What do you think?
Rate this book
The Real American Dilemma: Race, Immigration, and the Future of America
Race is still the American dilemma. This is partly because Americans dare not speak frankly about it. There is no other subject on which private opinion diverges so greatly from public expression. This book is different. Its contributors--some of the most thoughtful people writing about race today--refuse to be intimidated by accusations of "racism." Here is straight talk on the burning issues that will shape our -Why is integration not working?
-Is Third-World immigration good for America?
-Why is there so much black crime?
-Are there racial differences in IQ?
Are whites destined to become a minority? This collection of essays on race and immigration is written by eight leading thinkers who are not afraid of being called "racist." It is published by the staff of American Renaissance , a monthly publication that has been called "a literate, undeceived journal of race, immigration, and the decline of civility."
-Is Third-World immigration good for America?
-Why is there so much black crime?
-Are there racial differences in IQ?
Are whites destined to become a minority? This collection of essays on race and immigration is written by eight leading thinkers who are not afraid of being called "racist." It is published by the staff of American Renaissance , a monthly publication that has been called "a literate, undeceived journal of race, immigration, and the decline of civility."
- GenresPolitics
152 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1998
About the author
Jared Taylor
16 books177 followersJared Taylor was born in Japan, where he lived until he was 16 years old. He has a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Yale University and a master's degree in international economics from l'Institut d' Etudes Politiques de Paris.
He has worked as an international lending office for a major New York bank and as a consultant to companies doing business in Japan. For three years he was the West Coast Editor of PC (Personal Computing) Magazine, and has published articles and essays in the following publications:
Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Washington Star, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, National Review, Chronicles.
Since 1994, Jared Taylor has been the president of New Century Foundation, which publishes American Renaissance, a monthly magazine devoted to issues of race and immigration (AmRen.com).
He has worked as an international lending office for a major New York bank and as a consultant to companies doing business in Japan. For three years he was the West Coast Editor of PC (Personal Computing) Magazine, and has published articles and essays in the following publications:
Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Washington Star, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, National Review, Chronicles.
Since 1994, Jared Taylor has been the president of New Century Foundation, which publishes American Renaissance, a monthly magazine devoted to issues of race and immigration (AmRen.com).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 25, 2021
9/10.
I wrote a five paragraph review, but something went wrong and it was not saved. I will just say that this is a great summary of the issues at hand for the current European-American population of the US. It has pithy expositions of most of the important topics to defeat the paltry propaganda displayed daily. The prime one is simply being able to justify your existence.
I wrote a five paragraph review, but something went wrong and it was not saved. I will just say that this is a great summary of the issues at hand for the current European-American population of the US. It has pithy expositions of most of the important topics to defeat the paltry propaganda displayed daily. The prime one is simply being able to justify your existence.
October 30, 2018
7/10. Uniformly good essays, but dated in places: Whitney's essay was from before the completion of the HGP. Two standout contributions are those of Levin and Hart, with honorable mentions to Fr Thornton and J-P Rushton, who summarized the summary of the abridged version of 'Race, Evolution, and Behavior: a life history perspective' here before the first edition went to press in 1994 (Rushton's essay would have been /the/ standout if this book was read before REB was published: in the time since, just read Rushton's book instead.)
March 9, 2026
Headline! White altruism results in demise of historically dominant race.
Three virtues of the white race are self-restraint, focus, and deferred gratification. Jared Taylor has written a tremendously focused book. His objective is to present overwhelming amounts of anecdotal evidence to support his major contentions, which are:
* Integration has failed - nobody wants it, Black, White or other
* Diversity is not strength - it undermines most of society
* Blacks and Hispanics, and recently Asians as well, relentlessly promote their own racial agendas
* Even to talk about the interests of White people is anathema. We muzzle ourselves, and every other racial group shouts us down endlessly, and with impunity
* The situation is getting worse as the White majority inexorably shrinks
Taylor's style is to overwhelm the reader with citations from news sources, books, and other historical references. He easily convinces the reader that his evidence is not isolated and anecdotal, but rather, that it represents the actual situation in today's America. He has 50 pages of dense endnotes, by my count an average of 40 citations per page. A disbeliever could not refute the evidence, however they might disagree with the conclusion.
Taylor has previously argued from statistics. In "The Color of Crime" he presented FBI statistics on the identities of perpetrators and victims of crime. In this book he cites statistics gathered by others, but does not go into how those statistics were developed. The statistics all skew the same way. Blacks generally compiled the worst records for everything: school performance, poverty, crime, incarceration, teen pregnancies and so on, with Hispanics running a close second and occasionally exceeding the Blacks. American Indians, where statistics are available, fall in with the Blacks and Hispanics. Whites do significantly better in all categories. For instance, approximately 20% as much crime, 40% more income, four grade levels better in academic performance upon graduation. Asians exceed whites in almost all categories, especially notably in their low rates of criminality. Taylor's does not split Jews out from whites in general. Those who do generally show Jews to exceed Asians in most categories.
Taylor repeatedly pounds home the point that the races differ in temperament, and do not want to mix. Perhaps hoping someday to find a mainstream publisher, he does not investigate why this might be so. Though not exactly for those points, he cites two authors whose research has delved into these uncomfortable questions. Tatu Vanhanen is a Finnish psychometrician and co-author of "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" which centers on a statistical regression of average intelligence by nation with average income by nation. He finds the correlation to be highly significant: countries with smarter people make more money. His co-author, Richard Lynn, went on to write the unambiguously titled "Race and Intelligence," which pursues the same thesis within societies.
The second major author whom he cites is Philippe Rushton, who has investigated some systematic differences in temperaments among peoples. Whereas Taylor notes, rather without comment, that Blacks enjoy high self-esteem, Rushton delves into differences in blood chemistry, dopamine, and other such explanations.
Taylor talks at length about the amount of money - trillions of dollars - that has been spent attempting to lessen the "Black/White achievement gap" over the past 50 years, and the fact that it has had no measurable impact. Similar expenditures have been stubbornly unable to reduce self-segregation in neighborhoods, self-segregation on university campuses, incarceration rates or anything else to which it has been applied. Occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation of a phenomenon is the best, and in this case, the evidence is overwhelming that there are unbridgeable differences between the races. Let it be! However, that goes against Diversity, which is one of the fundamental tenants of this age's secular dogma. I note with irony that even our churches, as segregated as they allow themselves to be, invariably preach a good line of diversity.
Taylor's last chapter is entitled "The Crisis We Face." You would hope that he offered a prescription, but he does not. I will offer my own in the next couple of paragraphs.
The United States is going to become a heavily pluralistic society. Perhaps Brazil offers the best model for our future. Whites and a surprising number of Japanese immigrants form a pocket of affluence from San Paulo southwards. They live in a sea of poverty and crime, and have to insulate themselves with walled communities, helicopter commutes, private schools and all of the other apparatus of a besieged minority. Nonetheless they survive, and they are responsible for Brazil's current affluence. Whites/Jews and Asians will continue to drive the engine of American financial success even as we are pushed into minority status. But we will not retain political control, and will continue to exist at the sufferance of the Blacks and Mexicans.
A major problem which Taylor does not address is our lack of fertility. He cites one stark statistic. White people make up 17% of the world's population but only 7% of its births. This is a recipe for self extinction, brought on by our own culture much more than anything the minorities have visited on us. We need a radical change of mindset, perhaps religious faith. Rather than waiting until such moment as our government leaves families enough money that we can be confident we can afford children, we should do as every other group does, have children and then figure out how to take care of them. Looking back at our own experience, a little adversity seems to have been beneficial to the children of the greatest generation. Let's not worry about it.
Lastly, I propose that we treasure the few uncontaminated reservoirs of whiteness. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are so politically and economically backwards that not even Africans want to come here. Writing from Kiev, I will add that the Ukrainians don't want them, and are just thuggish enough to rough them up occasionally on the streets when they do appear. Rather like a white boy on Calle Ocho. These terrible governments cannot last, and once these intelligent populations achieve some economic freedom, we can expect to see what economists call "convergence" by which process the gross national product rises to reflect average national productivity. Smart people naturally tend to grow rich; wealth has been repressed by catastrophic politics in this part of the world.
My expectation is that the Slavic countries, as well as Iceland, Finland, Georgia and a few other outliers will conclude that diversity is no virtue and keep themselves ethnically fairly pure. I have a choice of where to raise my kid, and I am betting on Ukraine. He will grow up feeling at home in his own country. Adios, Americanos.
Three virtues of the white race are self-restraint, focus, and deferred gratification. Jared Taylor has written a tremendously focused book. His objective is to present overwhelming amounts of anecdotal evidence to support his major contentions, which are:
* Integration has failed - nobody wants it, Black, White or other
* Diversity is not strength - it undermines most of society
* Blacks and Hispanics, and recently Asians as well, relentlessly promote their own racial agendas
* Even to talk about the interests of White people is anathema. We muzzle ourselves, and every other racial group shouts us down endlessly, and with impunity
* The situation is getting worse as the White majority inexorably shrinks
Taylor's style is to overwhelm the reader with citations from news sources, books, and other historical references. He easily convinces the reader that his evidence is not isolated and anecdotal, but rather, that it represents the actual situation in today's America. He has 50 pages of dense endnotes, by my count an average of 40 citations per page. A disbeliever could not refute the evidence, however they might disagree with the conclusion.
Taylor has previously argued from statistics. In "The Color of Crime" he presented FBI statistics on the identities of perpetrators and victims of crime. In this book he cites statistics gathered by others, but does not go into how those statistics were developed. The statistics all skew the same way. Blacks generally compiled the worst records for everything: school performance, poverty, crime, incarceration, teen pregnancies and so on, with Hispanics running a close second and occasionally exceeding the Blacks. American Indians, where statistics are available, fall in with the Blacks and Hispanics. Whites do significantly better in all categories. For instance, approximately 20% as much crime, 40% more income, four grade levels better in academic performance upon graduation. Asians exceed whites in almost all categories, especially notably in their low rates of criminality. Taylor's does not split Jews out from whites in general. Those who do generally show Jews to exceed Asians in most categories.
Taylor repeatedly pounds home the point that the races differ in temperament, and do not want to mix. Perhaps hoping someday to find a mainstream publisher, he does not investigate why this might be so. Though not exactly for those points, he cites two authors whose research has delved into these uncomfortable questions. Tatu Vanhanen is a Finnish psychometrician and co-author of "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" which centers on a statistical regression of average intelligence by nation with average income by nation. He finds the correlation to be highly significant: countries with smarter people make more money. His co-author, Richard Lynn, went on to write the unambiguously titled "Race and Intelligence," which pursues the same thesis within societies.
The second major author whom he cites is Philippe Rushton, who has investigated some systematic differences in temperaments among peoples. Whereas Taylor notes, rather without comment, that Blacks enjoy high self-esteem, Rushton delves into differences in blood chemistry, dopamine, and other such explanations.
Taylor talks at length about the amount of money - trillions of dollars - that has been spent attempting to lessen the "Black/White achievement gap" over the past 50 years, and the fact that it has had no measurable impact. Similar expenditures have been stubbornly unable to reduce self-segregation in neighborhoods, self-segregation on university campuses, incarceration rates or anything else to which it has been applied. Occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation of a phenomenon is the best, and in this case, the evidence is overwhelming that there are unbridgeable differences between the races. Let it be! However, that goes against Diversity, which is one of the fundamental tenants of this age's secular dogma. I note with irony that even our churches, as segregated as they allow themselves to be, invariably preach a good line of diversity.
Taylor's last chapter is entitled "The Crisis We Face." You would hope that he offered a prescription, but he does not. I will offer my own in the next couple of paragraphs.
The United States is going to become a heavily pluralistic society. Perhaps Brazil offers the best model for our future. Whites and a surprising number of Japanese immigrants form a pocket of affluence from San Paulo southwards. They live in a sea of poverty and crime, and have to insulate themselves with walled communities, helicopter commutes, private schools and all of the other apparatus of a besieged minority. Nonetheless they survive, and they are responsible for Brazil's current affluence. Whites/Jews and Asians will continue to drive the engine of American financial success even as we are pushed into minority status. But we will not retain political control, and will continue to exist at the sufferance of the Blacks and Mexicans.
A major problem which Taylor does not address is our lack of fertility. He cites one stark statistic. White people make up 17% of the world's population but only 7% of its births. This is a recipe for self extinction, brought on by our own culture much more than anything the minorities have visited on us. We need a radical change of mindset, perhaps religious faith. Rather than waiting until such moment as our government leaves families enough money that we can be confident we can afford children, we should do as every other group does, have children and then figure out how to take care of them. Looking back at our own experience, a little adversity seems to have been beneficial to the children of the greatest generation. Let's not worry about it.
Lastly, I propose that we treasure the few uncontaminated reservoirs of whiteness. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are so politically and economically backwards that not even Africans want to come here. Writing from Kiev, I will add that the Ukrainians don't want them, and are just thuggish enough to rough them up occasionally on the streets when they do appear. Rather like a white boy on Calle Ocho. These terrible governments cannot last, and once these intelligent populations achieve some economic freedom, we can expect to see what economists call "convergence" by which process the gross national product rises to reflect average national productivity. Smart people naturally tend to grow rich; wealth has been repressed by catastrophic politics in this part of the world.
My expectation is that the Slavic countries, as well as Iceland, Finland, Georgia and a few other outliers will conclude that diversity is no virtue and keep themselves ethnically fairly pure. I have a choice of where to raise my kid, and I am betting on Ukraine. He will grow up feeling at home in his own country. Adios, Americanos.
February 3, 2020
A good book explaining the racial differences and tensions in the US
January 17, 2026
I started this book in November of last year, but due to pilot school responsibilities and a desire to improve my surfing, I took a break from reading.
This book would be considered “controversial” to the average person because of the slanderous labeling of Jared Taylor as a “white supremacist,” when he is nothing of the sort. The Real American Dilemma challenges modern academic orthodoxy’s understanding of race as a “social construct” with science-based evidence. It also discusses issues affecting the United States and the future of the West that many people refuse to address out of fear of societal scrutiny—or, in some countries, punishment.
This book was published in 1998, and the issues that affected our nation then continue to plague us today.
This book would be considered “controversial” to the average person because of the slanderous labeling of Jared Taylor as a “white supremacist,” when he is nothing of the sort. The Real American Dilemma challenges modern academic orthodoxy’s understanding of race as a “social construct” with science-based evidence. It also discusses issues affecting the United States and the future of the West that many people refuse to address out of fear of societal scrutiny—or, in some countries, punishment.
This book was published in 1998, and the issues that affected our nation then continue to plague us today.
June 13, 2018
The real American dilemma here is how quickly can we toss this book and its awful writing into a pit?
September 17, 2014
Written in 1998, much of this assortment of essays were review. I didn't realize the title was in reference to Gunnar Mydral until I opened the book! Perhaps I would have recognized this had I read the book in 1998, shortly after Mydral's republication of The American Dilemma, which I did pick up and read back in the mid nineties.
The opening essay by Rushton was well done and well argued. It dealt with IQ and personality among the races. It piggybacks on The Bell Curve which would help a reader understand Rushton's point of view. I'd recommend the former for a far closer and thorough examination on the subject, however. The essays by Jared Taylor and Michael Levin were particularly hard-hitting and enjoyable.
The essay entitled "Racial Partition of the United States" was interesting only because I've never read an argument in favor of racial separation. I think the guy is dreaming, especially when he admits that the concept is at least 20 years out. We're 16 years from the authorship and I doubt his dream is any closer now than it was then. Should the fabric of the country fall apart in the next 50 to 100 years (probably not too improbable) perhaps his idea would gain steam if somehow a racial component of discord is significant or seen as significantly responsible for said disintegration. This isn't really an idea for our lifetime, at all. But, at least I know where these guys are coming from.
There aren't any reviews of this book on Goodreads, but there are on AMZN. Over there I noticed a lot of pejoratives in the reviews. I suppose that's understandable, but for the most part, the essays are well reasoned and are food for thought. It would be pretty easy to attack the book at its weak points, but it seems people knee-jerk against stronger arguments of the book. For instance, partitioning the country is seen as a way of avoiding violence and discord within the population. However, creating different countries is not necessarily a cure; surely millennia of international war should prove this point. Furthermore, ideological proclivities might be correlated to ethnicity, but ethnicity is no monolith of ideas. This is admitted in the book though, but I'm not necessarily buying it. Additionally, pale skin, like Asians, include several diverse ethnic groups - but in dividing the country by "white" "non-white" and "integrated" treats whites like they're pretty much the same. That seems a bit amiss, does it not?
So when there's easy targets to attack in this book (such as above), why attack the strong points of the book? (such as there's no such thing as race, or there's no IQ differences among the races that don't exist, these guys are just xenophobes, etc)
The opening essay by Rushton was well done and well argued. It dealt with IQ and personality among the races. It piggybacks on The Bell Curve which would help a reader understand Rushton's point of view. I'd recommend the former for a far closer and thorough examination on the subject, however. The essays by Jared Taylor and Michael Levin were particularly hard-hitting and enjoyable.
The essay entitled "Racial Partition of the United States" was interesting only because I've never read an argument in favor of racial separation. I think the guy is dreaming, especially when he admits that the concept is at least 20 years out. We're 16 years from the authorship and I doubt his dream is any closer now than it was then. Should the fabric of the country fall apart in the next 50 to 100 years (probably not too improbable) perhaps his idea would gain steam if somehow a racial component of discord is significant or seen as significantly responsible for said disintegration. This isn't really an idea for our lifetime, at all. But, at least I know where these guys are coming from.
There aren't any reviews of this book on Goodreads, but there are on AMZN. Over there I noticed a lot of pejoratives in the reviews. I suppose that's understandable, but for the most part, the essays are well reasoned and are food for thought. It would be pretty easy to attack the book at its weak points, but it seems people knee-jerk against stronger arguments of the book. For instance, partitioning the country is seen as a way of avoiding violence and discord within the population. However, creating different countries is not necessarily a cure; surely millennia of international war should prove this point. Furthermore, ideological proclivities might be correlated to ethnicity, but ethnicity is no monolith of ideas. This is admitted in the book though, but I'm not necessarily buying it. Additionally, pale skin, like Asians, include several diverse ethnic groups - but in dividing the country by "white" "non-white" and "integrated" treats whites like they're pretty much the same. That seems a bit amiss, does it not?
So when there's easy targets to attack in this book (such as above), why attack the strong points of the book? (such as there's no such thing as race, or there's no IQ differences among the races that don't exist, these guys are just xenophobes, etc)
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews