← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 5158 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2003-02-22
2003-02-22 03:07 | User Profile
Whites and the Next Racial Clash in America
Political scientist Carol Swain argues the U.S. is headed for even more conflict
By JACK E. WHITE
Vanderbilt law school professor Carol M. Swain
Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2003 According to political scientist Carol M. Swain's unsettling new book, "The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration," the U.S. is on the brink of an explosion of white "tribalism" that could trigger unprecedented levels of racial antagonism and an epidemic of violence. The underlying cause: a swelling "white nationalist" movement fueled by simmering resentment of affirmative action programs like those used by the University of Michigan. "The book is a wake-up call to warn people that we're following a dangerous course by pushing identity politics and multi-culturalism," explains the Vanderbilt law school professor. "There's nothing special about the U.S. that says we couldn't have ethnic cleansing and violence here like in Bosnia or Rwanda."
It's shocking to hear such a dire prophesy from a scholar like Swain, who is rapidly establishing herself as one of the leaders of a new, increasingly vocal neoconservative brand of black political analysis that rejects affirmative action and reparations for slavery and holds blacks responsible for their own uplift. Until recently, most left-leaning black theorists derided her as a hopeless optimist. Her previous book, "Black Faces, Black Interests," ruffled many black politicians by dismissing their fear that a Supreme Court ruling that struck down the use of race in the creation of majority black congressional districts would be a disaster. Instead, Swain predicted, the ruling actually would be good for African Americans. As she foresaw, even in the Deep South strong black candidates were capable of winning enough support from whites to prevail in districts where black voters were outnumbered. She also argued that disbursing blacks into mostly-white districts could make it easier for liberal Democrats to compete with conservative Republicans by building multi-racial coalitions. Blacks "need more representation of their liberal views of policy than they need people who look like them" in Congress, Swain contended. Anyone looking at the toothlessness of the Congressional Black Caucus in the Republican-dominated House would find it difficult to disagree.
But, as Swain says, she "turned from a Pollyanna into a Cassandra" as her research into a book criticizing racial preferences made her aware of the spread of what she calls "the new white nationalism," a form of racial extremism more dangerous than the Ku Klux Klan because of its veneer of erudition and mastery of the Internet. Groups such as former Klansman David Duke's National Organization for European American Rights and the National Association of White People eschew the discredited notion of white supremacy. Indeed, they don't claim that whites are superior to anyone else and may even be inferior to Asians.
Instead they push the notion over websites, in publications such as Jared Taylor's "American Renaissance " magazine and through on-campus recruiting drives that all racial groups have unique interests and the god-given right to fulfill their destiny. They see themselves, as Swain has written, as "defenders of the legitimate civil rights of white people against what they allege are a host of racial double standards." In short, that affirmative action has made whites the most discriminated-against group in the country and that it can only get worse as a tide of immigrants transforms the U.S. from a white nation into a rickety Third World republic. The language white nationalists use to promote their insights is stunningly familiar to anyone who has listened to black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan ââ¬â but that's not surprising, since the white nationalists appropriated it. As Swain observes, "the multicultural left has provided a language that works very well for whites who want to push white-identity politics," says Swain. "They say that if it's good for blacks to celebrate their heritage, it's good for whites to celebrate theirs."
What concerns Swain the most is such groups now seem to be finding an audience among mainstream whites whose gripes about racial preferences and high crime rates among blacks have been tuned out by white liberal politicians. Though she has no proof that the membership of such groups is mushrooming, their influence is being felt widely. Indeed, some of the rhetoric used by white nationalists is indistinguishable from the verbiage used by President Bush in his assault on the "quotas" supposedly used by the University of Michigan. "If we keep going down this road, it's going to increasingly pit racial groups against each other," she warns. "Some white people, who are otherwise good people, who don't hate blacks, are going to be pushed into the arms of these extremists if we don't change course."
Swain thinks there's only one way out of this bind: recognizing that whites have "legitimate" beefs about race that should be openly debated by politicians and scholars. She also believes we should immediately do away with racial preferences in university admissions, hiring and government contracts that not only fuel white resentment but send the message to blacks that they can't meet the same standards as everyone else. Swain's detractors say such steps amount to no more than a cowardly capitulation to racism, but she won't back down because she does not believe that blacks need the crutch provided by race-conscious policies. For Swain, a deeply devout evangelical Christian, such beliefs are not academic. Now 49, she went from being a high school drop-out and single mother in rural Virginia to a Ph.d and a chair at a leading university. "Somehow, we've got to embrace an American national identity that pulls us together instead of dividing us into warring camps," says Swain, "perhaps through a renewed emphasis on the Judeo-Christian idea of a common creator and the brotherhood of man." It's an old-fashioned idea that could prevent Swain's troubling predictions from coming true.
url: [url=http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,423780,00.html]http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,...,423780,00.html[/url]
2003-02-22 04:13 | User Profile
"Somehow, we've got to embrace an American national identity that pulls us together instead of dividing us into warring camps," says Swain, "perhaps through a renewed emphasis on the Judeo-Christian idea of a common creator and the brotherhood of man." It's an old-fashioned idea that could prevent Swain's troubling predictions from coming true.
She advocates social engineering - wonderful. "I say evolve, and let the chips fall where they way" - Tyler Durden, "Fight Club".
2003-02-22 08:26 | User Profile
**Carol M. Swain's unsettling new book, "The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration," **
The only unsettling thing about Carol Swain's new book is the thought that Cambridge University Press would voluntarily choose to publish this turgid sludge.
2003-02-22 14:07 | User Profile
I didn't think it was that bad. It was interesting to learn a few of the chosen have defected.
2003-02-22 14:21 | User Profile
**According to political scientist Carol M. Swain, the U.S. is on the brink of an explosion of white "tribalism" that could trigger unprecedented levels of racial antagonism and an epidemic of violence. The underlying cause: a swelling "white nationalist" movement fueled by resentment "There's nothing special about the U.S. that says we couldn't have ethnic cleansing and violence here like in Bosnia or Rwanda," explains the Vanderbilt law school professor. **
You know those blue-eyed devils, whose cultural heritage is dancing 'round the cannibal cookpot in their grass skirts and nose bones, can never be fully acclimated to Civilization. "The two races, equally free, cannot live under the same government", as Sally Hemings once said through her ventriloquist-dummy. This was all clearly detailed in the now-repudiated 1915 film, Afterbirth of a Nation, which even the US Presiment declared was "like writin' history, Lightnin'!"
2003-02-22 17:38 | User Profile
I give her credit for seeing the precipice and wanting to avoid it, but abolishing affirmative action is too little, too late. As for inventing a new "American national identity," I suspect that will be as successful as "New Soviet Man," or "Yugoslav."
2003-02-23 15:45 | User Profile
Swain is an affirmative action product herself, and she simply wants to defuse groups like Amren and the message they carry. She also realizes that the Whites have been kicked in the ass repeatedly by their enemy class, comprising, politicians, media, academia, big business and big religion. She wonders if this can go on while the elites wish to push the whites' noses into the dirt further, as they show no sign of pulling away the whip. Swain is simply another point person for the "civil rights" movement who salts some bait into her work:coming together, debate, reason, and other familier trite and false phases. She would move to outlaw AMREN and similer groups as fast as any liberal if she could. A close reading of Swain's work on these issues also shows that she has little understanding of White Nat. movements, and I suspect that she has cribbed from mainstream experts on "hate groups".
2003-02-23 16:27 | User Profile
The main thing is that American Renaissance got a plug on Time.com
2003-02-23 19:36 | User Profile
Originally posted by Faust@Feb 21 2003, 22:07 ** ...the spread of what she calls "the new white nationalism," a form of racial extremism more dangerous than the Ku Klux Klan because of its veneer of erudition and mastery of the Internet. **
This article confirms the view she takes in her book (which I've read) that the suits-and-ties racism is but a "veneer". That we're nought but slavering Neanderthals, stewing in filth with dreams of blood and Hell, but that we've somehow found a way to make ourselves "appear" educated and intelligent -- like a parrot who has learned a few big words. Their blinkered ignorance will be their undoing.