A recent report about how anti-white rhetoric in schools is pushing white kids to go “trans” is about as alarming as it gets and should have all Americans seriously concerned. In interviews with dozens of parents and parent-group leaders, researcher Leor Sapir found that a key reason behind white kids’ transitioning was their left-wing teachers “compulsively” telling them “how awful it is to be white, how white people enjoy unearned ‘privilege,’ how they benefit from ‘systems’ put in place by and for white people for the sole purpose of oppressing ‘people of color.’” As he writes, “plagued by guilt, the children… rush to the sanctuary of ‘LGBTQ+’ identity.”

So severe is the poor self-image of white kids today apparently, they seek to “transition” out of their natural identity and into one with supposedly higher moral authority. This actually isn’t hugely surprising. Sapir’s otherwise excellent report does not fully engage with this topic, but positive group identity and moral authority are basic human needs for most people. Restrain them and you get supreme neurological discomfort followed by all sorts of perverse behaviors.

Being part of a wider phenomenon, Sapir’s findings might also help explain why whites generally transition more than non-whites or why whites endure unparalleled drug-addiction and suicide rates. Without an understanding of what group identity is and what its denigration means for its members, these and other related problems will likely persist.

All human beings need group identity. According to social psychology research, people generally need certain things in order to be content, including that they feel authentic in their lives and connected to others. This means they not only need a group to identify with, they have to feel good about their group. This is intrinsic to happiness and far more important to most than status or money.

Evolutionary psychologists have tried to explain why. As they posit, early humans found value in forming groups in order to endure harsh, uncertain times. Forming coalitions with others allowed for resources to be better protected and for individual goals to be more easily achieved. Those drawn to and able to work in groups, therefore, obtained a survival and reproductive advantage compared to the more atomized among us.

Altruism is also linked to this. Evolutionary psychologists find that not only is sacrificial behavior most strongly exercised within groups, but by helping someone who is genetically similar, such behavior does in fact incur individual benefits (and not just costs). This helps explain things like family sacrifice and our natural distrust of strangers.

This all raises serious questions then about white liberals: a group that is not only behind the push for CRT in classrooms, but seems to defy the innate tendencies described above. For instance:

·       According to Pew survey data collected in 2017, a whopping 80 percent of white liberals agreed that white racial discrimination was “the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days.” This was actually higher than blacks themselves, just 60 percent of whom registered the same skepticism towards whites.

·       A similar survey shows 83 percent of white liberals believing that an increase in ethnic diversity (that is, their own dilution) will make America a better place.

·       Elsewhere, white liberals have been found to be the only group to communicate warmer feelings toward out-groups (i.e. non-whites) than they do their own. In the case of blacks and Hispanics, it’s the very opposite.

Apparently white liberals are so uncomfortable in their own skin, they put others on a higher plain than they do themselves. But as mentioned, this seems to greatly conflict with what we know about evolution and human nature. So, how could this have happened? How did white liberals become so singularly self-hating?

The above survey data is actually relatively new, having reached these heights only in the mid-2010s—leading to a kind of liberalism 2.0, or what we now call “wokeism.” But their beginning can basically be pinned to the civil rights era of the 1960s. In his book White Guilt, black conservative commentator Shelby Steele says it was this period in which white liberals lost any sense of pride and confidence in America and the West generally. As he writes, “[a]fter America admitted to what was worst about itself, there was not enough authority left to support what was best.” Starting around this time then, for white liberals, “beyond an identity that apologizes for white supremacy, absolutely no white identity is permissible.”

This is completely wrong, of course. As Steele says: “If white Western societies were racist and imperialistic, they were also the centers of an indisputably great civilization.” In other words, it can’t be all blame and shame.

Interestingly, writes Steele, white liberals’ loss of a positive identity was compounded by a parallel identity crisis which happened to black Americans also during the civil rights era. Now enjoying full, equal freedoms across the country and no longer united by a brotherly feeling of persecution, blacks found themselves enduring a “sense of loss.” Demagogues like Stokely Carmichael jumped in to fill the vacuum, spouting new ideas like “institutional” or “systemic” white racism that apparently continued to hold blacks down. It was a narrative that white liberals were only too willing to go along with, writes Steele.

Again, we all need some form of group identity: something bigger than our own individual lives which we can feel a part of. Relatedly, we all need moral authority. Since the 1960s, however, a deep ‘moral inequality’ has set in; a kind of moral hierarchy built by white liberals who’ve put all whites on the bottom rung—Even school children, apparently.

Just like many white trans youth, many white liberals since the 60s have found perverse ways to restore their moral authority and alleviate their own racial guilt. Take whites who practice “allyship.” When black activists demand that white liberals be “allies”—that is, to be in perpetual deference to them—, they’re basically selling them a drug; something they can do to get back on an even keel.

“Antifa” is another example. Considering their mandate is all about “fighting ‘fascism’” (that is, fighting fellow whites on behalf of racial minorities), supporting them does allow whites to restore (however perversely) some sense of lost moral authority. Furthermore, it satisfies white liberals’ need to be a part of a group and something bigger than their individual selves.

While conservatives might find white liberals’ neuroses mockable (just like the trans community’s), the problem certainly requires mature, careful and even clinical attention. After all, the problem is a gravely serious one. Like a proverbial shark that has to keep swimming, white liberals must keep finding, fighting, and “protecting” non-whites against “racism.” This is an intense, even existential motivation. And, as we can see, the consequences of their actions are getting more and more serious. Holding white liberals up to a mirror is crucial. By pointing to social psychology and evolutionary studies, we can show them that their self-loathing is a not-so-subtle form of psychological torture. One they are needlessly imposing on themselves and on innocent people as well.