New TribeRising?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
"Is white the new black?"
So asks Kelefa Sannehin the
subtitle of "Beyond the Pale," his New Yorker review of several books on
white
America, wherein he concludes we may be witnessing "the slow birth of a
people."
Sanneh is onto something. For after a year of batteringas
"un-American,
" "evil-doers" and racists, and praise from talk-show hosts
and Sarah Palin as "the real Americans," Tea Party America seems to be
taking on
a new and separate identity.
Ethnonationalism -- the recognitionof an
embryonic people that they are different from their neighbors, and the
concomitant drive to live apart -- is, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote
20 years
ago, a more powerful force than any ideology, be it communism, fascism
or
democracy.
Ethnonationalism is the pre-eminent force of the agewe have
entered, the creator and destroyer of empires and nations. Even as
Schlesinger
was writing his "Disuniting of America," Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union
were
disintegrating into 22 new nations, along the lines of ethnicity. In
Dagestan,
Ingushetia, Chechnya, Ossetia and Abkhazia, the process proceeds
apace.
It has happened before -- and here.
In the American
colonies, the evil institution of slavery, followed by a century of
segregation,
created out of the children of captured Africans who had little in
common other
than color a new people, the African-Americans, who went out and voted
24-to-one
for Barack Obama.
In 1754, the 13 colonies consisted of SouthCarolinians, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians and Virginians, all loyal
subjects of
the king.
But after the contemptuous treatment of colonialsoldiers in
the French and Indian War, the Stamp Act, the Townshend duties, the
Boston
Massacre, the Tea Party, the Quartering Act and the Quebec Act, by 1775 a
new
people had been born: the Americans.
In 1770, New York colonistshad
erected a statue of George III in Bowling Green in grateful tribute for
his
repeal of the Townshend taxes. In July 1776, they pulled it down and
melted it
for lead bullets after Washington read his soldiers the Declaration of
Independence portraying George III as another Ivan the Terrible.
"There
is no such thing as a Palestinian people," said Golda Meir. When she
said it,
she may have been right. But as generations have grown up under the
occupation
and two intifadas and a Gaza War, the Palestinians are a people
today.
Adversity and abuse increase the awareness of separateidentity
and accelerate the secession of peoples from each other.
Obama inthe
campaign of 2008 recognized that "out there" in Middle America existed
another
country, far from the one he grew up in, far from the privileged Ivy
League
community to which he belonged.
"You go into some of these smalltowns in
Pennsylvania, and ... the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. ... So
it's not
surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or
antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or
anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Palin
and Tea Partiers now repeat Obama's disparaging line about their
clinging to
Bibles and guns -- with defiant pride.
As others have done in our
multicultural and multiethnic nation, this people is beginning to assert
its
identity, unapologetically.
Sioux gather at Little Bighorn tocelebrate
the massacre of Custer's command. Hawaiian natives demand a new
ethnically based
government -- and receive Obama's blessing. Hispanics march under
Mexican flags
in Los Angeles to demand citizenship for illegal aliens.
NowSoutherners
are proudly commemorating ancestors who fought and fell in the Lost
Cause and
demanding recognition of Confederate History Month. And state governors
are
acceding.
In 2004, when Howard Dean reached out to "guys withConfederate
flags in their pickup trucks," Shelby Steele wrote that this was
"absolutely
verboten. Racial identity is simply forbidden to whites in America"
because of
their history and white guilt.
This, Sanneh suggests, ischanging. The
imputation of racism to Tea Partiers has not intimidated or cowed
them.
When Obama named Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court,there was no
hesitation in blistering her for showing contempt for the rights of
Frank Ricci
and the white firefighters of New Haven, cheated of the promotions they
had won
in competitive exams.
When black Harvard professor Henry LouisGates was
arrested by Cambridge cop James Crowley, most Americans, despite Obama
and media
suggestions of racial profiling, sided with Crowley.
Why are theTea
Partiers not intimidated the way Republicans often are? Why is the
charge of
racism not working?
First, they do not feel the guilt ofcountry-club
Republicans.
Second, they know it to be untrue. While TeaPartiers are
anti-Obama, they are also anti-Pelosi, anti-Martha Coakley and
anti-Charlie
Christ. The coming conflict is not so much racial as it is cultural,
political
and tribal.
Black America seems united. White America is thehouse
divided, for it is in the womb of white America that this new people is
gestating and fighting to be born.
and Sarah Palin as "the real Americans," Tea Party America seems to be
taking on
a new and separate identity.
Ethnonationalism -- the recognitionof an
embryonic people that they are different from their neighbors, and the
concomitant drive to live apart -- is, as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote
20 years
ago, a more powerful force than any ideology, be it communism, fascism
or
democracy.
Ethnonationalism is the pre-eminent force of the agewe have
entered, the creator and destroyer of empires and nations. Even as
Schlesinger
was writing his "Disuniting of America," Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union
were
disintegrating into 22 new nations, along the lines of ethnicity. In
Dagestan,
Ingushetia, Chechnya, Ossetia and Abkhazia, the process proceeds
apace.
It has happened before -- and here.
In the American
colonies, the evil institution of slavery, followed by a century of
segregation,
created out of the children of captured Africans who had little in
common other
than color a new people, the African-Americans, who went out and voted
24-to-one
for Barack Obama.
In 1754, the 13 colonies consisted of SouthCarolinians, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians and Virginians, all loyal
subjects of
the king.
But after the contemptuous treatment of colonialsoldiers in
the French and Indian War, the Stamp Act, the Townshend duties, the
Boston
Massacre, the Tea Party, the Quartering Act and the Quebec Act, by 1775 a
new
people had been born: the Americans.
In 1770, New York colonistshad
erected a statue of George III in Bowling Green in grateful tribute for
his
repeal of the Townshend taxes. In July 1776, they pulled it down and
melted it
for lead bullets after Washington read his soldiers the Declaration of
Independence portraying George III as another Ivan the Terrible.
"There
is no such thing as a Palestinian people," said Golda Meir. When she
said it,
she may have been right. But as generations have grown up under the
occupation
and two intifadas and a Gaza War, the Palestinians are a people
today.
Adversity and abuse increase the awareness of separateidentity
and accelerate the secession of peoples from each other.
Obama inthe
campaign of 2008 recognized that "out there" in Middle America existed
another
country, far from the one he grew up in, far from the privileged Ivy
League
community to which he belonged.
"You go into some of these smalltowns in
Pennsylvania, and ... the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. ... So
it's not
surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or
antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or
anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Palin
and Tea Partiers now repeat Obama's disparaging line about their
clinging to
Bibles and guns -- with defiant pride.
As others have done in our
multicultural and multiethnic nation, this people is beginning to assert
its
identity, unapologetically.
Sioux gather at Little Bighorn tocelebrate
the massacre of Custer's command. Hawaiian natives demand a new
ethnically based
government -- and receive Obama's blessing. Hispanics march under
Mexican flags
in Los Angeles to demand citizenship for illegal aliens.
NowSoutherners
are proudly commemorating ancestors who fought and fell in the Lost
Cause and
demanding recognition of Confederate History Month. And state governors
are
acceding.
In 2004, when Howard Dean reached out to "guys withConfederate
flags in their pickup trucks," Shelby Steele wrote that this was
"absolutely
verboten. Racial identity is simply forbidden to whites in America"
because of
their history and white guilt.
This, Sanneh suggests, ischanging. The
imputation of racism to Tea Partiers has not intimidated or cowed
them.
When Obama named Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court,there was no
hesitation in blistering her for showing contempt for the rights of
Frank Ricci
and the white firefighters of New Haven, cheated of the promotions they
had won
in competitive exams.
When black Harvard professor Henry LouisGates was
arrested by Cambridge cop James Crowley, most Americans, despite Obama
and media
suggestions of racial profiling, sided with Crowley.
Why are theTea
Partiers not intimidated the way Republicans often are? Why is the
charge of
racism not working?
First, they do not feel the guilt ofcountry-club
Republicans.
Second, they know it to be untrue. While TeaPartiers are
anti-Obama, they are also anti-Pelosi, anti-Martha Coakley and
anti-Charlie
Christ. The coming conflict is not so much racial as it is cultural,
political
and tribal.
Black America seems united. White America is thehouse
divided, for it is in the womb of white America that this new people is
gestating and fighting to be born.
Comments
Racism is a white problem; not that of non-whites. The U.S. still practices their Manifest Destiny doctrines as a way of life. Owning what belongs to other cultures and civilizations is what made the Western Civilization viable and drew it out of the third world country to catapult it into the main, dominant, aggressive civilization today.
The Western World forced-assimilation whereby other nations needed to deal with them on its terms and demand through sheer brute force. It's still their ballpark regardless of how well non-whites have assimilated to the mainstream culture and society. The pot is calling the kettle black because the kettle was forced to learn how to be the pot.
Tane
Cutural, political and tribal seems too Akaka and military toxic waste dumps in the Pacific permitting via Article 12....Kaohi