Racism as the New Communism

March 28, 2021 in Anti-Semitism No Comments Tags: antisemitism, Colorado shooter, racism

Those of us with Bircher relatives remember that they saw everything through the lens of communism: whatever went wrong, it must be the fault of communism. They were right to some extent: the communists were making life miserable for a lot of people, and, yes, Alger Hiss was a communist. But most evils were the result of other bad tendencies in human nature.

Racism has become the new communism. A man kills prostitutes: it must be because he is a racist. The serial killer of prostitutes is a recognized type of criminal from Jack the Ripper onward. There is something about the warped sexuality of a few men which makes them murderously angry at prostitutes. Race has nothing to do with it.

Just before Passover a Syrian immigrant drives 25 miles to a supermarket that advertises its Kosher department and murders the people from the Jewish neighborhood who are shopping for Passover. The media cannot fathom a motive because there is no racial angle. Antisemitism is the most likely motive, but not a peep has been heard from the media about that possibility, because it does not fit the obsession with racism that dominates newsrooms.

European countries are discovering that they can have a Jewish minority or a Muslim minority; they cannot have both and have social peace, and there are more Muslim voters than Jewish. The United States may discover the same painful truth.

TJ, UVA, and Historical Memory

November 28, 2015 in Uncategorized 2 Comments Tags: racism, Sally Hemings, slavery, Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson

I wonder how the University of Virginia, where I did my graduate work, is handling the current craze to obliterate the memory of all those, such as Woodrow Wilson, whom activists regard as racists.

What is the University going to do with Thomas Jefferson, slave owner? – one of the “loudest yelpers after liberty” who was also “a driver of Negro slaves” (Samuel Johnson). And not merely slave owner, but one who kept a mulatto mistress, Sally Hemings, his late wife’s half-sister. And one whose expensive tastes led him live far beyond his means, who therefore left an enormous debt, which his slaves (except Sally’s children) had to be sold to pay. But who founded the University, designed its buildings, enshrined religious liberty in the laws of Virginia, declared our independence, and doubled the size of the United States.

Human beings have a strong tendency to want to escape responsibility, and one way is by regarding their governors as flawless persons. Our presidents were all politicians, and had the characteristic flaws of politicians, especially narcissism and a tendency to exploit others. Catholics want to the Pope to be a sinless oracle, so they don’t have to weigh his actions and words, but accept them as the very actions and voice of God. But they are only men, not gods.

When I first visited Monticello, many decades ago, slavery was not even mentioned. Now there is also a tour that describes the life of those whose work supported Jefferson’s career. I think that is the proper approach. Along with memorials to Jefferson, there should be memorials to those mostly nameless slaves whose lives made Jefferson’s work possible. And a reminder that Jefferson’s failure to deal with slavery and put it on the course to extinction led to the worst war that America has ever had, in which brother killed brother.

Jefferson had written

“The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other,” and “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” But he failed to act.

I am no fan of Woodrow Wilson. His policies in Central and Eastern Europe led to untold deaths and suffering that continues to this day. And I suspect that his advocacy of segregation in the United States was connected to his policy in Europe, a policy which encouraged ethnically homogenous states. But he cannot be obliterated from the history of Princeton. Photographs of the blacks who lost their jobs in the federal government and of the refugees his policies created in Europe could be added to his commemorations, to remind students of the complexity and ambiguity of history.

Refugees 1920

Also Princeton students there seem to have lost their sense of irony. They are proposing segregated living halls and programs to protest the legacy of a segregationist.

Father Absence and Failure in School

October 18, 2009 in education, Masculinity, Responsibility, Women in Church 4 Comments Tags: fathers, racism, schools

Patrick Welsh, who teaches in the Washington D.C, school system, has diagnosed the problem of poor academic achievement among black students: Making the Grade Isn’t about Race. It’s About Parents.

“Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”

In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class of 12th-graders who had done horribly on a test I had just given. A kid who seldom came to class — and was constantly distracting other students when he did — shot back: “It’s because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study.”

Another student angrily challenged me: “You ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us.” When I did, not one hand went up.

Educators are worried that black children are doing poorly in school because of unspecified “racism” or low expectations. Welsh demurs:

But focusing on a “racial achievement gap” is too simple; it’s a gap in familial support and involvement, too. Administrators focused solely on race are stigmatizing black students. At the same time, they are encouraging the easy excuse that the kids who are not excelling are victims, as well as the idea that once schools stop being racist and raise expectations, these low achievers will suddenly blossom.

Fathers have to be present in a home for children to succeed in life; the absence of a father makes it very difficult for a child to succeed. A child growing up in a middle-class community in which almost all children have fathers at home will benefit from this environment, even if he lacks a father. But when whole neighborhoods do not have a father in any home, working, disciplining, guiding, the result is inevitable: academic failure, violence, and out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

But what can a government do about this? Some policies hurt the family, but churches are really the only way that men can be taught their responsibilities to be responsible fathers and not simply biological males.

And of course men, especially young men, especially black young men, stay away from church, which they regard as a feminine environment: for women and little children, not for men.

But all the churches, at least the main-line churches, including the Catholic Church, worry about is how to make more space for women in church – when women are already the vast majority of the congregations.