Alt-Right
Until
the recent presidential campaign, the Alt-Right was just one more
fringe group unknown to most of us. But the campaign rhetoric of the
President Elect has encouraged these far right wing groups and
brought them to the attention of the general public.
Unlike
more familiar conservatives, the members of the Alt – Right are not
terribly interested in defending the so-called free market, or
reducing the size of the federal government. They are mainly
interested in issues of racial identity. They believe that whites,
what they call the "white race," are superior to all
others. They also believe that this white race is in danger of being
submerged in waves of persons of color, of Jews and other "inferior"
races. They lay claim to a "scientific" theory of race and
dedicate themselves to the preservation of the white race.
Such
a hard-edged position of white racism appears very far from what most
Americans believe. There is no such thing as a biological race. There
is no evidence that groups of people who look different from other
groups of people regularly inherit superior or inferior
characteristics – different competencies, different character
traits, different social relationships.
In
addition, many Americans believe in diversity as an important value.
In 2008 and 2012 Pres. Obama was elected with a convincing majority.
The people who voted for him did not believe in the inborn
superiority of the white race.
And
yet……
It
seems quite clear that the passionate opposition to Pres. Obama by
large sectors of the American electorate has racial overtones. His
black ancestry is not irrelevant to the blind hatred of many
Americans. Many whites, I think, are in some way humiliated by having
a black president. Many white Americans believe that black people are
getting special consideration from the federal government while they
themselves feel unsupported in the midst of economic crises. White
males especially feel abandoned by their government while they have
to lower their standard of living because the good jobs have been
moved outside the country (by Jews?). They believe that they need to
work harder than ever to make a passable living, while women and men
of color are receiving special favors from the government and can
afford to live off welfare and other social programs. In plain
English, white men feel done to. That is not only unfair but it is
more than unfair because they, the white men, deserved better because
they are, after all white men.
The
Alt – Right is unambiguously committed to a belief in the
superiority of white men. A lot of Americans reject that talk about a
white identity and the inferiority of people of color or of women.
But most Americans, perhaps all of us whites, are ambivalent about
race, about superiority and inferiority. Many white Americans –
however you decide who is white and who is not – will surprise
themselves when they find themselves making definitely racist
assumptions.
A
few blogs back I published the newspaper story of the black woman
physician who offered to help out when a passenger on an airplane was
taken ill. The airplane attendants refused to believe that she was a
doctor because she was a black woman. These airplane attendants were
probably very much like you and me, white Americans who rejected
racism but every now and then surprised themselves, and shamed
themselves by discovering that they too in some secret place of their
mind harbored ideas of white superiority.
Most
of us, unlike the Alt – Right, are ashamed of those remnants of
racism we harbor. But we should resist the temptation to think that
the beliefs of the Alt-Right are beyond the pale and that we have
completely emancipated ourselves from this inheritance from America’s
racist history.
We
must forcefully reject the Alt – Right and everyone who refuses to
join that rejection. But we whites must also continue to monitor
closely our own racist impulses and correct ourselves wherever
necessary.
The
white superiority doctrine of the Alt-Right is sick, but most of us
whites are infected by the same virus. We may speak with conviction
about pluralism and diversity in America and how all of us are human
beings and thus the same in important respects. We may undergo
sensitivity trainings and participate in discussions about race. We
should be justly proud of these actions to combat racism. But we need
to remain watchful because we too are affected by the American
disease of racism.
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