White America Reacts – Western Voices World News

"Why are Whites expected to submit to something that neither Japan,
China, Pakistan, Iran, Mexico nor any country in Africa would ever
submit to? None of those countries would allow mass immigration of
alien races. What is so unique about Whites that they must allow this?" — <a href=”http://www.whitenationalism.com/”>Yggdrasil</a><a href=”http://www.whitenationalism.com/”> </a> January 2009 According to a recent Census Bureau report, whites could become a
minority of the U.S. population as early as 2042. In the
January/February issue of the Atlantic, <a href=”http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200901/end-of-whiteness”>contributor Hua Hsu explores the implications</a> of this development from both a demographic and cultural perspective. To some extent, Hsu argues, an important shift
has already taken place. “Where the culture is concerned,” he writes,
“[white America is already all but finished.” While some are
celebrating this new, more multiethnic America, others, he notes, have
reacted with anxiety—sometimes with blunt xenophobia (like Pat
Buchanan, who characterizes America’s white-minority future as “Third
World America”), and sometimes with ironic self-deprecation (like
Christian Lander, whose blog and book, both titled <a href=”http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/" target=”outlink”>“Stuff White People Like,”</a> have found popular success).

Such concerns about perceived or real challenges to white hegemony
are nothing new. Hua Hsu opens his essay with a look at some of the
fears about racial encroachment that once prevailed among a certain
cadre of scholarly white men in the 1920s:

<blockquote style=”font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;”>
Their sense of dread hovered somewhere above the concerns of everyday
life. It was linked less to any immediate danger to their class’s
political and cultural power than to a perceived fraying of the fixed,
monolithic identity of whiteness. From the hysteria over Eastern
European immigration to the vibrant cultural miscegenation of the
Harlem Renaissance, it is easy to see how this imagined worldwide white
kinship might have seemed imperiled in the 1920s.
</blockquote>

More than a decade before the books cited by Hsu were published, Atlantic
author William Z. Ripley took on the issue of early 20th-century
immigration and its—in his view—dire demographic implications. In his
1908 article, <a href=”http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/immigr/rip.htm”>“Races in the United States,”</a>
he discussed how “Mediterranean, Slavic, and Oriental” immigrants were
“swarm[ing over here in rapidly growing proportions.” In light of
this, he expressed grave concerns about America’s racial and cultural
future:

<blockquote style=”font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;”>
We have even tapped the political sinks of Europe, and are now drawing
large numbers of Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians. No people is too mean
or lowly to seek an asylum on our shores. … Relative submergence of the
domestic Anglo-Saxon stock is strongly indicated for the future. ‘Race
suicide’ marked by a low and declining birth-rate, as is well known, is
a world-wide social phenomenon of the present day.
</blockquote>

Ripley did suggest, however, that such “mean” and “lowly” immigrants
could perhaps be educated and improved through the generous efforts of
their Anglo-Saxon superiors:

<blockquote style=”font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;”>
An even greater responsibility with us, and with the people of Canada,
is that of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’s burden,’—so to nourish, uplift, and
inspire all these immigrant peoples of Europe that, in due course of
time, even if the Anglo-Saxon stock be physically inundated by the
engulfing flood, the torch of its civilization and ideals may still
continue to illuminate the way.
</blockquote>

In the 1960s, the increasing power of black Americans posed a more
direct challenge to white cultural supremacy. During the aftermath of
the civil rights movement, Dr. Robert Coles conducted an informal
anthropological study on the attitudes of white northerners towards
African-Americans. His June 1966 Atlantic article, <a href=”http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/race/whitenor.htm”>“The White Northerner: Pride and Prejudice,”</a>
summarized what he had gleaned from many interviews. Because of changes
brought about by the civil rights movement, he wrote, many
working-class white families now felt “cheated and nervous”—resentful
of the fact that they suddenly had to compete with black families for
schools, jobs, and charity efforts.

Coles found that these low-income white Americans were feeling
slighted in less tangible ways as well; the nation’s attention, they
noted, seemed newly focused on the plight of African-Americans,
particularly in the North, where, Coles wrote, “the Negro … is now a
constant topic of news and conversation.” There was, they felt, “a
certain snobbish and faddish ‘interest’ in Negroes.”

In some cases, there was also backlash against a growing sense of
guilt—a feeling that white Americans, being held responsible for their
ancestors’ mistreatment of black Americans, were now being expected to
make personal sacrifices to ameliorate the position of blacks. Coles
quoted one young Irish mother in Boston:

<blockquote style=”font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;”>
I just can’t take what some of our priests are saying these days.
They’re talking as if we did something wrong for being white. I don’t
understand it at all.
</blockquote>

Three decades later, in <a href=”http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199311/reverse-racism”>“Reverse Racism, or How the Pot Got to Call the Kettle Black”</a>
(November 1993), Stanley Fish argued forcefully against this concern
that the plight of blacks might be overemphasized at the expense of
whites. Focusing on the question of affirmative action, he contended
that those claiming to be being unfairly discriminated against in favor
of blacks were simply attempting to preserve their own racial privilege. “The
playing field,” he wrote, “is already tilted, and the resistance to
altering it by the mechanisms of affirmative action is in fact a
determination to make sure that the present imbalances persist as long
as possible.”

He argued that the effects of racism—even on educated middle-class
blacks—was “sufficiently great to warrant the nation’s attention.” And
he encouraged whites to view the “unfairness” of affirmative action not
as an intentional assault on their own opportunities, but as the
byproduct of a necessary initiative to correct a greater unfairness in
the past.

More recently, in <a href=”http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/01/rodriguez.htm”>“Mongrel America”</a>
(January/February 2003), Gregory Rodriguez suggested that racial
jockeying might eventually fade to irrelevance, as Americans from
different backgrounds increasingly intermarry and self-identify as
belonging to multiple races. “Americans cross racial lines more often
than ever before in choosing whom to sleep with, marry, or raise
children with,” he pointed out. And therefore the more that can be done
from a political standpoint to minimize the relevance of
race-differences, he argued, the better off we might be:

<blockquote style=”font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;”>
The immigrants of recent decades are helping to forge a new American identity. … 
At this point perhaps the best thing the government can do is to
acknowledge changes in the meaning of race in America and then get out
of the way. The Census Bureau’s decision to allow Americans to check
more than one box in the “race” section of the 2000 Census was an
important step in this direction. No longer forced to choose a single
racial identity, Americans are now free to identify themselves as
mestizos—and with this newfound freedom we may begin to endow racial
issues with the complexity and nuance they deserve. </blockquote>

<div id=”bio” style=”font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;”>Laura Brunts is an <a href=”http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200901u/white-america”>Atlantic</a> intern.</div>

2009-10-06