The Left's Greatest Victory Over Conservatism

Conservatives generally pride themselves on being hard-headed and clear-eyed realists. They enjoy puncturing the more silly assumptions of the progressive left, whether those assumptions concern defunding the police, gender ideology, prison abolition, or the decolonisation of knowledge. They mock these ideas as utopian flights from reality. As obviously, these notions are detached from truth and rooted in an unrealistic understanding of human nature.

Yet those same conservatives have glommed onto what is, in its own way, a similarly confused and flawed ideology, colourblindness. This creed demands that we pretend not to see race, an aspect of reality as obvious as sex or class in the hope that social harmony will magically follow. Like the deleterious ideas they so often criticise, colourblindness asks people to ignore aspects of reality that are plainly visible. In this sense, colourblindness rests on the same fundamental mistake conservatives often accuse the left of making: subordinating observable reality to an appealing abstraction. Conservatives who sneer at progressive idealism are undermining their own principles when they advocate treating race as irrelevant. They have fallen for the same error they condemn on the Left, mistaking an attractive moral vision for a clear-eyed understanding of how the world works.

Like communism’s fantasy of a classless utopia, colourblindness offers another seductive promise: end conflict by erasing a dividing line. Communism pledged to abolish class conflict; colourblindness promises to erase racial conflict. Both begin with a grand premise (that social divisions of class or race can be transcended by the right policies or attitudes) and both depend on ignoring inconvenient facts. In practice, neither holds up. By pretending the race or class “problem” is a illusion that can be wished away, supporters of these ideas make the same fundamental mistake, they assume human groups are interchangeable and that visible differences are ultimately unimportant. If conservatives truly believe in defending reality over fantasy, they should recognise that colourblindness is not the antidote to leftism, but a repackaged piece of its core myth. In other words, by adopting colourblindness, conservatives are not beating the Left; they are capitulating to its central blind spot.

Like the old communist dream, this promise is emotionally powerful, who wouldn’t want a world without social strife? But in both cases, the seductive ideal blocks honest questioning of the assumptions underneath.

By swallowing colourblind ideology, conservatives end up embracing the key premise of the Lefts worldview. The Left generally calls race a “social construct” and seeks to downplay any biological basis for difference. Colourblind conservatives say they want the same thing “we don’t see race, everyone’s the same” and in effect they are accepting the Left’s own metaphysics. Resulting in the same delusion, whether on the Right or Left, an unrealistic disregard for human biodiversity and group identity.

Violent-crime disparities. So, if race “doesn’t matter,” why do we see enormous racial gaps in violence and victimisation? FBI crime statistics and BJS reports show that Black Americans (≈13% of the population) commit a far larger share of serious violent crime than any colourblind ideology would predict. For example, the FBI’s Crime in the U.S. (2019) reports that ~51% of murder arrestees were Black and ~46% were white, even though Blacks are a small minority. Likewise, Blacks made up about 50.3% of robbery arrests compared to 47.0% for Whites.1 This pattern has held steady for decades under the so-called “race-neutral” policing and policies. In 2023 the homicide victimisation rate for Black Americans was a staggering 21.3 per 100,000, about 6.7 times the White rate of 3.2 per 100,000. In other words, an average Black American is almost seven times more likely to be murdered than an average White American (mostly/majority by a co-ethnic). These gaps persist even when accounting for poverty and education levels.

Academic and cognitive gaps. The same chasm shows up in education. Decades of federal funding and “equity” programs have not eliminated it. For instance, SAT scores (a proxy for academic aptitude) still show enormous racial divides: in 2015 the average SAT math score was 534 for White students but only 428 for Black students (out of 800), a gap of over 100 points (roughly 1.1 standard deviations). Hispanics averaged 457 and Asians 598.2 These differences place Black test-takers near the 50th percentile nationally, Whites above the 75th percentile, and Asians near the 90th. The black–white gap on standardised tests has barely budged in decades. Likewise, long-term research on intelligence and achievement finds consistent group differences. The American Psychological Association’s task force on intelligence reported that the Black mean is “typically about one standard deviation” (≈15 IQ points) below the White mean. Mainstream sources show a familiar ranking: Whites ~IQ100, blacks ~IQ85, Hispanics in between, and Asian (and Ashkenazi Jewish) populations somewhat above 100. Colourblindness pretends these stubborn gaps don’t exist, but they do. Chalk it up to any combination of factors (socioeconomic, educational, cultural, or yes, even genetic), the raw numbers refute the notion that we live in a post-racial, equal-performance society.

Family structure and impulse control. Social science finds huge racial differences in family and behavioural factors that shape life outcomes. For example, consider single-parent households. Black Americans have much higher rates of out-of-wedlock births and single motherhood than Whites (and many other groups). In 2019, the official U.S. Vital Statistics showed ~70% of non-Hispanic Black births were to unmarried women, versus only ~28% for non-Hispanic Whites (Hispanics ~52%, Asians ~12%). That difference in family stability is a reality that colourblind ideology forbids us to worry about. We can cite decades of research linking single-parenthood and childhood adversity to crime, poverty, and educational underachievement. Similarly, controlled studies find biological differences in traits like impulsivity and testosterone. For instance, multiple lab study of college men found Black subjects had about 15–19% higher average testosterone levels than Whites. Higher testosterone is associated with greater aggression and risk-taking. There is also evidence Blacks, on average, score higher on measures of impulsivity and time-discounting (preferring immediate rewards).

Genetics and heritability. Modern genetics have demolished the idea that “race is just a social construct” with no real substance. Twin and adoption studies consistently find human traits like intelligence and personality are highly heritable (often 50–80%).3 That means individual differences are largely genetic. When researchers look at genomes, they repeatedly see clear clustering by ancestry. As population geneticists note, if Lewontin’s famous claim (a fallacy) (that most variation is within groups, not between) implied “race has no biological reality,” it is simply false once you analyse enough DNA. In fact, principal-component and cluster analyses of hundreds of thousands of genetic markers can classify an individual’s continental ancestry with near-100% accuracy. Stated plainly, genetic data can reliably tell whether you are African, European, East Asian, etc., even though there’s also lots of variation within each group. (This is why ancestry tests work so well.) The old “Lewontin’s fallacy” has been repeatedly rebutted: yes, individuals within one “race” are diverse, but the patterns of differences across many genes mean the concept of race does map onto genetics in a meaningful way. Thus, we know race correlates with real biology.

Social cohesion and trust. Empirical social-science research shows that increasing ethnic diversity tends to reduce social trust and solidarity, the opposite of the promised harmony. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam famously documented that in diverse communities “residents of all races tend to hunker down.” In ethnically mixed neighbourhoods, people trust each other less (even people of their own race), volunteer and cooperate less, and maintain fewer friendships. Putnam’s data, from U.S. communities found that added diversity correlates with lower social capital for everyone, Black and White alike. Other studies in Europe and elsewhere have found similar patterns as when neighbours come from very different ethnic backgrounds, people are less likely to engage civically or feel a sense of community. This means that, under colourblindness, conservatives have to ignore the sizable evidence that the very policies they promote tend to strain the social fabric. “More diversity = more division” is an empirically observed reality in many Western democracies.

If ignoring race were noble, reality wouldn’t look like this. Instead, every reliable statistic screams that race and group differences still drive outcomes in crime, education, family life, and beyond. Colourblindness is wilful ignorance.

So, what explains this self-defeating embrace of colourblind platitudes by people who otherwise claim to value facts?

It is not naïve ignorance but cowardice. Many conservatives know that the data above is real and observable in the world but they dare not speak it aloud. Acknowledging that race does matter in crime, schooling, or family formation would force them to confront the deepest taboos of modern discourse. They would have to answer uncomfortable questions about immigration’s impact on national demographics, about whether multiracialism undermines social trust and about how to preserve the cultural identity of historic majorities. All of these are perfectly fair topics of political debate in a democracy.

Yet, it is far safer (and career-preserving) to mouth the clichés: “No, we don’t notice race,” “Assimilation will magically take care of itself” “people will just somehow adopt our values”. But in reality this is a cop-out, a way to avoid the hard work of actually defending the people, culture, and traditions that built their nation. It takes moral courage to say, “I want my country to remain recognisably the country of my ancestors; I worry about demographic change.” But few politicians or pundits dare to say so. Instead they cower behind the progressively acceptable ritual of colourblindness.

This cowardice has consequences. True conservative principles, like loyalty to one’s country and its existing cultural inheritance are fundamentally incompatible with blind egalitarianism. Yet by pretending to be colourblind, conservatives have adopted an ideology that equates not noticing race with high moral ground. In this way, they surrender any principled defence of their own people.

The practical upshot of all this is paralysis on the existential issues conservatives care about. Colourblindness, by definition, turns any talk of a nation’s racial or ethnic composition into a almost untouchable subject (if you want to be truthful, consistent and intellectually honest). Under colourblind ideology, who makes up the citizen body is supposed to be irrelevant, only individuals count. Therefore, even raising concerns like “We should preserve the culture and identity of this country’s majority population” is met with outrage. Thus, conservatives who would fiercely defend borders against ideological or criminal subversion suddenly go mute on the demographic dimension. They will say “strong borders” and “secure the nation,” but shy away from the more precise truth: that they care which people are doing the immigrating, which culture/ethnic group is reproducing faster, and how those trends will reshape the nation.

Thus the most important question, the demographic future of our country is unthinkable to discuss honestly. Time and again, conservatives who purport to “cherish the particular people and place” find themselves unable to voice any objection to the slow-motion replacement of those people, for fear of violating the colourblind taboo. They might fret about inflation or crime, but they dare not say “This country must remain fundamentally this country.”

Conservatives refuse to face the contradictions: if race doesn’t matter, then why do we care who votes? If every individual is “the same,” then what is a national identity? The colourblind ideology ensures that any attempt to defend a nation’s demographic character sounds illegitimate. Best to say nothing, or at most repeat patriotic slogans that mean nothing. The net effect is that conservatives can never win the most vital fights, on borders, schooling, or cultural continuity because the underlying premises of those fights (that some groups will out-reproduce or transform the nation) are deemed unsayable. They end up enforcing their opponents’ premises while claiming the moral high ground.

If conservatives are genuinely “hard-headed realists,” they must apply that realism uniformly, even when the truth is uncomfortable. The idea that conservatives can simply declare themselves colourblind and solve racism is an enticing fantasy, but it belongs in the same garbage bin as other left-wing utopian schemes. Conservatives should reject it outright. They should stop idolising an ideology that demands ignoring nature. Instead, they should embrace a candid view: race matters. Group differences in behaviour, family life, ability and yes, IQ, are well-supported by evidence. Acknowledging this is the only honest way to defend our nation’s future.

We must call colourblindness what it is, a form of left-wing egalitarianism. If conservatism is to stand for anything, it must stand for viewing people as they are. If the Right is to truly live up to its boast of realism, it must ditch the false vision of a race-neutral utopia. That means accepting the reality of human biodiversity, defending the demographic and cultural character of our countries, and engaging in honest debate about diversity and immigration. Only by seeing the world clearly, in full colour, can conservatives hope to preserve the cohesion, trust, and heritage that actually sustain society.

Conservatives who refuse to do this are not principled; they are cowards who are deluding themselves. They have fallen for the last great egalitarian myth: that we can conjure good and equal societies by blinding ourselves to difference.