Race denialism is massively immoral, inefficient, and has large scale negative impacts on society.
It’s also been “manageable” until now. This isn’t the first “woke freakout.” We’ve survived them before, whatever the cost.
The issue is that surviving it was based on being an 87% white society. Basically everytime we did some crazy woke shit, the median white voter would get sick of it after awhile and smack it down.
Today whites are a minority of new births. Romney got 59% of the white vote and lost.
I fear that eventually the white % will be low enough that their will be no normie median voter pushback against a future woke moral panic, because the median voter will be non-white and on board with looting whites.
The only openly HBD world leader, Lee Kuan yew, explicitly said this was a problem and why he froze Singapore’s demographics by law and ensured the Chinese would always have a 75% super majority.
So my big takeaway is that due to immigration (which would be heavily influenced by genetics if it were allowed) we can’t assume that there will be a kind of “I don’t know why, but I don’t like it” pushback against future woke by the normie median voter to save society from its own lies.
Thanks for this thoughtful article with a lot of background.
Discussion of the elements and underlying causes of physical and psychological average differences between races should be profoundly interesting and useful for multiracial societies on any scale, from a school or workplace up to international level, as it informs what policies will be most helpful - or least corrosive, at a minimum.
Unfortunately the antiracist over-reach from the 1970s onwards dismissed such research and policy making, in favour of very expensive moves in the wrong direction (affirmative action etc). These policies, ironically enough, in addition to not working, actually have very racist messages for individual black people embedded in them, that they are only ever going to succeed if white people make things easy for them, due to their lower intelligence, or whatever. Nice work.
Cofnas believes that facing the realities of race, and average race differences, has the potential to liberate everyone from fifty years of unhelpful thinking and action. It’s a very positive direction to head in.
Meritocracy as a "solution" to racial disparities in ability presents its own set of issues. Blacks are overrepresented—present at rates higher than their presence in the general population—in many sports where participation/victory is selected based on merit/objective standard; basketball and marathon running come immediately to mind.
Nathan Cofnas has been vilified for studying Harvard's own student admission data, supplied in connection with the recent (SFFA vs. Harvard, 2023) Supreme Court decision striking down racial preferences, and coming to the conclusion that, without those preferences and in light of the high standards required of its professors, almost NO blacks would quality to become Harvard faculty members. Cofnas insists that grim prospect must be understood and accepted by those, like the author, who preach meritocracy as panacea in settling issues presented by the fact of racial differences.
Cofnas suggests that some fields where "representation" is more critically important than merit, such as political appointments and corporate governance, could be dealt with using some version of a quota system (had the Supreme Court not banned their use for such purposes). Cofnas is a deep and subtle thinker; neither Glenn Loury nor John McWhorter gave him the opportunity to fully express himself. Coleman Hughes ("Conversations with Coleman" on YouTube) did much better. There, Cofnas recommends that the discussion of racial differences and mechanisms to deal with them be effectively restricted to high-level academics and other professionals rather than thrown into public view as a matter for consideration, debate, and action.
For now, I'll take your word for most of the above. But I respectfully submit that Cofnas is missing the far bigger, far more important picture regarding the populations that private universities in America chose to cultivate. They chose to not merely accept our world as it was or is, not merely accept that so-called race and past or even current performance determines the potential for future performance. Their focus is not on mere "representation" but on far more important "participation."
That's where their focus and our focus should be. Our focus always should be on working toward what We the People declared were the purposes of our Constitution and our nation: to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" by always stiving toward "a more perfect Union" and a more secure Union, including by not merely "provid[ing] for the common defence," but also by "establish[ing] Justice, insur[ing] domestic Tranquility" and "promot[ng] the general Welfare."
I'd be more inclined to believe that "Cofnas is a deep and subtle thinker" if, instead of thinking about where we are now, he thought about where we'd be if the resources of this nation after the American Revolution had been devoted to eliminating slavery and ameliorating its effects instead of perpetuating slavery and its effects.
If you have watched The Sopranos you saw the Italian-American community begin to distance itself from the crime ridden Mafia. When does the apparent tolerance for crime within the black community along with the acceptance by black school administrators of the disruption of classrooms by out of control individuals begin to end? When will black fathers who fail to care for and love their children and especially their boy children be openly censured by black leadership? The young Chris Rock joked about these issues but he clearly now censors himself.
On X, now without censorship thanks to Elon Musk, out of control violence has become standard fodder for ridicule with blacks typically being the most violent group depicted. Unfortunately, the stereotype of black violence is rooted in reality.
Where white people decide to live, shop, vacation and even if they are willing to use public transit (especially women) has been for decades largely based on avoiding large groups of black people because of their perceived and actual tendency to engage in violence. The term white flight has always been used as a slur when, in truth, it means white common sense.
Why do the Democrats always appear to be on their back foot on the issue of black violent crime? Why do they allow Trump to take the lead on this issue while they hem and haw? Why not make fighting murderers, car jackers and rapists a top priority of the Democratic Party and especially of Democratic mayors? There is simply no political logic to being seen as soft on crime when the majority of crime victims are the very minorities the Democrats are supposed to champion. The single most important thing Democrats could do to save the lives of young black men would be to reinstitute the police policy of “stop and frisk” in black neighborhoods to stop the carrying of illegal guns. This would stem the tide of murders of blacks that fill the nightly news in every major city in America and yet is hidden in plain sight. These kids would quickly get the message and quit carrying illegally. Young black men (15-34) are just 2% of the population and yet commit about half of the nation’s homicides. A rate an astounding 50 times higher than the average American. They are the nation’s gun violence problem. They are also the primary victims of these murders with about 6,000 killed every year. We need to save their lives in spite of the insane ACLU and its bullshit niceties.
I think you redeemed yourself at the end. Meritocracy. But not just in hiring practices, but in life generally. Yes, I see racial differences in people I know (I make no presumptions about people I don't know). But racial disparity does not establish a hierarchy. In simplistic terms, 'these people are good at this, those people are good at that'. I wouldn't want to have to defend that statement to the death, but it's at least a little bit true. But who, then, is the better person?
Whatever race is or isn't, I will continue to evaluate the people I meet based on my own bias, and apologize to no one for doing it. In an increasingly technical world, we can little afford to be hiring people on anything but meritocracy. I want the best possible doctor operating on my child. Period. You can leave your racial philosophy at the hospital door.
What kind of person would you like to have operating your government? Many people judged or judge George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to be intellectually inferior to many others. Maybe they were. Academically, they undoubtedly were. So what?
Could anyone else have been any better at leading our national government when they had to do so? Would a "smarter" man have been able to lead 13 separate nations to form one nation as Washington did? Would a "smarter" man have been able to preserve the Union and our Constitution as Lincoln did?
It seems to me that many of the people who obsess over purported meritocracy are missing the bigger picture. The people who founded this nation saw education of the people as essential to the sovereignty of the people. The premise of our 1776 Declaration and our 1788 Constitution was, as President Lincoln put it in 1863, "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
Education is a crucial means to an essential end, very much like the freedom of thought, expression, communication, association and assembly secured by the First Amendment. The rights and freedoms addressed in the First and Second Amendments are the means of attaining and securing the ends in the Preamble. It is a grave mistake to think that the means are more important than the ends.
"I see racial differences in people . .. [and] 'these people are good at this, those people are good at that'. . . . I will continue to evaluate the people I meet based on my own bias . . . . In an increasingly technical world, we can little afford to be hiring people on anything but meritocracy. I want the best possible doctor operating on my child."
So I asked:
"What kind of person would you like to have operating your government?" What kind of person would you like to have as a Representative, Senator, President, Judge, Ambassador, General? Would you rather be represented by Julius Caesar or George Washington? By Woodrow Wilson or Abraham Lincoln? By Robert E. Lee or U.S. Grant? Chief Justice Roger Taney or Justice Thurgood Marshall? John C. Calhoun or John Adams?
Education isn't merely about preparing technically proficient doctors, surgeons, scientists, etc. It's at least as much about preparing people to choose good public servants for the purposes stated in the first paragraph of our Constitution. How do we design a system to do that?
OK, I get your point. People have been discussing these sorts of things forever, as they should.
First, I don't want any person operating our government. The USA developed out of a rejection of King George's claim to divine right to rule the people. That's why our constitution dilutes power, spreads it across multiple branches and layers.
It would take far more time than I'm willing to devote here to give my opinions on the people you mention. I'll just say that we should have diversity of point of view to protect all interests. And when I say diversity, I mean diversity of ideas and philosophies, not of skin color and gender. Yes, they count too, but only in peripheral way.
My one driving concern is with the two parties, which have NO authority whatsoever, but have taken control of all aspects of all governments in the USA. People argue about which party is the best party, the legitimate party. Neither party is legitimate. My focus is on doing everything I can to undermine the two parties. They are the problem.
I’m not sure why the term “oppressed community” has never occurred to me but what a concept! Oppression is about circumstances, not identity. Also I love McWhorter’s point that fuzzy categories are still categories.
We do not have a society sophisticated enough to understand and implement the message of Cofnas. The people who do reside in positions where his research could be utilized for the greater good are too comfortably embedded in their power and greed to give it up. They do not care one whit about society as a whole. They have no concern whatsoever for the greater good.
We have no idea how to move forward, except perhaps to keep talking, as McWhorter, Hughes, Williams and Glen do. The question is can they overcome the voices of Kendi, Hannah Nicole Jones, et al. They have the race baiting bull horns that require little thought and even less nuance and they’ve become very rich off it. Why would they stop.
Maybe a path has been found, but too many people are just too stubborn to follow it. Maybe too many people are just too devoted to stunted, self-serving, Old World ways of thinking.
Focusing on meritocracy with respect to intellect is a way to justify feelings of social superiority or even social supremacy. It carries with it a dangerous implication of social domination. For thousands of years, precisely such thought and talk of so-called meritocracy has been used to justify one form or another of social domination.
Such thoughts and talk call to mind the very meritocracy that led to the American Revolution. They call to mind Edmund Burke (correctly) emphasizing to Parliament in 1774 that Americans would rather fight and die than submit to such meritocracy: "If [your] sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued into slavery."
For that matter, didn't multiple iterations of such thoughts and talk of meritocracy lead to a very different revolution in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's? It seems to me that people who obsess over such "meritocracy" may be smart, but they aren't wise.
Maybe they don't really even understand the concept of merit on which this nation was founded. People who want merely to create or justify a ruling class may focus on what they think is their self-serving version of a purported meritocracy. People who want to create an effective, sound, safe democracy or republic as a nation think much bigger and much better. The best and brightest of those who founded and preserved this nation based on the principles in our 1776 Declaration and our 1788 Constitution were far more wise than those who now persist in perpetuating Old World theories of meritocracy or supremacy.
Our Constitution was deliberately designed to promote diversity in multiple respects. James Madison (repeatedly) made that point explicitly. In Federalist 10, for example, Madison expressly emphasized the vital importance of preserving the “diversity in the faculties of” diverse peoples. “The diversity in the faculties of [people] from which the rights of property originate, is” an “insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. [Even so, t]he protection of these faculties is the first object of government.”
Madison was rightly lauded as the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights. He wrote many of the Federalist Papers to explain our Constitution to convince people to support its ratification. Madison directly explained that diversity was crucial to the strength of our Constitution and the strength of our nation.
Many people opposed our Constitution and opposed creating one nation out of the very diverse peoples of the 13 then-independent nations that became one nation with the ratification of the Constitution. So in Federalist No. 10 (https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493273), Madison explained and emphasized that our Constitution was designed to provide “a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.” Such diseases include “faction,” which can easily result in a “tyranny of the majority,” as Tocqueville put it in his book “Democracy In America.”
Madison highlighted how factions divide people in a manner that presents an existential danger. Many people invoke “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions” precisely “to kindle [the most] unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.” Anything “interesting to the human passions” can be “inflamed” to make people “much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.” So our Constitution was designed “[t]o secure the public good and private rights against the danger of [any] faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government.” Those were the obvious, vital and overarching purposes of our Constitution. As a result, Madison emphasized that "the first object of government" is the "protection" of “[t]he diversity in the faculties of [people] from which the rights of property originate.”
In Federalist No. 51 (https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493427), Madison directly and expressly emphasized that diversity in society is one of the essential sources of the strength of our union. Diversity helps secure justice, safety and security. Madison emphasized (repeatedly) that “Justice is the end [i.e., the ultimate goal] of government.” Madison even provided examples. Diversity is essential to the security of “civil rights” and “religious rights.” Our security is promoted by promoting our diversity.
“It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.”
The act of “creating a will in the community independent of the majority” is what the People did by writing and ratifying our Constitution. The First Amendment and the prohibition on religious tests in Article VI and the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Sixth Amendments and the many ways that our Constitution included states and preserved the power of the people of individual states were expressly directed at using our Constitution to secure and promote diversity and inclusion (and thereby promote equity/justice).
The second method, above (“comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable”) is diversity and inclusion. That was the primary principle underlying the 1st, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments Each such amendment clarified or changed the meaning of the expression “We the People” at the beginning of our Constitution.
In Federalist No. 51 Madison directly highlighted the importance of diversity of society to the strength of our Union and our Constitution: “Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity [diversity] of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity [diversity] of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number [diversity] of interests and sects; and this [diversity] may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government.”
There is nothing intelligent or relevant--morally, psychologically, culturally, or otherwise--to say about an individual based on their group identity (self-or-externally-assigned), and nothing intelligent or relevant to say about a group (however assigned) based on the behavior or characteristics of an individual. Individual human variability within any claimed group identity makes this true, and individual human dignity demands it, morally.
But we are pattern-seeking, highly tribal monkeys approaching 200 years of social science that is interested in doing almost only that, in one way or another. So we are all armchair sociologists and psychologists and anthropologists committing the inescapable antisocial sin, all the time. But we can try not to!
McWhorter recognizes reality, that race is meaningfully real, and I suspect has little interest in engaging with any project that might arise from whatever meaning can be drawn because there is no moral or ethical sociological project that uses generic racial categories as its basis. Because treating individuals with a prescription that is meant for and derived from a population is doomed to be (morally significantly) less than suited to any given individual.
Maybe we are not meant to encounter humans this way, in these massive populations, to be understood as creatures operating according to some predetermined genetic (or cultural) code or blueprint. We are meant to know a few hundred individuals, and know them intimately and for who they individually are. Instead we talk about millions or billions as though that were a perfectly reasonable thing to do, just because we can, as though the scale doesn't matter. As though we can grasp it, as though it is knowable. But the scale is maybe all that matters.
Or, in simpler terms, when Gayle King says she "has to sit with that for a minute," when confronted with the idea that an anonymous juror is black, and when Bo French says that he would prefer the football game to have fewer darkies and more whites in the stands, they are committing the same fundamental sin.
Hemingway was wrong that the rest was cheating. The rest was about the why’s and the hopes.
Maybe Hemingway should’ve known. There’s a purpose for keeping your head clear and knowing how to suffer like a man. There’s a reason virtue is important.
Volodzko’s literary critique hinges on a single, compelling idea: race functions as a "social script" so blunt and forceful that it routinely blinds both its creators and its victims, but his sharpest insight lies in tracing the chronology of these novels. He points out a deeply unsettling irony—as Black Americans became legally freer across history, the racial scripts depicted by American writers became progressively more insidious, migrating from external societal laws straight into the deep psyche of the individual.
In *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*, the script is entirely externalised, dictated by the legal and religious institutions of the antebellum South. Huck is a product of his environment, explicitly conditioned to believe that helping a runaway slave is a damnable sin against God. The moral climax of the book occurs when Huck consciously chooses to rebel against that script. Tearing up the letter that would betray Jim, he declares, "All right, then, I'll go to hell." Huck achieves a sudden, revolutionary mental emancipation by prioritising Jim's humanity over society's laws. Yet, as Volodzko notes, this moment is "ethically pretty." Huck gets to break the script, but Jim is denied that agency by a system that offers a Black man no such moral stage.
By the time we reach Ralph Ellison’s *Invisible Man*, written decades later, the script has transformed into a structural trap. The unnamed narrator doesn't face literal chains, but he is constantly boxed in by the preset expectations of white society, rendering his true self completely invisible. In the book's infamous "Battle Royal" scene, the narrator is forced to fight blindfolded in a boxing ring for the amusement of drunken white citizens. Yet, instead of throwing away the script like Huck did, the narrator clings to it. He bloodies himself to deliver a sanitised speech on Black progress, desperately believing that performing the role of a "respectable negro" will win him acceptance from a fundamentally corrupt system. He is legally free, but mentally bound.
The final, most tragic stage of this evolution occurs in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.
Here, the script has completely bypassed external laws and social structures, embedding itself directly into the victim’s soul. Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove doesn't just navigate a racist world; she internalises its aesthetic standards, learning to see her own reflection as inherently ugly because she lacks the blue eyes of Shirley Temple. While Ellison’s narrator could at least see through the societal lie, Pecola is utterly consumed by it. The script becomes a psychological pathogen, destroying her sanity and erasing her sense of self from the inside out.
Through this trajectory, Volodzko illustrates a harrowing literary trend: the modern world didn't destroy the racial script; it just made it clever enough to crawl inside its victims' heads.
I believe Cofnas attributes immigrant blacks' relative success (until recently that is; see UK and North/Western Europe) to selection bias. There are any number of IQ test analogs in Africa that show very stark differences in measured IQ averages between European whites and African blacks (on the order of 2 standard deviations, approx. 30 IQ points).
Respectfully, I disagree with parts of this, and with much of Cofnas' advocacy. I also disagree with McWhorter and Hughes as in the discursive obscurantism issue.
It's circular to say I agree with myself, but I do maintain a non-proprietary position that's superficially similar to Williams' (who I also disagree with, and find very uninspiring), with elements of what I *think*—I can't know because half the podcast is behind a paywall—Loury's position might be. But much of mine is fairly nuanced and bespoke, so it probably doesn't have a clean analogue here.
Anyway, I think it's just obviously untenable to admit of "races" as a real thing, and to admit if "race differences" as real even on the cognitive domains, yet to then say "let's not talk about it." That's the McWhorter-Hughes position, as well as the position of many Good Liberals™ who think the race realists are, broadly speaking, empirically correct but culturally insensitive.
If one wishes to contest with a race realist, they must be prepared to say that the hereditarian thesis itself is actually wrong, at least in some important areas. That is the position I hold to, and what I have argued in my work. Race realism isn't simply impolite, it's factually wrong.
I agree that wherever one stands, if one wants to assert a position, one ought to be willing to have the conversation. The denialists, though not all of them, often prefer to deny race, and then close the debate and call the other side hateful.
I'm not sure if you count me as a "denialists," and I know you're speaking in generalities rather than about anyone in particular with this message. Still, it is worth pointing out that "close the debate and call the other side hateful" would not correctly describe my position or my approach to countering race realism.
Very good thought-provoking article! Thank you for having the courage to write it. But in the "revolution of the American soul" how is it true that "the guiding hand on the wheel was black"? You're right that we shouldn’t care if it were, but I think it clearly was not. Some of the true guiding hands wrote Two Treatises of Government, The Spirit of the Laws, the Declaration of Independence (and many earlier related declarations) and various versions of state constitutions and the U.S. Constitution, including amendments (especially Amendments I, XIII, XIV, XV, XIX, XXIV and XXVI).
Back in the 1690's John Locke with "The Second Treatise of Government" popularized the belief in the colonies that "Men" were "by Nature, all free, equal and independent," which was incorporated into our Declaration of Independence.
In the 1750's, Montesquieu with "The Spirit of the Laws" helped popularize even better beliefs that eventually were incorporated into our even better Constitution. "VIRTUE in a republic is a most simple thing; it is a love of the republic." "A love of the republic, in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; as the latter is that of equality. A love of the democracy is, likewise, that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness and the same advantages."
"The freedom of every citizen constitutes a part of the public liberty; and, in a democratical state, is even a part of the sovereignty [of the people]." "[T]he enjoyment of liberty, and even its support and preservation, consists in every man’s being allowed to speak his thoughts and to lay open his sentiments." "In republics women are free by the laws, and restrained by manners." "In a democracy the people are in some respects the sovereign, and in others the subject" (of the laws).
“[A]s all men are born equal, slavery must be accounted unnatural.” "There is no such thing as a right of reducing people to slavery, but when it becomes necessary for the preservation of the conquest. Preservation, and not servitude, is the end of conquest; though servitude may happen sometimes to be a necessary means of preservation. Even in that case it is contrary to the nature of things that the slavery should be perpetual. The people enslaved ought to be rendered capable of becoming subjects [or citizens]."
Montesquieu even summarized much of the thinking in this article: "THE customs of an enslaved people are a part of their servitude; those of a free people are a part of their liberty."
Well said, and thank you for that response. What I meant when I wrote that the guiding hand was black was that the revolution of the American soul when it comes to race was the result of the civil rights movement. But yes, the moral foundation of the civil rights movement was laid by the liberal philosophers you note, as well as Christian tradition.
It still seems to be extremely inaccurate to say "the guiding hand was black" in "the revolution of the American soul when it comes to race" as "the result of the civil rights movement." The guiding hands weren't from the civil rights movement of the 1960's and 1970's. The guiding hands were from at least as early as the 1860's and 1870's. President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (which was founded on the Declaration of Independence) and Amendments XIII, XIV and XV come to mind.
Another person who comes to mind is Schuyler Colfax. In 1866 (160 years ago and 90 years after the Declaration of Independence), as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Schuyler Colfax declared that Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment was “the gem of the Constitution . . . because it is the Declaration of Independence placed immutably and forever in our Constitution.” Finally, our Constitution (not merely the Declaration) said that all men have equal rights, privileges and immunities. But even Speaker Colfax overlooked a far more important and far more fundamental principle inherent in our Constitution.
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment (arguably) is “the gem of the Constitution" because in fact and in law it established far more by our Constitution than was declared in the Declaration of Independence. The Fourteenth Amendment declared and established that all citizens (regardless of arbitrary factors previously invoked to purport to justify discrimination, e.g., race, color or previous condition of servitude, sex, wealth or age) have equal rights, privileges and immunities. It established (by the paramount law of the land, i.e., in law created by the People speaking for themselves), much more than merely that "all men" are equal and have equal rights. The 14th Amendment clarified what citizenship means by emphasizing the rights of "all persons." "All persons born or naturalized in the United States" are entitled to all "the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," which includes "equal protection of the laws."
The 14th Amendment followed the lead of the 1st Amendment. Together, they led to the 15th Amendment, then the 19th Amendment, then the 24th Amendment and then the 26th Amendment. Each such amendment was a revolution in American government. Each such amendment radically changed the scope of the first words of the Constitution ("the People") so that our Constitution expressly reflected the truth about "the People."
Race denialism is massively immoral, inefficient, and has large scale negative impacts on society.
It’s also been “manageable” until now. This isn’t the first “woke freakout.” We’ve survived them before, whatever the cost.
The issue is that surviving it was based on being an 87% white society. Basically everytime we did some crazy woke shit, the median white voter would get sick of it after awhile and smack it down.
Today whites are a minority of new births. Romney got 59% of the white vote and lost.
I fear that eventually the white % will be low enough that their will be no normie median voter pushback against a future woke moral panic, because the median voter will be non-white and on board with looting whites.
The only openly HBD world leader, Lee Kuan yew, explicitly said this was a problem and why he froze Singapore’s demographics by law and ensured the Chinese would always have a 75% super majority.
So my big takeaway is that due to immigration (which would be heavily influenced by genetics if it were allowed) we can’t assume that there will be a kind of “I don’t know why, but I don’t like it” pushback against future woke by the normie median voter to save society from its own lies.
Thanks for this thoughtful article with a lot of background.
Discussion of the elements and underlying causes of physical and psychological average differences between races should be profoundly interesting and useful for multiracial societies on any scale, from a school or workplace up to international level, as it informs what policies will be most helpful - or least corrosive, at a minimum.
Unfortunately the antiracist over-reach from the 1970s onwards dismissed such research and policy making, in favour of very expensive moves in the wrong direction (affirmative action etc). These policies, ironically enough, in addition to not working, actually have very racist messages for individual black people embedded in them, that they are only ever going to succeed if white people make things easy for them, due to their lower intelligence, or whatever. Nice work.
Cofnas believes that facing the realities of race, and average race differences, has the potential to liberate everyone from fifty years of unhelpful thinking and action. It’s a very positive direction to head in.
Meritocracy as a "solution" to racial disparities in ability presents its own set of issues. Blacks are overrepresented—present at rates higher than their presence in the general population—in many sports where participation/victory is selected based on merit/objective standard; basketball and marathon running come immediately to mind.
Nathan Cofnas has been vilified for studying Harvard's own student admission data, supplied in connection with the recent (SFFA vs. Harvard, 2023) Supreme Court decision striking down racial preferences, and coming to the conclusion that, without those preferences and in light of the high standards required of its professors, almost NO blacks would quality to become Harvard faculty members. Cofnas insists that grim prospect must be understood and accepted by those, like the author, who preach meritocracy as panacea in settling issues presented by the fact of racial differences.
Cofnas suggests that some fields where "representation" is more critically important than merit, such as political appointments and corporate governance, could be dealt with using some version of a quota system (had the Supreme Court not banned their use for such purposes). Cofnas is a deep and subtle thinker; neither Glenn Loury nor John McWhorter gave him the opportunity to fully express himself. Coleman Hughes ("Conversations with Coleman" on YouTube) did much better. There, Cofnas recommends that the discussion of racial differences and mechanisms to deal with them be effectively restricted to high-level academics and other professionals rather than thrown into public view as a matter for consideration, debate, and action.
For now, I'll take your word for most of the above. But I respectfully submit that Cofnas is missing the far bigger, far more important picture regarding the populations that private universities in America chose to cultivate. They chose to not merely accept our world as it was or is, not merely accept that so-called race and past or even current performance determines the potential for future performance. Their focus is not on mere "representation" but on far more important "participation."
That's where their focus and our focus should be. Our focus always should be on working toward what We the People declared were the purposes of our Constitution and our nation: to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" by always stiving toward "a more perfect Union" and a more secure Union, including by not merely "provid[ing] for the common defence," but also by "establish[ing] Justice, insur[ing] domestic Tranquility" and "promot[ng] the general Welfare."
I'd be more inclined to believe that "Cofnas is a deep and subtle thinker" if, instead of thinking about where we are now, he thought about where we'd be if the resources of this nation after the American Revolution had been devoted to eliminating slavery and ameliorating its effects instead of perpetuating slavery and its effects.
If you have watched The Sopranos you saw the Italian-American community begin to distance itself from the crime ridden Mafia. When does the apparent tolerance for crime within the black community along with the acceptance by black school administrators of the disruption of classrooms by out of control individuals begin to end? When will black fathers who fail to care for and love their children and especially their boy children be openly censured by black leadership? The young Chris Rock joked about these issues but he clearly now censors himself.
On X, now without censorship thanks to Elon Musk, out of control violence has become standard fodder for ridicule with blacks typically being the most violent group depicted. Unfortunately, the stereotype of black violence is rooted in reality.
Where white people decide to live, shop, vacation and even if they are willing to use public transit (especially women) has been for decades largely based on avoiding large groups of black people because of their perceived and actual tendency to engage in violence. The term white flight has always been used as a slur when, in truth, it means white common sense.
Why do the Democrats always appear to be on their back foot on the issue of black violent crime? Why do they allow Trump to take the lead on this issue while they hem and haw? Why not make fighting murderers, car jackers and rapists a top priority of the Democratic Party and especially of Democratic mayors? There is simply no political logic to being seen as soft on crime when the majority of crime victims are the very minorities the Democrats are supposed to champion. The single most important thing Democrats could do to save the lives of young black men would be to reinstitute the police policy of “stop and frisk” in black neighborhoods to stop the carrying of illegal guns. This would stem the tide of murders of blacks that fill the nightly news in every major city in America and yet is hidden in plain sight. These kids would quickly get the message and quit carrying illegally. Young black men (15-34) are just 2% of the population and yet commit about half of the nation’s homicides. A rate an astounding 50 times higher than the average American. They are the nation’s gun violence problem. They are also the primary victims of these murders with about 6,000 killed every year. We need to save their lives in spite of the insane ACLU and its bullshit niceties.
I think you redeemed yourself at the end. Meritocracy. But not just in hiring practices, but in life generally. Yes, I see racial differences in people I know (I make no presumptions about people I don't know). But racial disparity does not establish a hierarchy. In simplistic terms, 'these people are good at this, those people are good at that'. I wouldn't want to have to defend that statement to the death, but it's at least a little bit true. But who, then, is the better person?
Whatever race is or isn't, I will continue to evaluate the people I meet based on my own bias, and apologize to no one for doing it. In an increasingly technical world, we can little afford to be hiring people on anything but meritocracy. I want the best possible doctor operating on my child. Period. You can leave your racial philosophy at the hospital door.
What kind of person would you like to have operating your government? Many people judged or judge George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to be intellectually inferior to many others. Maybe they were. Academically, they undoubtedly were. So what?
Could anyone else have been any better at leading our national government when they had to do so? Would a "smarter" man have been able to lead 13 separate nations to form one nation as Washington did? Would a "smarter" man have been able to preserve the Union and our Constitution as Lincoln did?
It seems to me that many of the people who obsess over purported meritocracy are missing the bigger picture. The people who founded this nation saw education of the people as essential to the sovereignty of the people. The premise of our 1776 Declaration and our 1788 Constitution was, as President Lincoln put it in 1863, "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
Education is a crucial means to an essential end, very much like the freedom of thought, expression, communication, association and assembly secured by the First Amendment. The rights and freedoms addressed in the First and Second Amendments are the means of attaining and securing the ends in the Preamble. It is a grave mistake to think that the means are more important than the ends.
I'm not sure what you're really asking me.
You said:
"I see racial differences in people . .. [and] 'these people are good at this, those people are good at that'. . . . I will continue to evaluate the people I meet based on my own bias . . . . In an increasingly technical world, we can little afford to be hiring people on anything but meritocracy. I want the best possible doctor operating on my child."
So I asked:
"What kind of person would you like to have operating your government?" What kind of person would you like to have as a Representative, Senator, President, Judge, Ambassador, General? Would you rather be represented by Julius Caesar or George Washington? By Woodrow Wilson or Abraham Lincoln? By Robert E. Lee or U.S. Grant? Chief Justice Roger Taney or Justice Thurgood Marshall? John C. Calhoun or John Adams?
Education isn't merely about preparing technically proficient doctors, surgeons, scientists, etc. It's at least as much about preparing people to choose good public servants for the purposes stated in the first paragraph of our Constitution. How do we design a system to do that?
OK, I get your point. People have been discussing these sorts of things forever, as they should.
First, I don't want any person operating our government. The USA developed out of a rejection of King George's claim to divine right to rule the people. That's why our constitution dilutes power, spreads it across multiple branches and layers.
It would take far more time than I'm willing to devote here to give my opinions on the people you mention. I'll just say that we should have diversity of point of view to protect all interests. And when I say diversity, I mean diversity of ideas and philosophies, not of skin color and gender. Yes, they count too, but only in peripheral way.
My one driving concern is with the two parties, which have NO authority whatsoever, but have taken control of all aspects of all governments in the USA. People argue about which party is the best party, the legitimate party. Neither party is legitimate. My focus is on doing everything I can to undermine the two parties. They are the problem.
I’m not sure why the term “oppressed community” has never occurred to me but what a concept! Oppression is about circumstances, not identity. Also I love McWhorter’s point that fuzzy categories are still categories.
Thanks for the excellent piece!
We do not have a society sophisticated enough to understand and implement the message of Cofnas. The people who do reside in positions where his research could be utilized for the greater good are too comfortably embedded in their power and greed to give it up. They do not care one whit about society as a whole. They have no concern whatsoever for the greater good.
We have no idea how to move forward, except perhaps to keep talking, as McWhorter, Hughes, Williams and Glen do. The question is can they overcome the voices of Kendi, Hannah Nicole Jones, et al. They have the race baiting bull horns that require little thought and even less nuance and they’ve become very rich off it. Why would they stop.
I fear you might be right. We haven’t found the path forward, at least not yet.
Maybe a path has been found, but too many people are just too stubborn to follow it. Maybe too many people are just too devoted to stunted, self-serving, Old World ways of thinking.
Focusing on meritocracy with respect to intellect is a way to justify feelings of social superiority or even social supremacy. It carries with it a dangerous implication of social domination. For thousands of years, precisely such thought and talk of so-called meritocracy has been used to justify one form or another of social domination.
Such thoughts and talk call to mind the very meritocracy that led to the American Revolution. They call to mind Edmund Burke (correctly) emphasizing to Parliament in 1774 that Americans would rather fight and die than submit to such meritocracy: "If [your] sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued into slavery."
For that matter, didn't multiple iterations of such thoughts and talk of meritocracy lead to a very different revolution in Germany in the 1930's and 1940's? It seems to me that people who obsess over such "meritocracy" may be smart, but they aren't wise.
Maybe they don't really even understand the concept of merit on which this nation was founded. People who want merely to create or justify a ruling class may focus on what they think is their self-serving version of a purported meritocracy. People who want to create an effective, sound, safe democracy or republic as a nation think much bigger and much better. The best and brightest of those who founded and preserved this nation based on the principles in our 1776 Declaration and our 1788 Constitution were far more wise than those who now persist in perpetuating Old World theories of meritocracy or supremacy.
Our Constitution was deliberately designed to promote diversity in multiple respects. James Madison (repeatedly) made that point explicitly. In Federalist 10, for example, Madison expressly emphasized the vital importance of preserving the “diversity in the faculties of” diverse peoples. “The diversity in the faculties of [people] from which the rights of property originate, is” an “insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. [Even so, t]he protection of these faculties is the first object of government.”
Madison was rightly lauded as the Father of the Constitution and the Father of the Bill of Rights. He wrote many of the Federalist Papers to explain our Constitution to convince people to support its ratification. Madison directly explained that diversity was crucial to the strength of our Constitution and the strength of our nation.
Many people opposed our Constitution and opposed creating one nation out of the very diverse peoples of the 13 then-independent nations that became one nation with the ratification of the Constitution. So in Federalist No. 10 (https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493273), Madison explained and emphasized that our Constitution was designed to provide “a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.” Such diseases include “faction,” which can easily result in a “tyranny of the majority,” as Tocqueville put it in his book “Democracy In America.”
Madison highlighted how factions divide people in a manner that presents an existential danger. Many people invoke “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions” precisely “to kindle [the most] unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.” Anything “interesting to the human passions” can be “inflamed” to make people “much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.” So our Constitution was designed “[t]o secure the public good and private rights against the danger of [any] faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government.” Those were the obvious, vital and overarching purposes of our Constitution. As a result, Madison emphasized that "the first object of government" is the "protection" of “[t]he diversity in the faculties of [people] from which the rights of property originate.”
In Federalist No. 51 (https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-51-60#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493427), Madison directly and expressly emphasized that diversity in society is one of the essential sources of the strength of our union. Diversity helps secure justice, safety and security. Madison emphasized (repeatedly) that “Justice is the end [i.e., the ultimate goal] of government.” Madison even provided examples. Diversity is essential to the security of “civil rights” and “religious rights.” Our security is promoted by promoting our diversity.
“It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable.”
The act of “creating a will in the community independent of the majority” is what the People did by writing and ratifying our Constitution. The First Amendment and the prohibition on religious tests in Article VI and the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Sixth Amendments and the many ways that our Constitution included states and preserved the power of the people of individual states were expressly directed at using our Constitution to secure and promote diversity and inclusion (and thereby promote equity/justice).
The second method, above (“comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable”) is diversity and inclusion. That was the primary principle underlying the 1st, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments Each such amendment clarified or changed the meaning of the expression “We the People” at the beginning of our Constitution.
In Federalist No. 51 Madison directly highlighted the importance of diversity of society to the strength of our Union and our Constitution: “Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity [diversity] of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity [diversity] of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number [diversity] of interests and sects; and this [diversity] may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government.”
You’ve written an excellent piece, I should have put your name grouped with Hughes, Glenn and McWhorter.
Yeah....Cofnas is worried about Nazis "leading the conversation."
Sure ;)
There is nothing intelligent or relevant--morally, psychologically, culturally, or otherwise--to say about an individual based on their group identity (self-or-externally-assigned), and nothing intelligent or relevant to say about a group (however assigned) based on the behavior or characteristics of an individual. Individual human variability within any claimed group identity makes this true, and individual human dignity demands it, morally.
But we are pattern-seeking, highly tribal monkeys approaching 200 years of social science that is interested in doing almost only that, in one way or another. So we are all armchair sociologists and psychologists and anthropologists committing the inescapable antisocial sin, all the time. But we can try not to!
McWhorter recognizes reality, that race is meaningfully real, and I suspect has little interest in engaging with any project that might arise from whatever meaning can be drawn because there is no moral or ethical sociological project that uses generic racial categories as its basis. Because treating individuals with a prescription that is meant for and derived from a population is doomed to be (morally significantly) less than suited to any given individual.
Maybe we are not meant to encounter humans this way, in these massive populations, to be understood as creatures operating according to some predetermined genetic (or cultural) code or blueprint. We are meant to know a few hundred individuals, and know them intimately and for who they individually are. Instead we talk about millions or billions as though that were a perfectly reasonable thing to do, just because we can, as though the scale doesn't matter. As though we can grasp it, as though it is knowable. But the scale is maybe all that matters.
Or, in simpler terms, when Gayle King says she "has to sit with that for a minute," when confronted with the idea that an anonymous juror is black, and when Bo French says that he would prefer the football game to have fewer darkies and more whites in the stands, they are committing the same fundamental sin.
https://youtu.be/2ggatYIMuS4?is=9C8iPEmgTgNYRRdK
Hemingway was wrong that the rest was cheating. The rest was about the why’s and the hopes.
Maybe Hemingway should’ve known. There’s a purpose for keeping your head clear and knowing how to suffer like a man. There’s a reason virtue is important.
Volodzko’s literary critique hinges on a single, compelling idea: race functions as a "social script" so blunt and forceful that it routinely blinds both its creators and its victims, but his sharpest insight lies in tracing the chronology of these novels. He points out a deeply unsettling irony—as Black Americans became legally freer across history, the racial scripts depicted by American writers became progressively more insidious, migrating from external societal laws straight into the deep psyche of the individual.
In *The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn*, the script is entirely externalised, dictated by the legal and religious institutions of the antebellum South. Huck is a product of his environment, explicitly conditioned to believe that helping a runaway slave is a damnable sin against God. The moral climax of the book occurs when Huck consciously chooses to rebel against that script. Tearing up the letter that would betray Jim, he declares, "All right, then, I'll go to hell." Huck achieves a sudden, revolutionary mental emancipation by prioritising Jim's humanity over society's laws. Yet, as Volodzko notes, this moment is "ethically pretty." Huck gets to break the script, but Jim is denied that agency by a system that offers a Black man no such moral stage.
By the time we reach Ralph Ellison’s *Invisible Man*, written decades later, the script has transformed into a structural trap. The unnamed narrator doesn't face literal chains, but he is constantly boxed in by the preset expectations of white society, rendering his true self completely invisible. In the book's infamous "Battle Royal" scene, the narrator is forced to fight blindfolded in a boxing ring for the amusement of drunken white citizens. Yet, instead of throwing away the script like Huck did, the narrator clings to it. He bloodies himself to deliver a sanitised speech on Black progress, desperately believing that performing the role of a "respectable negro" will win him acceptance from a fundamentally corrupt system. He is legally free, but mentally bound.
The final, most tragic stage of this evolution occurs in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.
Here, the script has completely bypassed external laws and social structures, embedding itself directly into the victim’s soul. Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove doesn't just navigate a racist world; she internalises its aesthetic standards, learning to see her own reflection as inherently ugly because she lacks the blue eyes of Shirley Temple. While Ellison’s narrator could at least see through the societal lie, Pecola is utterly consumed by it. The script becomes a psychological pathogen, destroying her sanity and erasing her sense of self from the inside out.
Through this trajectory, Volodzko illustrates a harrowing literary trend: the modern world didn't destroy the racial script; it just made it clever enough to crawl inside its victims' heads.
Curious - would Cofnas consider the gap as a cultural phenomenon, since it's been noted how studious and hard-working Black African immigrants are?
I believe he would say no, because I’ve heard him refer to “culturalists” as another group, one he doesn’t seem to identify as belonging to himself.
I believe Cofnas attributes immigrant blacks' relative success (until recently that is; see UK and North/Western Europe) to selection bias. There are any number of IQ test analogs in Africa that show very stark differences in measured IQ averages between European whites and African blacks (on the order of 2 standard deviations, approx. 30 IQ points).
Respectfully, I disagree with parts of this, and with much of Cofnas' advocacy. I also disagree with McWhorter and Hughes as in the discursive obscurantism issue.
It's circular to say I agree with myself, but I do maintain a non-proprietary position that's superficially similar to Williams' (who I also disagree with, and find very uninspiring), with elements of what I *think*—I can't know because half the podcast is behind a paywall—Loury's position might be. But much of mine is fairly nuanced and bespoke, so it probably doesn't have a clean analogue here.
Anyway, I think it's just obviously untenable to admit of "races" as a real thing, and to admit if "race differences" as real even on the cognitive domains, yet to then say "let's not talk about it." That's the McWhorter-Hughes position, as well as the position of many Good Liberals™ who think the race realists are, broadly speaking, empirically correct but culturally insensitive.
If one wishes to contest with a race realist, they must be prepared to say that the hereditarian thesis itself is actually wrong, at least in some important areas. That is the position I hold to, and what I have argued in my work. Race realism isn't simply impolite, it's factually wrong.
I agree that wherever one stands, if one wants to assert a position, one ought to be willing to have the conversation. The denialists, though not all of them, often prefer to deny race, and then close the debate and call the other side hateful.
I'm not sure if you count me as a "denialists," and I know you're speaking in generalities rather than about anyone in particular with this message. Still, it is worth pointing out that "close the debate and call the other side hateful" would not correctly describe my position or my approach to countering race realism.
"Race realism isn't simply impolite, it's factually wrong."
Can't really get more denialist than that...
Respectfully, it wasn't an open question per se, let alone an opening for a stranger to but in. Please try to understand context and propriety. 👋🏿
Very good thought-provoking article! Thank you for having the courage to write it. But in the "revolution of the American soul" how is it true that "the guiding hand on the wheel was black"? You're right that we shouldn’t care if it were, but I think it clearly was not. Some of the true guiding hands wrote Two Treatises of Government, The Spirit of the Laws, the Declaration of Independence (and many earlier related declarations) and various versions of state constitutions and the U.S. Constitution, including amendments (especially Amendments I, XIII, XIV, XV, XIX, XXIV and XXVI).
Back in the 1690's John Locke with "The Second Treatise of Government" popularized the belief in the colonies that "Men" were "by Nature, all free, equal and independent," which was incorporated into our Declaration of Independence.
In the 1750's, Montesquieu with "The Spirit of the Laws" helped popularize even better beliefs that eventually were incorporated into our even better Constitution. "VIRTUE in a republic is a most simple thing; it is a love of the republic." "A love of the republic, in a democracy, is a love of the democracy; as the latter is that of equality. A love of the democracy is, likewise, that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness and the same advantages."
"The freedom of every citizen constitutes a part of the public liberty; and, in a democratical state, is even a part of the sovereignty [of the people]." "[T]he enjoyment of liberty, and even its support and preservation, consists in every man’s being allowed to speak his thoughts and to lay open his sentiments." "In republics women are free by the laws, and restrained by manners." "In a democracy the people are in some respects the sovereign, and in others the subject" (of the laws).
“[A]s all men are born equal, slavery must be accounted unnatural.” "There is no such thing as a right of reducing people to slavery, but when it becomes necessary for the preservation of the conquest. Preservation, and not servitude, is the end of conquest; though servitude may happen sometimes to be a necessary means of preservation. Even in that case it is contrary to the nature of things that the slavery should be perpetual. The people enslaved ought to be rendered capable of becoming subjects [or citizens]."
Montesquieu even summarized much of the thinking in this article: "THE customs of an enslaved people are a part of their servitude; those of a free people are a part of their liberty."
Well said, and thank you for that response. What I meant when I wrote that the guiding hand was black was that the revolution of the American soul when it comes to race was the result of the civil rights movement. But yes, the moral foundation of the civil rights movement was laid by the liberal philosophers you note, as well as Christian tradition.
It still seems to be extremely inaccurate to say "the guiding hand was black" in "the revolution of the American soul when it comes to race" as "the result of the civil rights movement." The guiding hands weren't from the civil rights movement of the 1960's and 1970's. The guiding hands were from at least as early as the 1860's and 1870's. President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (which was founded on the Declaration of Independence) and Amendments XIII, XIV and XV come to mind.
Another person who comes to mind is Schuyler Colfax. In 1866 (160 years ago and 90 years after the Declaration of Independence), as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Schuyler Colfax declared that Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment was “the gem of the Constitution . . . because it is the Declaration of Independence placed immutably and forever in our Constitution.” Finally, our Constitution (not merely the Declaration) said that all men have equal rights, privileges and immunities. But even Speaker Colfax overlooked a far more important and far more fundamental principle inherent in our Constitution.
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment (arguably) is “the gem of the Constitution" because in fact and in law it established far more by our Constitution than was declared in the Declaration of Independence. The Fourteenth Amendment declared and established that all citizens (regardless of arbitrary factors previously invoked to purport to justify discrimination, e.g., race, color or previous condition of servitude, sex, wealth or age) have equal rights, privileges and immunities. It established (by the paramount law of the land, i.e., in law created by the People speaking for themselves), much more than merely that "all men" are equal and have equal rights. The 14th Amendment clarified what citizenship means by emphasizing the rights of "all persons." "All persons born or naturalized in the United States" are entitled to all "the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," which includes "equal protection of the laws."
The 14th Amendment followed the lead of the 1st Amendment. Together, they led to the 15th Amendment, then the 19th Amendment, then the 24th Amendment and then the 26th Amendment. Each such amendment was a revolution in American government. Each such amendment radically changed the scope of the first words of the Constitution ("the People") so that our Constitution expressly reflected the truth about "the People."