Poor Little Oppressed White People

Recently, Arizona State Representative Cicil Ash suggested, rhetorically, that Arizona might want to have a “White Appreciation Day.” More accurately, he pleaded with the up-and-coming Latino Establishment that once Whites are a minority in Arizona, it might deign to grant them a holiday. Some might think that actions like this mark the first step towards a Western awakening. I still see it as something worse than defeatism. With this episode in the news (as well as the appearance of CPAC 2012), it’s worth revisiting my essay “Poor Little Oppressed White People,” which was first published in The Occidental Observer.  

Jamie Kelso is an unlikely manipulator of the masses, but the activist and web-radio host scored a definite coup when he was filmed engaging a group of young people at this February’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Thus far, the clip has been viewed some 30,000 times on YouTube and has even inspired a convoluted essay by a neoconservative academic.

Kelso’s arguments were sound, based in reason, history, evolutionary theory, and the natural desire to treasure one’s own. He presented a moderate, reasonable case for racialism, one noticeably lacking in the Sieg Heils, Swastika tattoos, howls of “White Power!” and other accoutrements of the far Right one sees on TV.

Not surprisingly, Kelso was denounced as a hater by a moustachioed hipster from Campaign for Liberty. He also elicited some non-sequitur responses about how it was only Democrats who supported lynching and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as bewildered stares from the smartly dressed young women hovering around him. (Even if Kelso was eventually asked to leave, one shouldn’t forget that the crowd was clearly fascinated by what they heard…. Just imagine if they had encountered Jonathan Bowden in full force, and not the unassuming Mr. Kelso.)

Whatever the case, “genetic interests” are unlikely to ever be a discussion topic at CPAC, and it’s important to ask why.

Kevin MacDonald has argued that modern Americans’ allergy to racialism is a product of Whites’ “attraction to abstractions,” an expression of the “individualistic heritage that is an ethnic trait of Europeans, most obvious in the Puritan/WASP tradition.” (My colleague Alex Kurtagic has offered some important, Schmitt-inflected contributions to the concept of “rights,” as well as some helpful suggestion on how we could better put forth our ideas.)

No doubt, much of what MacDonald says is true, though some objections immediately present themselves:

First, the Japanese have excelled in the abstract logic required in advanced electronics and industrial engineering, and their economy is geared towards exporting to global markets; yet, judging by their national consensus on immigration restriction, they have little compunction in fighting for their genetic interests.

Secondly, though today’s self-styled “conservatives” think in terms of America as a “Proposition Nation,” the puritanical WASPs, deist intellectuals, and yeoman Calvinists who founded the country engaged in brutal wars for territory with the Indians, restricted immigration to “free, white persons,” and maintained (disastrously, for future White generations) African slavery. The Left is certainly correct when it asserts that from its inception to the Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, America was a downright racist — even White supremacist — place. Perhaps innate Anglo-Saxon inclinations did evolve into “anti-racism,” but for many generations, this was hardly a foregone conclusion.

Whatever the case, a conversation about the limitation of the Protestant mentality is certainly one we should have — but it’s not necessary for understanding the “conservatives” who disagreed with Kelso, for they were engaging in the timeless practice of cheerleading for the regime.

Though there certainly might have been some genuine Tea Party types at CPAC, the conference is, essentially, a tasteless junket for Republican staffers, young people who want to be staffers, and the various “movement” rent-seekers who scare up money from old women in direct-mail campaigns. Racialists shouldn’t think that conservatives are “like us, though not quite” — or that we are “like them, only more so.” Both assumptions are false. The Political is not defined by linear gradations of Left and Right, with us on one end, Lenin on the other, and Glenn Beck somewhere in between. And though we will certainly find colleagues for our cause in average Americans, perhaps the worst place to look is the professional “movement.”

And in many ways, the problem is deeper. “Conservatives” — and here I mean professionals and FOX News enthusiasts — genuinely believe that in embracing “Americanism” and the Washington regime (both of which are defined by postwar Liberals), they are supporting the most powerful, most special, most world-historical thing on Earth. The twenty-something CPAC attendees are, much like Young Pioneers of the Soviet Union, true believers in American Empire; prattling on about freedom, democracy, and equality allows them to feel that they are connected to Power. (Or in conservatism’s more vulgar manifestation, “AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!”)

To give up on the regime’s reigning ideology of “universal values” — and embrace limited genetic interests — is, in their minds, to abdicate power. Why worry about our extended family when “America” should be liberating and protecting all peoples around the globe. (And one shouldn’t discount the degree to which Red State America literally profits from both federal handouts as well as the military industrial complex.)

We should certainly lament the fact that conservatives support so enthusiastically a regime that is working tirelessly to dispossess them; however, it is also clear that until the collapse of American globalism — and the displacement of the movement’s leadership — we can’t expect much from “conservatives.”

There is, however, one grassroots right-winger who is consciously — and publicly — acting in the interests of White people. His name is Colby Bohannan. The Texas State undergrad recently launched The Former Majority Association for Equality, a San Marcos-based organization awarding small scholarships to White males — and White males only — with academic talent.

The title of Bohannan’s organization seems to evoke Wilmot Robertson’s classic White Nationalist text, The Dispossessed Majority of 1972… The site’s Mission Statement alerts us that we shouldn’t get our hopes up:

One obstacle that we immediately anticipate is to not appear racist or racially motivated. We do not advocate white supremacy, nor do we enable any individual that does. We do not accept donations from organizations affiliated with any sort of white supremacy or hate group. We have no hidden agenda to promote racial bigotry or segregation. FMAE’s existence is dedicated around one simple principle, to provide monetary aid for education to white males who need it.

Bohannan seems genuine: he is responding to a need in his community and does not desire to upturn the dominant civil discourse of “equality” and inclusion. Unlike most all “minority” scholarship applications, the “former majority” application [PDF] does not ask students to delve into their racial identity or recount tales of oppression. The Association only solicits the applicant’s career goals and his thoughts on a rather wholesome and bland essay question,

What kind of attributes makes a successful individual? How can you improve your own habits to better exemplify a fair and strong leadership role in your future?

This isn’t the first time someone has suggested a scholarship for White males. In 2004, Jason Mattera — then an undergrad at Roger Williams University, now the editor of the conservative-movement organ Human Events — led an effort to found a “Whites only” scholarship at his college. (The University of Rhode Island followed suit a couple of years later.) The scholarship was only for $250 and was clearly meant as political high-jinx, in the line of “Affirmative Action Bake Sales.”

Whatever might be going on in the Texas hinterlands, the authorized Beltway Right is not about to assert its European/Anglo-Protestant identity. Indeed, its standard refrain goes something like,

Well, Justice Sotomayor, what if I had said that a wise, White man, with the depth of his experience, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latino women? You’d denounce me. And rightly so!

The argument is that in pursuing ethno-politics, liberals are not post- or anti-racist enough.

It’s worth noting that Mattera, who’s Puerto Rican, was the recipient of a $5000 scholarship from the Hispanic College Fund, which he didn’t decline despite his devotion to color-blind justice. Apparently, scholarships for Whites are satire; scholarships for Puerto Ricans are real.

Another sincere effort in forging European identity occurred in 2000, when the European American Issues Forum, then led by Louie Calabro, convinced a school district in Northern California to declare April “European American Heritage Month.” Calabro stressed that Whites deserve a whole month because of the “many inventions” they’ve contributed over the years

The late Sam Francis, a one-time Washington insider whom it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call a White Nationalist, recognized early on that such an effort hardly represented the reawakening of the Old America. Francis argued, “whether they realize it or not, the European-Americans who pushed the heritage month through the school board have just signed the death warrant of what was once known as ‘white civilization’ in California.”

They have agreed that they no longer define the civilization of the state and that they have now devolved into just one more little brick in the ethnic and racial mosaic. Francis continues:

If the European-Americans don’t realize that, Raymond Tom, the district’s Chinese-descended director of state and federal programs, does. “They’re recognizing immigrant groups, and European Americans are an immigrant group to America,” he says. “Kids think white is America. We have to understand that we’re all American. Asian Americans, African Americans are all part of America. We’re all newcomers to this country. Not one group owns it.”

You can see how Tom plans to make use of the heritage month. By acknowledging that European Americans are merely one more immigrant group, the heritage month forfeits the claim that America is a nation of European heritage. Having once forfeited that claim, the largely European-derived institutions that make American civilization what it is lose their claim to legitimacy. It’s more than “many inventions” that Europeans contributed, you see. What they really contributed was the whole concept.

We could start counting with the language that comes from Britain and its Germanic forebears, go on to the basic judicial and political institutions (juries, the right to bear arms, voting, the rule of law), education (universities, most of what we still study in the curriculum), and religion (Christianity may originally come from the Middle East, but it didn’t last there; the only place it’s ever endured has been Europe and its extensions). That’s just for starters. Inventions, in fact, — from airplanes and vaccines to electric potato peelers — are pretty far down the list.

The new non-European-Americans will no doubt keep the inventions, but why they would want to retain the European cultural, linguistic, political, educational, and religious traditions of a civilization and a people of which they are not a part is not clear. And the more they displace European-Americans, the less they’ll want to keep what their predecessors left. If European-Americans are no longer the majority in the state, they will no longer be able to define the civilizational framework of the state; and if they no longer define the civilizational framework of the state, other races and peoples will rush into the vacuum to define it themselves. (Samuel Francis, “‘European-American month’ forfeits claim to define civilization,” Townhall, May 16, 2000)

It might be tempting for White Nationalists to claim that though the efforts of the European American Issues Forum and the Former Majority Association aren’t perfect, they’re a step in the right direction. But, again, to think this is to imagine that there’s a progressive “White consciousness meter” leading from libertarianism to White scholarships to the Ethno State. But, again, things don’t really work that way. White Nationalism isn’t on the “far Right” in the post-Civil Rights, post-mass immigration American political spectrum. It’s off the chart and represents nothing less than a radical, revolutionary challenge to the egalitarian consensus. Glenn Beck is just as far away from us as are academic multiculturalists.

Bohannan, FMAE, and EAIF might do a service in bringing to the fore Liberal hypocrisy, but they are hardly representative of a self-assured Western consciousness; they are, in fact, more reminiscent of entitlement-mongers like Al Sharpton — poor, little oppressed White people will apparently now plead for handouts from the welfare state. The European history put forth by the EAIF is, in turn, not a history of conflict, development, and tradition, but a list of White Inventors — which could be given to education administrators in hope of Thomas Edison being taught alongside such world luminaries as Harriet Tubman. It is “White advocacy,” safely confined to the domain of the state and political establishment.

What makes the agenda of Bohannan and EAIF even more pathetic is that they are bound to fail. To put forward “White History Month” or “White Scholarships” is to assume that that “multiculturalism” is actually about, well, multi-culturalism; that is, it is to deny that multiculturalism is primarily and essentially anti-White and anti-Western.

On a Monday, a Multiculturalist might encourage non-Whites to develop racial consciousness (even when such consciousness is completely contrived, such as when Japanese and Indians join hands in “Asian” student associations.) On a Tuesday, the same person might insist that race itself is a social construct, created by British colonialists and that all peoples must unite as “global citizens” in the face of economic injustice.

Such an ideology is, of course, wildly inconsistent and contradictory. But what holds it all together is its implicit enemy — the White middle class, in particular, and the Western Christian tradition, in general. An honest multiculturalist — one who desires a pluralist America that includes White identity — might exist, but I’ve never met one.

This reality won’t change in the slightest were Whites to become a minority in the United States, much as it hasn’t changed in “majority minority” states like California and Texas. If history continues on its current trajectory, Whites could comprise 10 percent of the American nation, and political commentators would still wax on about the “Whites Only” water fountains of the 1950s and how Affirmative Action is still necessary due “institutional racism.” The Anglo-Saxon Protestant might literally become an endangered species, yet he will be featured prominently on stage and screen as heartless plutocrats in charge of corporations and government, incessantly plotting to reinstitute apartheid and Jim Crow laws.

Imagining that Whites could ever have a seat at the table in multiculturalist America amounts to something worse than defeatism.