship. It is the default state of mankind. Its pedigree dates back to prehistory, and its vestiges were worrisome to later civilized states. (100)
[. . .]
Tribalism is now swiftly becoming a synonym for multiculturalism. It accepts that the strongest human affinities in a society, past and future, must arise from similar and natural racial, ethnic, religious, or clannish ties of blood among like groups. These pre-state bonds properly should supersede the citizen's collective and constructed political and social allegiance to the nation-state. (100-101)
Hanson rightly distinguishes American multi-racialism with its commitment to a common culture from multi-culturalism and notes their opposition to each other. A multi-racial society could work but only with a shared culture. Without the latter, the nation will "unwind" and "revert to pre-state status," issuing in a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes.
That is what we are in for, I fear.
Not long ago, tribalism was seen to be backward, reactionary and pre-civilizational, as "innately toxic" and "anathema to any pluralistic democratic society." (101) But no longer.
On Transcending Tribalism: A Critique of Jonathan Haidt
My latest at Substack.
Jonathan Haidt, who is well worth reading, naively thinks that closer proximity and more interaction, more 'conversations,' will bring us together. A nice, heart-warming sentiment, that; one with no basis in reality, however.
Dennis Prager on Liberalism, Leftism, and Race
Here at Substack.
IS IT REASONABLE TO BE A SEX REALIST BUT A RACE IRREALIST LIKE PRAGER?
If not, should one affirm the biological reality of both, deny the biological reality of both, or affirm race realism and sex irrealism?
On Transcending Tribalism
Humans are tribal, but tribalism can be transcended. It exists in tension with our extraordinary ability to develop bonds with other human beings. Romeo and Juliet fell in love. French, British and German soldiers came out of their trenches in World War I to exchange food, cigarettes and Christmas greetings.
The key, as Cicero observed, is proximity, and a great deal of modern research backs him up. Students are more likely to become friends with the student whose dorm room is one door away than with the student whose room is four doors away. People who have at least one friend from the other political party are less likely to hate the supporters of that party.
But tragically, Americans are losing their proximity to those on the other side and are spending more time in politically purified settings. [. . .]
Haidt is right that tribalism can be transcended, at least to some extent, and that proximity and interaction can facilitate the transcending. But he is far more optimistic that I am.
What Haidt ignores is that there is no comity without commonality, as I like to put it. You and I can live and work together in harmony only within a common space of shared values and assumptions and recognized facts. But that common space is shrinking.
Take any 'hot button' issue, Second Amendment rights, for example. What do I have in common with the anti-gunner who favors confiscation of all civilian firearms, or only slightly less radically, wants to ban all hand guns or semi-automatic weapons? To me it is evident that my right to life grounds a right to self-defense, and with it a right to acquire the appropriate means of self-defense. If you deny this, then we have no common ground, at least not on this topic. On this topic, we would then be at loggerheads. If you then work politically or extra-politically to violate what here in the States are called Second Amendment rights, then you become my enemy. And the consequences of enmity can become unpleasant in the extreme. Push can come to shove, and shove to shoot.
In a situation like this, proximity and interaction only exacerbate the problem. Even the calm interaction of scholarly argument and counter-argument does no good. No matter how carefully and rigorously I argue my position, I will not succeed in convincing the opponent, with only a few exceptions. This is a fact of experience over a wide range of controversial topics, and not just in politics. The only good thing that comes of the dialectical interaction is a clarification and deeper understanding of one's position and what it entails. If you think, say, that semi-automatic weapons ought to be banned for civilian use, then you and I will never find common ground. But I will perfect my understanding of my position and its presuppositions and better understand what I reject in yours.
After we have clarified, but not resolved, our differences, anger at the intransigence of the other is the likely upshot if we continue to interact in close proximity whether in the same academic department, the same church, the same club, the same neighborhood, the same family . . . . This is why there are schisms and splits and factions and wars and all manner of contention.
Anger at the intransigence of the other can then lead on to the thought that there must be something morally defective, and perhaps also intellectually defective, about the opponent if he holds, say, that a pre-natal human is just a clump of cells. One advances — if that is the word — to the view that the opponent is morally censurable for holding the position he holds, that he is being willfully morally obtuse and deserves moral condemnation. And then the word 'evil' may slip in and the word 'lie': "The bastard is not just wrong; he is an evil son-of-a-bitch for promoting the lie that an unborn child is just a clump of cells, or a disposable part of woman's body like a wart." The arguably false statements of the other get treated as lies and therefore as statements at the back of which in an intent to deceive. And from there it ramps up to 'Hillary is Satan' and 'Trump is Hitler.'
One possible cure for this unproductive warfare is mutual, voluntary, segregation via a return to federalism. I develop the thought in A Case for Voluntary Segregation. I say 'possible' because I am not sure the federalist route is sufficient. Secession and partition are other options, not to mention the one no sane person could want: full-on hot civil war. We are already beyond cold civil war, what with the Left's violent Stalinist erasure of monuments and memorials (and not just that).
So while Haidt is right that proximity and interaction can promote mutual understanding and mitigate hostility, that is true only up to a point and works only within a common space of shared assumptions, values, and recognized facts. (His examples, by the way, were poorly chosen: Romeo and Juliet were young Italians; the French, German, and British soldiers were Europeans.) Absent the common space, the opposite is true: proximity and interaction are precisely what must be avoided to preserve peace.
The Problem and Three Main Solutions
The problem is how to transcend tribalism. I count three main solutions, the Liberal, the Alt Right, and the Sane (which is of course my view!)
There is first what I take to be Haidt's rather silly liberal solution, namely, that what will bring us together is proximity and interaction. He assumes that if we all come together and get to know each other we will overcome tribalism. This borders on utopian nonsense. It is precisely because of proximity and interaction that many decide to self-segregate. The more I know about certain individuals and groups the less I want to have to do with them. The Marxist thugs of Black Lives Matter, for example. By the way, 'thug' is not code for 'nigger.' 'Thug' means thug. Look it up. The Antifa fascists are another example. The anti-white White Fragility racists. I could go on.
At the other extreme we find the 'alties' and neo-reactionaries. They have a sound insight, namely, that there are unassimilable elements and that they must be kept out. For example, Sharia-supporting Muslims are unassimilable into the U. S. because their values are antithetical to ours, perhaps not all of their values, but enough to make for huge problems.
The success of e pluribus unum depends on the nature of the pluribus. A viable and vibrant One cannot be made out of just any Many. (Cute formulation, eh?) The members of the manifold must be unifiable under some umbrella of common values, assumptions, and recognized facts. One proposition nation cannot be made out of many tribes of immigrants unless the many tribes of immigrants accept OUR values, American values, and our propositions. The tribalism is overcome or at least mitigated by acceptance of a unifying set of American values and ideas.
The alt-rightists, however, do not really offer a solution to the problem of transcending tribalism since their 'solution' is to embrace an opposing tribalism. They are right about the reality of race, as against the foolish notion that race is a social construct, but they push this realism in an ugly and extreme direction when they construe American identity as white identity, where this excludes Jews. American identity is rooted in a set of ideas and values. It must be granted, however, that not all racial and ethnic groups are equally able to assimilate and implement these ideas and values. Immigration policy must favor those that are.
The sane way is the middle way. To liberals we ought to concede that diversity is a value, but at the same time insist that it is a value that has to be kept in check by the opposing value of unity. Muslims who refuse to accept our values must not be allowed to immigrate. They have no right to immigrate, but we have every right to select those who will benefit us. That is just common sense. The good sort of diversity is not enhanced by the presence of terror-prone fanatics. Immigration must be to the benefit of the host country.
What we need, then, to mitigate tribal hostility is not more proximity and interaction, but less; fewer 'conversations' not more; less government, more toleration, voluntary segregation, a return to federalism, a total stoppage of illegal immigration, and a reform of current immigration law.
Will any of this happen? Trump has taken steps in the right direction. Flawed as he is, he is all we have, and best we have who is ready, willing, able, and electable. You know what you have to do come November.
A Comment Thread on Tribalism and Identity Politics from December, 2015
I’m not sure we need to even address the question of whether our race is essential to our personal identity or not. Isn’t it enough that it is a feature of us that is deeply important to our functioning in the world and part of the natural categories into which we separate ourselves?
As you define it, I doubt anyone here is a racial tribalist, because saying that you are “first and foremost” part of a race makes it sound as though the interests of that group or yourself as a member of that group trump everything else. I take it that the position that Jacques and I are defending is just that racial groups are morally legitimate and one’s racial affiliation provides genuine moral grounds for certain prioritizations of members of that race.
Anon. writes,
>>it is obvious that it is morally permissible to prioritize one’s family, one’s country, one’s species, etc. in various ways. So, it’s already obvious that “tribalism” is morally permissible. Why arbitrarily think that racial tribalism is illegitimate given that tribalism in generally is clearly morally permissible?<<
I take it that what you mean by tribalism in general is favoring or "prioritizing" one's X over another person's X, if they are different. So racial tribalism is favoring or "prioritizing" one's race over another's assuming they are different.
Whether or not this is morally permissible in a given case will depend on the nature of the favoring. In the O. J. Simpson case, the black jurors voted to acquit despite a mountain of evidence showing that he had murdered two white people. They favored Simpson over his victims because he is black. I would say that their favoring was morally impermissible.
We have to agree upon a definition of 'tribalism,' however, if we are to move forward.
Continue reading “A Comment Thread on Tribalism and Identity Politics from December, 2015”
Celebrity Privilege
Add that to Black Privilege and Leftist Privilege and you've got some serious privileging going on. Not to mention the tribalism of blacks which makes it very difficult for them to be objective about members of their own race. Remember the O. J. Simpson trial?
And to those on the Reactionary Right, I say: white tribalism is no good and truly ameliorative response to black and Hispanic tribalism, although it is a natural response: Get in whitey's face and he may come to discover that he too has an identity . . . .
Is it politically sane to want both to crush and to tolerate opposing tribes?
George Packer in The New Yorker on tribalism:
I hear myself say this and think, A solid analysis. At the same time, I hear a Republican reply, Pure tribalism. You’re just proving your own point. I want part of my brain, even a small part, to be always attuned to the frequency of other tribes, ready to pose the essential questions: How would this sound coming from them? How do they see you? I try to keep two thoughts in my head at the same time: the other tribe needs to be crushed, and I have to talk and listen to them. The first thrives on rage, the second on tolerance. These are contradictory states of being, and extremely difficult to maintain in tension, but a sane politics requires both. The alternative isn’t victory but self-destruction. After all, we have to live together.
Surely the above is incoherent. I cannot both tolerate you and seek to crush you. Toleration does not imply approval, but it does imply a willingness to put up with you, your beliefs, your expressions of your beliefs, and at least some of the actions flowing from them. If I tolerate you, then I let you be, which is obviously incompatible with crushing you either physically or politically.
Packer tells us that a sane politics requires both rage and tolerance. On the contrary such a politics would be insane.
Packer tells us we have to live together. True. But he offers no proposal as to how to do so peacefully.
Secession is out of the question. If so, we are just going to have to battle it out in this age of post-consensus politics. It won't be pretty. Let's hope that political means suffice to beat back the Democrats. If we can beat some sense into them, then perhaps we can keep the Republic together.
Madeleine Albright, Chief of the Tribal Females
"There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other." Thus Madeleine Albright, urging women to vote for Hillary because she's a woman.
Now there is a reason that stands up to sober scrutiny. That's on a level with someone's refusing to vote for Hillary because of her pant-suited thunder thighs.
Albright is the gas bag who also darkly hints at Trump's being a fascist. But she lacks the estrogen to come out and say it. Does she know the meaning of that word or is she just using it as a verbal cudgel in the typical way of the leftist?
Tribalism is on the rise among the distaff contingent and it is not a pretty sight. The tribally female Dems are "un-freaking-hinged" to borrow a creative adjective from Rod Dreher whose Progressive Tribalism Beats the War Drums I invite you to read.
Part of an uncommonly good thread. Here is the entry to which the thread attaches.
………………………………………………….
Anon,
My point was that many short comments are better than one long one.
One problem here is that I tossed out a word, 'tribalism,' but did not define it. What's worse is that I used it very loosely. Mea culpa. It is a stretch to think of women as a 'tribe.'
Perhaps we have a 'family' of tribalisms: racial, sexual, etc.
Now I'll take a stab at a definition:
I'm Caucasian as you may have guessed. But when I get up in the morning I don't look into the mirror and affirm: I am a white man! This is who I am most fundamentally. This is what makes me be ME. This fact is what constitutes my innermost identity and is that attribute upon which my value as a person primarily supervenes.
I am therefore not a racial tribalist by my definition. This is not to say that I am not white or that being white is not a part of WHAT I am, namely an animal, a bit of the world's fauna. Indeed, insofar as I am an animal, it is arguable that I am essentially (as opposed to accidentally) white if we grant Kripke's point about the essentiality of origin: if I could not have had parents other than the parents I in fact have, then, given that both are white, I could not have failed to be white. So I am essentially white.
But is it essential to WHO I am that I be white? (Related question: Are persons reducible to objects in the natural world?)
Now in my definition above there is the phrase "member of the race of which he happens to be a member" which suggests that it is a contingent fact about me that I am white. There is the animal that bears my name, an animal that is essentially white. But there is a sense, brought out by Thomas Nagel in various writings, in which I am contingently the animal I am. I am contingently an animal that is essentially white.
But now we are drifting towards some very deep waters.