"White Racial Consciousness" as a Dangerous Progressive Project
DAVID BERNSTEIN | 10.2.2021 10:18 AM
I have come across all sorts of interesting and sometimes distressing things while researching my forthcoming book, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classifications in America.
My conclusion discusses the fact that classifying people by race increases their tendency to identify with that race. I googled around to look for writing on that topic, and I discovered that if one googles "white racial consciousness" you will find many articles praising it and encouraging more of it–the vast majority not from right-wing white nationalists, but from progressive academics, who somehow think this is a good thing that leads to positive social outcomes.
The idea seems to be that if you make people more conscious of their whiteness, they will recognize their white privilege, and this will lead them to be allies in the cause of anti-racism.
I suppose this should not come as a shock. Back in 1991, I saw the late Professor Derrick Bell, a well-known Critical Race Theorist from Harvard Law School, talk about how proud he was that he got his students, including a specific Jewish woman, who did not think of themselves as white, to recognize and become much more conscious of their whiteness.
What strikes me about this literature is how it ignores what seems to me to be the obvious dangers of encouraging a majority of the population to emphasize and internalize a racial identity, and, moreover, to think of themselves as having racial interests opposed to those of the non-white population. I mean, what could go wrong?
It would be one thing to note the obvious dangers of increased ethnonationalism, racial conflict, and so on, and explain why the author believes the risk-reward ratio is favorable. But the literature I came across (which admittedly is not comprehensive), the possibility that this could backfire is simply ignored.
L:
Agree that trying to promote white racial consciousness is a bad idea -- in fact, not just idiotic but straight-up racist. On the other hand, so-called "ethnonationalism" is largely a prog/Woke bogey-man, used to mischaracterize the universal human impulse to resist too-rapid cultural change, as seen at all levels, including back yard nimby-ism.
Me:
Wasn’t Nazism uber ethnonationalism?
L:
I suppose, but not all ethnonationalism is nazism.
Me:
Yeah, but is it an answer to “what could go wrong?”?
L:
Okay, sure -- but the linked article said the answer was simply "ethnonationalism", and identified that as simply opposition to cultural change (e.g., non-English-speaking immigrants, etc.). Such opposition might be debatable in itself, but it's not nazism and not particularly uber-.
Me:
But isn’t it, ethnonationalism, if I understand it,
Wiki: “Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity.”
inherently problematic.
As someone passionately wrote to me:
“As if 2000 years of persecution as The Other wasn’t enough of an empirical test, didn’t the Nazis settle the issue ? They people who lost their civil rights, their citizenship, their professions, their property and their lives, forced to wear yellow stars,
to change their names, to live in ghettoes, stuffed into gas chambers, shot or deliberately worked to death or otherwise murdered were not ‘white’. “
What virtue in these days of multi racial, ethnic, cultural populations, in making a nation’s being or meaning coincident with a particular ethnicity? What’s an argument for it given all these multis, as opposed to understanding a nation by its history such as it is and liberal principles now animating it, ie rights and roots?
L:
First, one answer to the "2000 years of persecution as The Other" was the establishment of Israel, a state defined in terms of ethnicity.
Second, you can if necessary make a new ethnicity out of a nation's history and principles, as in the American "melting pot" as opposed to a multicultural "mosaic".
And third, my argument is really over the issue of too-rapid cultural change, and the use of a label like "ethnonationalism" to smear people resisting such change as crypto-nazis and such.
Me:
I think the creation of Israel, a special case, is an exception that proves a rule. That Jews suffered historically culminating in the Holocaust from the worst kind of ethnonationalism makes her existence and law of return a tragedy-borne necessity.
I agree with you second observation to a point though I frame it differently. As an institutional, public, state, de jure matter, I prefer the idea and image of the melting pot over the idea of a multi cultural society. But this raises the distinction between between public and private.
I like the idea of a pluralistic society enriched by the variety of traditions and cultures within it expressing themselves but one that at the same time is not only publicly colourblind but also blind to all ethnic and racial differences save where discrete injustices need sunsetting remedies. We probably differ on the temporary need for affirmative action in a variety of settings in the later 60s in the US, but it’s an example.
And a further point here, if we have a predominant national identity, say American or Canadian or whatever, then doesn’t that remedy the ethnonational concern by subsumption? Then we have nationalism rather than ethnonationalism.
The springboard for all this was the concern with the danger of promoting white consciousness. Clearer thinking on my part—not yours, yours is clear enough—is helped by my keeping in mind the differences between race and ethnic consciousness as such on one hand and the the idea of ethnonationalism on the other.
People feeling unmoored by rapid change and reacting to it shouldn’t be called names unless they act in such ways so as to deserve being labeled so. Words like racist, fascist, and Nazi, others too, have lost nearly all their meaning in typical discourse due to their fatuous overuse.
L:
Okay, thanks.
I agree with your last paragraph entirely.
I agree with the danger of promoting white consciousness.
I agree about the preference for "melting pot" over multi-culti, while at the same time generally approving of a pluralistic society. But, not all cultures are equal and some import values inconsistent with basic values of the receiving society -- an obvious and legitimate reason for resisting changes brought about by such immigration.
I agree that Israel is a special case, but disagree that it "proves the rule". It simply exemplified to a higher degree than others the security and identity provided by any ethnically defined state, and shows why people of any sort resist change especially that threatens to undermine their culture.
I agree with subsuming "ethnonationalism' under "nationalism", and getting rid of the former altogether.
