After your talk in Tempe, AZ I approached you and discussed the place of African-Americans in the conservative firmament. My place was as a White working class kid marrying a Black girl 55 years ago and raising a family in AZ as householder of a Black family so that the things that happened to Black people in that period happened more or less to me.
Thank you for your thoughtful response to me.
The truth is, conservatives cannot restrain themselves from drifting back to the racial basis of their claim to ascendency. They seem so steeped in European world hegemony that they took it to be the way the world works. And since this hegemony was based on theories of racial superiority, they keep drifting and in some cases stampeding back to them. James Burnham was quoted by Roger Kimball as saying that newly emerging African nations consisted of cannibalistic tribes and slave-holding nomads (how long ago did Americans hold slaves?). I know Kimball approved of that sentiment – and that’s what it was – by his words and tone and also by his full-throated condemnation of Black authors receiving accolades (this in a radio interview 20 years or so ago I still have on audio tape). Charles Murray is desperate to show us that Blacks cannot possibly rise to the level of Whites (even as Whites cannot rise to the level of Asians).
Is this what conservatism is condemned to be, a holding action of Ol’ Massa weeping over his lost plantation when the Damn Yankees flattened his prosperous farm for just a bit of rebellion? I would love to see a discussion by conservatives, properly goaded by a moderator, on the topic, “Is Conservatism Lost Without a racial basis?”
I’ll try to send this to Jonah Goldberg.
OK. I found an address for him and sent this off, a slight modification of the above.
After your talk in Tempe, AZ I approached you and discussed the place of African-Americans in the conservative firmament. My place was as a White working class kid marrying a Black girl 55 years ago and raising a family in AZ as householder of a Black family so that the things that happened to Black people in that period happened more or less to me.
Thank you for your thoughtful response to me.
The truth is, conservatives cannot restrain themselves from drifting back to the racial basis of their claim to ascendency. They seem so steeped in European world hegemony that they took it to be the way the world works. And since this hegemony was based on theories of racial superiority, they keep drifting and in some cases stampeding back to them. James Burnham was quoted by Roger Kimball as saying that newly emerging African nations consisted of cannibalistic tribes and slave-holding nomads (my wife’s great-grandfather was a slave for 25 years – in Texas, not Mauritania) I know Kimball approved of that sentiment – and that’s what it was – by his words and tone and also by his full-throated condemnation of Black authors receiving accolades (this in a radio interview 20 years or so ago I still have on audio tape). Charles Murray is desperate to show us that Blacks cannot possibly rise to the level of Whites (even as Whites cannot rise to the level of Asians). And this man is truly a serious scholar, though not in genetics.
Is this what conservatism is condemned to be, a holding action of Ol’ Massa weeping over his lost plantation when the Damn Yankees flattened his prosperous farm for just a bit of rebellion? I would love to see a discussion by conservatives, properly goaded by a moderator, on the topic, “Is Conservatism Lost Without a Racial Basis?”