I don’t think that the “culture”argument is total hooey, Mark. Give me two groups of people utterly indistinguishable by race, let me put ‘em through some group-solidarity training, and I’ll have ‘em at each other’s throats in no time. (The experiment has actually been done.)

The stronger “natural” types of group difference though, of which race (that is, largely-common ancestry) is the strongest, are much more difficult to cope with and “smooth out” than the smiley-face multiculturalists tell us. The appeals to “mere culture,” “social construction,” and the like are really just a social engineer’s way of saying: “I can fix this, if you just give me enough power to push people around.”

Given a choice between (a) that social engineer who premises his actions on human universalism because, heck, these differences we get hung up about are just “cultural,” and (b) a Rev. Wright type who takes human nature as he finds it, racial particularity and all, and uses that as his raw material — well, my advice would be, put your money on (b) every time.

Considering what wickedness can be and has been done by appeals to racial loyalty, it’s natural to prefer (a), even if you’re not crazy about social engineering. That’s not the way to bet, though, as Rev. Wright’s retirement lifestyle, and Jerry Muller’s Foreign Affairs article, make plain.