The Last Best Hope on Earth?

Filed Under ao resources, books, current affairs, history, questions, quotes, race

From State of Emergency:

… if racism means a belief in the superiority of the white race and its inherent right to rule other peoples, American history is full of such men. Indeed, few great men could be found in America or Europe before World War II who did not accept white supremacy as natural.

In Pat Buchanan’s book, State of Emergency: the Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, he writes that what ‘paralyzes’ Bush and other Americans from repulsing the waves of illegal immigrants (or undocumented workers, as some prefer) is white guilt.

He reminds us that Eisenhower engaged in Operation Wetback without any trouble to his conscience. Nobody called him a racist (or perhaps I say, no one white called him a racist). Buchanan goes on to add:

Growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, we did not feel any need to apologize for America’s past, but took pride in all she had accomplished. African-Americans shared that pride. That there were sins in our past, no one denied. But Americans did not obsess over wrongs done by previous generations, for, compared with other nations, America merited the gratitude of mankind.

He then describes a “disease” that took root in the 1960s, beginning in Europe, in which left-wing intellectuals began to loathe all things European, seeing their ancestors as “irredeemably racist, imperialist, and genocidal.” By the end of the 60s, Buchanan says, this illness had spread to the US, with the result that baby boomers grew up mired in guilt, “indoctrinated to believe America is fatally flawed - racist, sexist, nativist, homophobic … many baby boomers bought into its core doctrine: America must confess her sins, seek absolution, do penance, and make eternal restitution.”

I found this really interesting, given recent discussions here and in other UU blogs on race and the founding fathers. The lightbulb over my head is brightening a little.

It was also interesting to contrast Buchanan’s take on ‘not obsessing’ over the past with James Loewen’s recounting of the Reconstruction, and the period of 1890-1940 - the time he refers to as “the nadir of US race relations.” This was when the anti-racist efforts of white and black folks in the generation following the Civil War were essentially rolled back.

Earlier today, I was telling Michael (the DH) about this nadir of US race relations; and then about the expulsions of the Chinese from small towns all across the northwest and west (at one point in the late 1800s, 1/3 of Idahoans were of Chinese descent); and then the rising up again of the KKK; and the changing of the story of why the Civil War was fought (it really was about slavery, not states’ rights); and the terrorizing and destruction of scores of black towns by angry white folks; and the creation of hundreds of anti-black laws - in places like New York, where at one point 1/3 of all merchant marines were black until limitations were placed on the percentage of black sailors allowed on ships; all the way until today where communities of people of color are targeted for “revitalization” (I just came from New Orleans where I saw this first hand).

I told all of these things to Michael, and his response - especially to the murders and driving out of Chinese in Rock Springs, Wyoming - was, “Whoa! No wonder Pat Buchanan and the other ultra-conservatives are so afraid! They don’t want this to happen to them!”

Is that really what this is about … fear of being destroyed? Buchanan’s main points so far are that:

we need to resurrect strict immigration laws - if we don’t, the Mexicans - and other immigrants from “Asia, Africa, and Latin America” - will, by their large numbers and refusal to assimilate, change what America is;
the white men who created the best nation the world has ever seen believed in their inherent superiority without apology; yes, some people were wiped off the planet in the process, but such is the price of progress.

He writes, “We may call our ancestors racists, as we trumpet our moral superiority. But history may yet mark ours as the generation of fools that threw away the last best hope on earth.”

This reminds me of a question Ms. Kitty recently asked. I think there is a lot at stake in the answer(s) - for all Americans. It leads me to wonder, “if the answer to Ms Kitty’s question were yes, would we (americans) change?”

Comments

2 Responses to “The Last Best Hope on Earth?”

Scimitar on July 7th, 2007 8:26 pm

Hafidha Sofia,

I’m someone you would probably describe as a “racist” even though I reject that appellation. My designation of choice is “racialist” - a person who believes in the existence of racial differences and their relevance to public policy. That said, I think we both share a common interest in the history of American race relations. It may interest you to know America has turned away from racial equalitarianism twice before, not just after the collapse of Reconstruction, but during the early nineteenth century as well.

In the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution, free blacks possessed voting rights in Southern states like Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina, but these were later rescinded. Racial equality was a standard theme of abolitionist propaganda during the 1790s. Around 1810, the first abolitionist movement collapsed and hereditarian explanations of racial inequality gained ascendence of equalitarian ones. If you haven’t read Klinker and Smith’s The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America, I would strongly suggest you do so. You will probably find it informative.

I believe the United States is in the early stages of another such turning on the issue of race. It is my goal in life to help bring this about. In recent years, the concept of race has been rehabilitated in biology and genetics. There was a discussion about this recently over at The New Republic of all places, a leading liberal webzine. In the last three years alone, immigration went from being a backburner issue to the most important issue of over 40% of Republican primary voters.

A few years ago, Pat Buchanan was a lonely voice amongst conservatives. Now, his views on immigration are being repeated by establishment conservatives like Peggy Noonan (who calls for a morotorium on even legal immigration, which Buchanan advocated in State of Emergency) and Jonah Goldberg of all people (who now says it is time for America to become a “normal” nation). In the recent immigration debate, charges of “racism, hate, xenophobia, bigotry, nativism” and so forth - every single one of the arrows in the anti-racist quiver - were shot at restrictionists.

For the first time since the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, White America rose up in anger and sent a simple message to its united anti-racist Washington elite: No. Do you realize the significance of this? What would happen if whites started saying “no” to blacks like yourself on other issues: on affirmative action, on “celebrating diversity,” on black-on-white crime, on the endless guilt tripping of whites over slavery and segregation?

That very same day the U.S. Supreme Court issued twin rulings on desegregation in the Seattle and Louisville cases. While comparisons to Plessy v. Ferguson have been overexaggerated, those rulings were indeed a body blow - the latest in a series of decisions - to the race agenda of the progressive left. Ever since Milliken v. Bradley in 1974, the Supreme Court has been steadily backing off from the vanguard role it once played in forced integration.

While you reflect on the “nadir of U.S. race relations,” and Pat Buchanan’s views re: Hispanic immigration, ponder what it must have been like to be a segregationist in 1945. A storm was approaching on the horizon which no one could have forseen at the time. Within the span of twenty or thirty years, down had become up, and up had become down; white supremacy had become white self-hatred. If history teaches us anything, it is that the future is always full of surprises.

Your pal,

Scimitar
hafidha on July 9th, 2007 2:38 pm

Hmm. This is a lot of information to digest all at once, Scimitar, but thank you for your response. Thanks also for the book recommendation; I will definitely check it out at some point in the near future. I should also note that I don’t seek to describe you as a racist - and the thought doesn’t occur to me to do so. If you want to describe yourself as one, that is entirely up to you.