Folkish practitioners deem Heathenry to be the indigenous religion of a biologically distinct race, which is conceptualised as being "white", "Nordic", or "Aryan". Some practitioners explain this by asserting that the religion is intrinsically connected to the collective unconscious of this race, with prominent American Heathen Stephen McNallen developing this into a concept which he termed "metagenetics". McNallen and many others in the "ethnic" faction of Heathenry explicitly deny that they are racist, although Gardell noted that their views would be deemed racist under certain definitions of the word. Gardell considered many "ethnic" Heathens to be ethnic nationalists, and many folkish practitioners express disapproval of multiculturalism and the mixture of different races in modern Europe, advocating racial separatism. This group's discourse contains much talk of "ancestors" and "homelands", concepts that may be very vaguely defined. Ethno-centrist Heathens are heavily critical of their universalist counterparts, often declaring that the latter have been misled by New Age literature and political correctness. Those adopting the "ethnic" folkish position have been criticized by both universalist and ethno-centrist factions, the former deeming "ethnic" Heathenry a front for racism and the latter deeming its adherents race traitors for their failure to fully embrace white supremacism.