By Ian Jobling • 12/5/08
My last column argued that racial right writers like Pat Buchanan and Steve Sailer were basically mistaken to see Barack Obama as a radical Leftist or black racialist. My contention that Obama is a moderate center-left politician rather than the extremist of the right’s fantasy now seems to have been confirmed by his choice of cabinet. The appointment of these ponderously respectable, centrist old hands has delighted conservatives and confirms that the US government will be run by the same old political machine as it has been for decades.
However, my skeptical attitude towards racial right fears does not mean I am not intensely disturbed by the Obama election. What is disturbing, though, is not that Obama will radically change our politics, but that he renders painfully manifest the truth of what was always there: the death of white racial consciousness. By racial consciousness, I mean the instinctive understanding among American whites that their country has a distinctive and precious heritage, that this heritage is rooted in the nature of the white race, and that only white people can be true Americans. Throughout most of American history, whites clearly felt this way. Even in the 1940s, for example, President Henry Truman maintained in his letters that America was a country for white people.
White racial consciousness has, of course, been on the decline for decades, and I argued last year that it was virtually non-existent today. However, even though rationally I understood that American whites had lost their sense of peoplehood, I did not recognize it emotionally until, dizzy with foreboding, I watched Obama give his victory speech on election night.
During the Bush years, it was possible to cling on to the hope that racial consciousness, however obscured and intimidated by leukophobia and race denial, still existed among American whites. Of course, the mainstream Republican party is thoroughly liberal on issues of race. The Bush administration supported amnesty and greater spending on minorities, and caved in to the leukophobic narrative that minority underperformance was due to mistreatment by whites. Rationally, I told myself that the mainstream of the Repubican party was really no better than the Democrats. Nevertheless, sub-rationally and emotionally the Republicans lulled me into a false sense of security. American conservatives are overwhelmingly negative about the legacy of the 1960s, after all. They blame social dysfunction on the sexual revolution and the emergence of the welfare state that took place during that time. Moreover, they are revolted by the disdain for America that characterized the anti-Vietnam War movement. Underlying Republican victories, it seemed to me, was a sense that America before the Civil Rights era was a better place.
My delusive sense of security had other sources. Bush infuriated the Left so profoundly that you couldn’t help but like the man. There had to be something positive about a man who could make Paul Krugman and Keith Olbermann froth at the mouth so. Also, on race and immigration issues, the Republicans were far superior to the Democrats. The immigration restrictionist House Republicans under Tom Tancredo were certainly a force for the good. Ending the Mary Frances Berry reign of insanity, Bush appointed affirmative action skeptics to the US Commission on Civil Rights, and his Justice Department actually prosecuted blacks for discriminating against whites. Wishful thinking could easily be reassured by such developments.
Obama’s election, however, has swept away these illusions and forced me to face up to the bleak reality of today’s America. If a racially conscious white America had existed, we would have seen a pervasive and profound revulsion against the very idea of an Obama presidency. Whites would have regarded it as an absurdity that a man who was not merely black, but the son of a Kenyan Muslim could be president of their country.
Such a revulsion failed to materialize. While we did see some evidence of unease with the prospect of a black president, it was fitful and weak. The most vigorous expression of white skepticism towards Obama was the outrage over Jeremiah Wright. However, whites allowed themselves to be easily consoled by Obama’s smarmy speech on race and soon dropped the matter.
The Obama election was decisive proof then that white Americans no longer believe in a white America, but rather diverse America. Indeed, the jubilation that has greeted the Obama victory, including naming schools and holidays after the man, is a celebration of the victory of diversity over whiteness. The American majority apparently thinks that Obama will set us free from the bad old white America, the America of slavery, segregation, and racism, and usher in a diverse America of inclusion, togetherness, and mutual understanding.
Those of us who have the gall to insist that white America was a great nation, the greatest in history, and far better than diverse America is likely to be—we find ourselves in a difficult position. Because of the triumph of the ideology of diversity, opportunists are going to flock to its banner. The Republican party may betray us even further. Already the leadership is talking about the need to prevent the Republicans from becoming the “old white-guy” party by stepping up the minority outreach initiatives that have been in place for years now and that always fail.
So what should we do? We go on attacking the ideology of diversity as mercilessly as we have in the past, exposing it as the ridiculous and pernicious sham that it is. Every day we should wake determined to point out on websites, discussion boards, and among our acquaintance that diversity does not bring liberation and inclusiveness and hope, but crime, corruption, and the lowering of standards. Every day, we must force white Americans to see that with increasing diversity our nation becomes less intelligent, less provident, less Western. Above all, we must reveal Obama and the rest of his crew for what they are: a bunch of fraudulent snake-oil salesmen and drug dealers who profit off of Americans’ anguish by selling them the narcotic of evangelical rhetoric even as their nation slides further into chaos.
These are troubling times for pro-white race realists, so troubling that you may fall prey to despair. If you do, you should remember that, no matter how bleak things seem, no one can know the future. All we can know is our own convictions in the present, and our only path to real happiness is to act on them. In doing so, we create a future different from anything we expect. While defending the truth may cause others to reject, or even hurt you, it will also reward you with a satisfaction and self-respect that more than compensates you for your pain. By holding firm against the tide of lies, you will know the moral courage that is the signal virtue of our people and join the ranks of those heroes who built and preserved the West.