In March of 2008, Pat Buchanan posted "A Brief for Whitey" in his blog at the Patrick J. Buchanan official website. Always outspoken about his (euphemistically-termed) conservative views concerning African-Americans, women, queers, immigrants, and all other non-white non-men, in "Brief" Buchanan focuses his indignation against African-Americans as he enumerates the various "convictions, grievances and demands" the "Silent Majority" of white America holds against the black community. While his comparison of then presidential-candidate Barack Obama's suggestion for an honest discussion of race to a "shakedown" run by "black hustlers" seems a bold display of unapologetic racism, one may find it easy to imagine that Buchanan's vitriolic spew represents little more than the ravings of a backwards and anachronistic dinosaur. When Buchanan argues that "America has been the best country on earth for black folks," we may twinge with distaste at his gross neglect of the Middle Passage and the centuries of atrocities that followed, but nonetheless we dismiss his words as ineffectual and decaying in an Affirmative Action world. As he concocts rape statistics and worries for the safety of the white woman from the lascivious urges of the black man, we may imagine Buchanan a mere crackpot, behind-the-times--certainly not representative of the modern American framework of racial discourse. But Buchanan possesses an audience, and they are not the marginal group of recognizable bigots that we'd like to imagine. Currently, the hit counter on his website posting of "A Brief for Whitey" sits at 173,927 views (with a 4.27 out of 5 star rating, nonetheless). This count represents only a small portion of Buchanan's audience, as the essay's publication in numerous and widely-read online conservative journals, even its discussion in the Forum section of Playboy, garnered Brief further attention.
But for a moment let's forget Buchanan's readers. Let's forget his fan base. Chances are you're not a member. You're not a racist or a sexist: you recycle regularly, drive a hybrid, have a few degrees. In that case, Buchanan's views don't fit within your worldview--do they?
Regardless of the vision of a "diversified" America that so many politically-sensitive liberal progressives embrace, regardless of the narrative of a unified nation that has moved beyond the ravings of a few lingering bigots, Buchanan's bold words prove a condensed manifestation of a symbolic narrative that reflects not merely the madness of a few hateful old men but rather the foundations of American cultural identity. Although many find it appalling when Buchanan claims that slavery provided "black folks" with the gifts of community, Christianity, and capitalism, these shocking words in fact reflect basic building blocks that enable the very production and proliferation of race in America. When Buchanan names white America as the benevolent savior of "black folks" in Africa, he calls upon an insidiously naturalized logic of racial binary that constitutes the politically opposite identities of 'white' and 'black.' This logic sets up a binary of domination in which whiteness signifies a common community representative of civility and American identity, while blackness describes the opposite type of people from the opposite side of the world: savage, mysterious, dark. When Buchanan labels African-Americans as the exploiters of welfare and Section 8 housing and in the next breath demands African-American gratitude for the white community's valiant completion of the White Man's Burden, he indulges in the fantasy of American Moral Purity, a place where white families have tolerated--nay, even aided--the exploitative Others who nonetheless continue demonstrate an insatiable appetite for undeserved goods. This moral fantasy has a reputation of historically justifying quite a bit of violence.
Among the underserved goods these black folks seek, Buchanan warns us, remains unbridled sex. Racial purity emerges inevitably entangled in sex, and as Buchanan charts the rise in illegitimacy among African-American babies, he reminds his readers of the inherent sexual turpitude of these monolithic black folk. When he warns his audience that "black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse," refers to the "hoaxes" that certain rape-crying black women enact against innocent white men, and finally laments that the "epidemic" of black sexual assaults against white women remain unsung, his accusations echo the battle cries of the lynch mobs of the Reconstruction-era South as they murdered their "rapist" victims in the name of white purity. Conversely, the white rapes of black women go unpunished under the assumption that the victims innate promiscuity disallowed the possibility of her refusal. Yet while the black rapist, the chaste white woman, the jezebel negress, and the heroic white man appear in obvious and condensed driving symbols behind the explicit narratives of white masculine dominance demonstrated by lynch mob logic and Buchanan's white demands for black gratitude, the characters in this drama don't remain locked in the corners of the past or the minds of extremists. Rather, they exist in our every day world, populating an invisible ideology of white masculine supremacy that constitutes the dominant frameworks of American race and gender as it remains necessarily hidden behind a naturalized veil.
White supremacy silences other narratives as it monopolizes the position of the dominant cultural mythology. Those great white "Founding Fathers" don't populate our mythology of American heroism based upon their singular merit; women, queers, and people of color do not remain hidden because of their natural inferiority. In order to drop the veil of "natural truth" which hides the face of white supremacy, we must reveal the narrative as just that: a narrative, a story, a perspective that comes from a one particular position. Furthermore, we must recognize the validity and right-to-life of other non-white-male ontologies--and this, at times, will be difficult for even the most progressive. The goal, as Jaqui Alexander suggests, remains to engage in conversation without domination, criticism without colonialism. White supremacy occupies only a position in a power structure of oppression that occurs at the site of difference. The dismantlement of this structure cannot occur by the mere displacement of white masculine supremacy with supremacy of some other sort. The goal does not reside in proving one narrative more "true" than the rest. Rather, the deconstruction of the "truth" to reveal its fictional nature proves at least one necessary step to dismantling the oppressive monopoly the narrative of white supremacy holds over a story's right to count.
But for a moment let's forget Buchanan's readers. Let's forget his fan base. Chances are you're not a member. You're not a racist or a sexist: you recycle regularly, drive a hybrid, have a few degrees. In that case, Buchanan's views don't fit within your worldview--do they?
Regardless of the vision of a "diversified" America that so many politically-sensitive liberal progressives embrace, regardless of the narrative of a unified nation that has moved beyond the ravings of a few lingering bigots, Buchanan's bold words prove a condensed manifestation of a symbolic narrative that reflects not merely the madness of a few hateful old men but rather the foundations of American cultural identity. Although many find it appalling when Buchanan claims that slavery provided "black folks" with the gifts of community, Christianity, and capitalism, these shocking words in fact reflect basic building blocks that enable the very production and proliferation of race in America. When Buchanan names white America as the benevolent savior of "black folks" in Africa, he calls upon an insidiously naturalized logic of racial binary that constitutes the politically opposite identities of 'white' and 'black.' This logic sets up a binary of domination in which whiteness signifies a common community representative of civility and American identity, while blackness describes the opposite type of people from the opposite side of the world: savage, mysterious, dark. When Buchanan labels African-Americans as the exploiters of welfare and Section 8 housing and in the next breath demands African-American gratitude for the white community's valiant completion of the White Man's Burden, he indulges in the fantasy of American Moral Purity, a place where white families have tolerated--nay, even aided--the exploitative Others who nonetheless continue demonstrate an insatiable appetite for undeserved goods. This moral fantasy has a reputation of historically justifying quite a bit of violence.
Among the underserved goods these black folks seek, Buchanan warns us, remains unbridled sex. Racial purity emerges inevitably entangled in sex, and as Buchanan charts the rise in illegitimacy among African-American babies, he reminds his readers of the inherent sexual turpitude of these monolithic black folk. When he warns his audience that "black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse," refers to the "hoaxes" that certain rape-crying black women enact against innocent white men, and finally laments that the "epidemic" of black sexual assaults against white women remain unsung, his accusations echo the battle cries of the lynch mobs of the Reconstruction-era South as they murdered their "rapist" victims in the name of white purity. Conversely, the white rapes of black women go unpunished under the assumption that the victims innate promiscuity disallowed the possibility of her refusal. Yet while the black rapist, the chaste white woman, the jezebel negress, and the heroic white man appear in obvious and condensed driving symbols behind the explicit narratives of white masculine dominance demonstrated by lynch mob logic and Buchanan's white demands for black gratitude, the characters in this drama don't remain locked in the corners of the past or the minds of extremists. Rather, they exist in our every day world, populating an invisible ideology of white masculine supremacy that constitutes the dominant frameworks of American race and gender as it remains necessarily hidden behind a naturalized veil.
White supremacy silences other narratives as it monopolizes the position of the dominant cultural mythology. Those great white "Founding Fathers" don't populate our mythology of American heroism based upon their singular merit; women, queers, and people of color do not remain hidden because of their natural inferiority. In order to drop the veil of "natural truth" which hides the face of white supremacy, we must reveal the narrative as just that: a narrative, a story, a perspective that comes from a one particular position. Furthermore, we must recognize the validity and right-to-life of other non-white-male ontologies--and this, at times, will be difficult for even the most progressive. The goal, as Jaqui Alexander suggests, remains to engage in conversation without domination, criticism without colonialism. White supremacy occupies only a position in a power structure of oppression that occurs at the site of difference. The dismantlement of this structure cannot occur by the mere displacement of white masculine supremacy with supremacy of some other sort. The goal does not reside in proving one narrative more "true" than the rest. Rather, the deconstruction of the "truth" to reveal its fictional nature proves at least one necessary step to dismantling the oppressive monopoly the narrative of white supremacy holds over a story's right to count.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
jaime:
I know.
gadget:
yup, it's a gloworm! a very very tattered gloworm.