White without Apology

While doing my weekly shopping at the Jewel-Osco, I overheard a very unusual conversation. It was between two young baggers who were talking about an article one of them had read regarding President Lincoln. Both men happened to be black. One of them informed the other that President Lincoln cared nothing about blacks and was actually a racist. I was stunned. I wanted to interject a million things to their discussion but I didn’t. Instead, I silently watched the checker ring up my order. The incident immediately brought to mind the old commercial from the seventies where tears run down the eye of an Indian brave as he paddles across a river filled with pollutants. I felt like that Indian as I listened to President Lincoln, the man who freed the slaves, badmouthed by a couple of assistants in a grocery store.

This was the same Lincoln who, during a triumphant walk through Richmond, told a group of bowing slaves to get up because the only king they should bow to was Jesus Christ. I wanted to explain to the clerks that men should be judged by the standards of the days in which they live. Some of Lincoln’s opinions may seem outlandish today, but during the 1860’s he was one of the most enlightened men on the continent. By the standards of the nineteenth century, black Americans had no better friend than Abraham Lincoln.

Race is the biggest taboo issue in America today. Almost everyone acknowledges this but acknowledgement does not make our dialogues any smoother. I discovered this for myself the other day after I wrote a column about rap music. It was a favorable elaboration upon one wrote for City-Journal by John McWhorter. Based on my observations of urban youth, I supported McWhorter’s claim that rap music keeps blacks down through its celebration of pointless rebellion, violence, and nihilism. I received many irate responses. One of them turned into a ten email debate with a reader. By the end of the discussion, we knew a great deal about one another and, vicariously, quite a bit about discussing race in America.

Our little dispute could well have been a microcosm of the nation as a whole. It is unfortunate that I, and numerous other Caucasians, do not always emphatically state our views when asked. Yet, there are major hazards to beware of when addressing race. You never know what the reaction of the person you’re speaking to may be and no one wants to get fired over a conversation.

I could tell that the young man at the other end of the server was not used to dealing with white people like me. He only knows whites who defer to him and agree when he says that he has been wronged. He has been conditioned into thinking that all whites will apologize for their ancestry. I, absolutely, and under no circumstance, will ever apologize for my ancestors. In fact, thank G-d for my ancestors! I wish there were more Americans like them.

He began our exchange by telling me that I shouldn’t be writing about rap music at all as I don’t know anything about it. He also believes that there is nothing wrong with it and that it doesn’t harm anyone. I countered by stating that, while it’s true that I don’t know all the names of the famous rappers, I have unfortunately been subjected to a ton of it and know firsthand adolescents who emulate the words and actions of their favorite stars.

The dialogue went downhill from there (if that’s possible). There was practically no common ground between us, yet I think that is how it should be. White Americans, if they honestly responded to the claims of black separatists and black powerites, would hear little with which to agree.

Most Caucasian Americans are hard-working and middle class. There are very few like Bill Gates or Paul Allen. Most of us make a decent wage and are content with it. We oppress no one. No ancestors of mine were in the United States before 1910, but, even if they were, it would be superfluous as I personally have committed no wrongs to anyone. I told the young man that white guilt is one of the most pernicious influences within our society. Although this white guilt has not hurt our economic success, it has made many whites regard themselves as being morally inferior to the rest of the population.

He made the point that “institutional racism” is the reason many blacks “have not made it.” I told him there was no such thing. It is a creation of the university Marxists who have substituted “African-Americans, Hispanics, women and gays” for the word “proletariat.” The entire concept of “oppressed” and “oppression” is merely idiotic Marxist claptrap. It’s a product of juvenile leftists and should be disregarded. Besides, if there were such a thing as institutional racism no blacks would have ever made it. They’re be no Cedric the Entertainer’s, Deion Sanders’, Tiger Woods’ or Halle Berry’s. If there were any truth in the flawed rubric of institutional racism, all the aforementioned successful blacks would have been poor sharecroppers rather than cultural icons.

We, of course, also clashed on affirmative action. He regarded it as a prerequisite for black success. He said, “The Supreme Court finally got it right.” I, on the other hand, think, “The Supreme Court wrote more legislation.” Clearly, affirmative action is one of the reasons blacks have not been more successful since 1970. You can’t put an average student in Cal Tech and expect them to flourish. They fail and the race hustlers could care less how the experience impedes their future development. Even more grievous, is that affirmative action gives racism the imprimatur of the state. A federal stamp of approval compounds its evil.

Towards the end of our exchange, the reader admitted that he felt blacks should not have to work more than one job and do overtime to get ahead in life. Their route should be more direct. He felt long hours were for immigrants and that “we’ve already played that game.” He argued that blacks have put their blood and sweat into this country’s infrastructure and deserve reparation for their effort.

Honestly, I have no respect for this argument whatsoever. The request for reparations could not be less valid. Blacks in America already have the world’s greatest reparation: United States citizenship. Every single one of the reader’s racial cousins in Africa, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, would kill to be in his shoes. They would stow away in a mouse trap just to get here and have an opportunity to be Americans. Most of them fantasize about an existence without murderous kleptomaniac dictators and having children who are free from disease. America is opportunity and blacks are no different from whites in that we all should be forever thankful that we somehow got to these shores.

I discovered that I profited greatly from this reader. Christopher Hitchens, in his fascinating book, Letters to a Young Contrarian, informs us that the great thing about argumentation is that both sides refine and modify their positions which doing it. I hold this to be true and my exchange with the young man is evidence of it.

In this particular argument, I realized something that I never had before. Clearly, it is conservatives like me who care about poor blacks (most, in fact, are middle class) as opposed to the pseudo-liberals. We offer them the best route for advancement. We want to challenge them and make them stronger. We resist the desire to infantilize them. By treating them like adults and inculcating responsibility through achievement, they will prosper just as every other group of Americans have before them.

My opponent, perhaps unconsciously, wants them to stay poor so he can continue to berate America and critique our way of life. Were their lot to suddenly improve, he’d have no positions and no identity.

Before this conversation, I never realized just how much that I am rooting for poor black folks. I want them to be as productive as everyone else and to “make it” in America. I want no less for them than I do for myself. It would please me to no end if all our citizens were grateful for what they have. No white people get anything out of a major percentage of the population being resentful and angry.

Racial harmony can only be achieved if we treat one another as individuals and not as members of fictitious classes. If you want to be oppressed you’ll find a way to be oppressed, and such a condition damages society as a whole. Racism is wrong in any of its manifestations. We will never all get along if we continue to pretend that some of us, due to the melanin content in our skin, are better than others. Period.

To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Bernard at bchapafl@hotmail.com .

You forgot the rest of the Juneteenth proclamation, as did the link you posted. The full Juneteenth proclamation reads as follows (the part you missed is in bold):

Headquarters, District of Texas
Galveston, Texas, June 19, 1865
General Orders, No. 3.
The people are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, becomes that between employer and hired labor. -- The Freedmen are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere. By order of Major General Granger
(Signed,) F. W. Emery, Maj. & A.A.G.

As reported in The Galveston Daily News, June 21, 1865.

Lincoln opposed expansion of slavery, so war was the only option the slave power saw to maintain their slave empire.

False. The expansion argument in the American territories was settled in 1861 when the south voluntarily reliquished their claims to those lands. Had this truly been Lincoln's "bedrock" position as you so frequently claim, he had already attained it without lifting a finger due to secession. Yet Lincoln was obviously not content with that and instead pursued war anyway. He pursued it because it was necessary for him to collect the revenues. Without it his tariff scheme, the same scheme that a few weeks earlier he had called the most important issue facing Congress, wouldn't work.

It was just as Lincoln told his friend Hawkins Taylor when the latter visited Springfield in December 1860 - the tariff, more than any other issue, was what got him into the White House and it was an issue that he would remain firm on.

"He fully agreed with me that to the Tariff Whig element of Penn was he most indebted (and he will not betray it). Towards Penn he feels most greatful and particularly &c towards Cameron who did not send a Packed delegation to Chicago as some others did" - Hawkins Taylor, record of his meeting with Lincoln, December 21, 1860 (emphasis contained in the original)

Lincoln, Lee, Grant, Davis; they were more alike than different

I would not argue with that at all. I would venture that today we are more polarized generally politically and socially and culturally. Kinda scary isn't it? If reasonable men bound by duty and honour etc found fit to fight a war then, how are we to interpret today where we are obviously more fragmented. All we need are some key issues to come to a boil. We lack the geographic division largely although the conservative (as in the old fashioned status quo or reversion mindset) is still more Southern than elsewhere. Simple musing. I'm putting my money on gun rights and abortion as powder keg issues one day. We must teach our children to be vigilant.

"The Freedmen are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere. By order of Major General Granger "

So what do you want, LBJ's the GREAT SOCIETY? It was in-fact reconstruction. Where were they to go? Look at Iraq now and picture Texas in June of 1865.

You impose such a double standard that your credibility to anyone who understands the history makes you a total fool. You insist that Lincon be Hubert Humphery or he is evil while you worship a slaver like Davis. That is revisionist nonsense and rustbucket, you are guilty.

"With deportation, even to a limited extent, enhanced wages to white labor is mathematically certain. Labor is like any other commodity in the market---increase the demand for it, and you increase the price of it. Reduce the supply of black labor, by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and, by precisely so much, you increase the demand for, and wages of, white labor." - Address to Congress, December 1, 1862

So what kind of wages was Jeff Davis proposing to give to blacks under his iron fist? Was there a demand for white cotton pickers at his plantation?

You, like rustbucket, impose a standard on Lincoln that none of your Confederate heroes could possibly reach, or would even want to. They stood for the opposite.

Lincoln was pragmatic and saw that neither blacks nor whites would adjust either socially or economically to emancipation. 150 years of American history have shown that he was more than correct in that assessment, but he was not alone. Other leaders dating all the way back to Madison also favored Colonization as the preferred method to end slavery while avoiding racial division. Was Madison a “bad guy” too?

Lincoln’s advocating separation of the races via colonization was surely not politically correct by current standards (unless you are a Skin-Head or a Black Panther) but where exactly does that leave him in relation to all the bronze icons in Richmond that you worship so deeply who fought to protect slavery?

My, my. Touchy aren't we. I simply pointed out that you had not posted the entire pronouncement. Let me understand your logic here. You posted the partial pronouncement; I posted the full pronouncement. Yet I am the revisionist?

LOL on the Hubert Humphrey / Abraham Lincoln connection. What an insult to Lincoln, and one I wouldn't have thought of.

I hope you don't mind if I poke a few more holes in your worldview. FYI, the Federal Provost Marshal in Galveston in June 1865 threw a bunch of the slaves in jail so that he could keep them for work he wanted done. Reported in the Galveston paper.

Doesn't quite fit your view of history? My apologies.

Aw, come on GOP. How about quotes in context?

"I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization. And yet I wish to say there is an objection urged against free colored persons remaining in the country, which is largely imaginary, if not sometimes malicious.

"It is insisted that their presence would injure, and displace white labor and white laborers. If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity. Is it true, then, that colored people can displace any more white labor, by being free, than by remaining slaves? If they stay in their old places, they jostle no white laborers; if they leave their old places, they leave them open to white laborers. Logically, there is neither more nor less of it. Emancipation, even without deportation, would probably enhance the wages of white labor, and, very surely, would not reduce them. Thus, the customary amount of labor would still have to be performed; the freed people would surely not do more than their old proportion of it, and very probably, for a time, would do less, leaving an increased part to white laborers, bringing their labor into greater demand, and, consequently, enhancing the wages of it. With deportation, even to a limited extent, enhanced wages to white labor is mathematically certain. Labor is like any other commodity in the market---increase the demand for it, and you increase the price of it. Reduce the supply of black labor, by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and, by precisely so much, you increase the demand for, and wages of, white labor.

"But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth, and cover the whole land? Are they not already in the land? Will liberation make them any more numerous? Equally distributed among the whites of the whole country, and there would be but one colored to seven whites. Could the one, in any way, greatly disturb the seven? There are many communities now, having more than one free colored person, to seven whites; and this, without any apparent consciousness of evil from it. The District of Columbia, and the States of Maryland and Delaware, are all in this condition. The District has more than one free colored to six whites; and yet, in its frequent petitions to Congress, I believe it has never presented the presence of free colored persons as one of its grievances. But why should emancipation south, send the free people north? People, of any color, seldom run, unless there be something to run from. Heretofore colored people, to some extent, have fled north from bondage; and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freed men, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes,and with people of their own blood and race. This proposition can be trusted on the mutual interests involved. And, in any event, cannot the north decide for itself, whether to receive them."

Taken in context, rather than out of context, the quote is actually an arguement against

forced deportation rather that in favor of it as you claim.

Look at the date of the quote you cited, my friend! It is June, 1865, a couple months after the surrender! Since the EP went into effect in January, 1863, 2-1/2 years ealier, by your logic the Texas slaves were freed at that time, which is clearly no the historical fact. And where, pray, did the alleged "3 million" slaves that were freed between January, 1863 and December, 1865 come from? Brazil? Haiti? They sure as hell didn't come from any Southern state, or the Confederacy would have heard something about it, and at least commented on it (which, if you knew history at all, never happened). So, before you show your immaturity and ignorance by saying my comment (based on historical fact) is "Marxist" (that's projection for you!), I suggest you read even the most basic history text.

Sorry, Walt. My "sophistry" as you put it, is just historical fact. Some slaves had "freed themselves" for many, many years before the War or the EP (it was called runaway). The EP did nothing. That's a fact. Read the damn proclamation yourself if you don't believe me. But your unealthy adoration of Lincoln, to the point of god-worship, blinds you to historical fact. Many, many posters have brought that to your attention over the months that I've been on FR.

Now, what weakened the Confederacy was the following:
(1) lack of materiel and supplies vis-a-vis the North;
(2) great imbalance in number of troops (the North had, relatively speaking, an exhaustible supply;
(3) poor military leadership in the West, where they could not afford to lose any major battles (where the North had incompetents like McClellan, Halleck, Butler and Hooker, to name a few, the South had equally lousy generals like Braxton Bragg and John Bell Hood).

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