A French group called Les Natifs (The Natives) invited me to give a speech in Paris on June 3, 2026. However, police broke up the meeting, explaining that judging from my record, I was likely to say things that would “violate the penal code and threaten national cohesion as well as the principles enshrined in The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen [of 1789] and in the republican tradition.”
The French version of the talk was published in the magazine Elements on June 8 without, apparently, threatening national cohesion. This is an English version of the speech.
“The American Dilemma Is Now the European Dilemma”
What is the American Dilemma?
The dilemma begins with the fact that we Americans had a multiracial society from the beginning. There were already Indians living where Europeans founded colonies. We then imported another race of people: Africans. And after that, we let in everyone from everywhere. The American multiracial society has been a failure, and it should have been clear to Europeans while they still had white countries that it was a failure.
Part of the problem, however, was that even though European intellectuals realized America had a race problem, they were convinced they could solve it. They believed the problem was not a multiracial society itself. The problem was ignorant, prejudiced Americans — especially Southern Americans — and Europeans were convinced they could teach us how to be better.
How many of you have heard of a Swede named Gunnar Myrdal? He was a leftist economist who won the Nobel Prize. But he also published in 1944 one of the most influential books ever written on American race relations. It was called An American Dilemma. It went through 25 printings and came out in a second edition in 1965 and was even being republished as a two-volume set in 1996.
For years An American Dilemma was almost the Bible — the essential guide to American race relations. I have read all 1,483 pages of that great, fat book, and I can summarize its contents very easily. It’s all the fault of white people.
It’s always this way. White people — in this case a Swede — who have little experience with people of other races always think they know better — they are more virtuous — than people who may have lived with other races for hundreds of years.
Gunnar Myrdal called the problem of race relations the American Dilemma, and in 1944, he was right. Now, it is also the European dilemma, the Canadian dilemma, the Australian dilemma. It is, everywhere, the white man’s dilemma.
Look at Gunnar Myrdal’s Sweden today. When he died in 1987, Sweden was 98 percent white. Now, thanks to immigration, Sweden is about 30 percent non-white, and in most years it has the highest rape rate of any country in Europe. Swedes have mostly stopped telling Americans they understand race relations better than we do.
So, first, I would like to tell you a few things about race in America that you probably don’t know. And then, I would like to talk about the broader picture. The European dilemma.
To start with America: I assume most of you have heard about the Jamestown colony of Virginia. This was the first permanent English settlement in the New World, founded in 1607. There were Indians living in Virginia, so when next year marks 420 years since the beginning of America, it will also mean 420 years of American race relations — 420 years during which Americans learned some lessons about race, forgot them, and are slowly beginning to learn them again.
When the English arrived, the Spanish had been settling the New World for more than a century. By 1607, 200,000 Spaniards had emigrated to the colonies. They had found gold and silver and had brought immense wealth back to Spain. At the same time, the Spaniards had, justifiably or not, developed a worldwide reputation for cruelty against the American Indians.
And so, the purpose of the Jamestown colony was to find gold and silver, but the English were determined not to make the Spanish mistake of mistreating Indians. As usual, the ones with no experience with race thought they would do better than the ones who already had 100 years of experience.
It is important to note that the English had no preconceived notions of racial differences or superiority. They saw the Indians as essentially no different from themselves. This was completely different from their view of Moors or black Africans whom they did think of as strange and alien.
The colony was initially all men — about 100 — and they were careful to find a place for their encampment that was unclaimed and uninhabited. They wanted to offend no one. The leader of the colony, Edward Maria Wingfield, decreed that because the English came in peace, they would build no walls and there would be no training in weapons.
However, when the encampment was not even two weeks old, hundreds of Indians attacked and tried to exterminate the English. There were deaths on both sides, and the English would have been massacred if they had not panicked the Indians by firing a cannon that was on one of the ships. This noise terrified the Indians and they ran away. The English quickly built a log fort.
Despite that bad start, all the existing records agree: The English still wanted to be better than the Spanish and to live in harmony with the Indians. However, to their disappointment, it was the tribes who lived closest to them who liked them the least. It was only the ones who lived furthest away that were friendly and willing to trade. This is a fundamental principle of race relations: They are always better at a distance.
The chief of the neighboring Indians was named Powhatan, and his favorite daughter, Pocahontas, converted to Christianity and married an English colonist in 1614, seven years after the colony started. This was the beginning of a period of peace.
By then, the colony had a new leader, George Thorpe, who worked especially hard to please the Indians. If colonists mistreated Indians in any way, it is recorded that George Thorpe “punished them severely,” though there are no specific examples of how. It is also recorded that when dogs that belonged to the English barked at Indians, Thorpe had the dogs killed in the presence of Indians — much to the anger of the owners.
But in 1618, four years after Pocahontas married a colonist, her father, Chief Powhatan, died, and his younger brother, Opechancanough, became chief. Opechancanough did not have a favorite daughter married to an Englishman, and he did not like the English.
And so, in 1622, four years after he became chief, Opechancanough decided to exterminate the colonists. By then there were about 1,200 of them in Jamestown, spread out in several locations. Every morning, Indians would come to the settlements and work with the English on farms and in workshops. On March 22, 1622, the plan was for the Indians to rise up and kill every man, woman, and child.
However, the main settlement at Jamestown was warned by an Indian who had converted to Christianity. The men kept their weapons handy and there was no violence. In other areas there was total surprise, and the Indians killed about 400 colonists — one third of the whole colony. Interestingly, they were especially cruel to George Thorpe, who had killed dogs that annoyed Indians and who was so concerned about their welfare. They tortured him and mutilated his body.