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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25086 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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The founding Fathers were white nationalists. This is nonsensical and extremely online. I hope you are trolling with this take. Segregation ended only 60 years ago.

The founding Fathers were white nationalists.

Worth noting that at least Benjamin Franklin's definition of "White" would have excluded French people, Russians, Swedes, and Bavarians -- quite different from how it would be used today.

Then they shouldn't have imported so many black people. That necessarily precludes ever having a white nation. Also some of them were race mixers and not at all meeting the purity standards of modern white nationalists.

They planned to send all the blacks back to Africa once they were no longer needed. Thomas Jefferson was very explicit about this, as I demonstrated in a reply to Hlynka above. Many of the greatest Americans, from James Madison to Andrew Jackson, and from Daniel Webster to Henry Clay, were members of an organization entirely dedicated to achieving this goal, as, again, I’ve noted in multiple comments in this thread. This effort was a dismal failure, resulting in the deportation of only a few thousand blacks to what became Liberia. So, yes, the importation of a massive population of black slaves was a disaster for this country, and the men responsible should indeed be roundly lambasted for their decision to do so. However, it’s not like it didn’t occur to the smart ones just how big a problem they had on their hands, nor the importance of dealing decisively with that problem at some point. Sadly, their descendants waited far too long and couldn’t execute the dismount.

They planned to send all the blacks back to Africa once they were no longer needed.

Most of them didn't, actually. A few did, hence the ill-fated Liberian venture, but the majority of early slave importers never had a long-term vision for what they'd do with a growing slave population, and the later ones just thought they could keep the system going forever with enough force (hence, the Confederacy).

It's true that many of the founding fathers undertook projects later in life to send Africans back to Africa. But their motives varied. Jefferson believed it was necessary for self preservation - he was terrified of slave revolts - while Madison was one of many slaveowners who came to have moral qualms later in life. I also suspect that they didn't really think their projects were likely, any more than you think your project to segregate America into Whitelandia and Blacklandia is likely. They saw the problem but short of somehow convincing almost all their fellow countrymen to undertake a radical transformation of society, it wasn't going to happen.

The founding Fathers were white nationalists.

I recognize that this is a one of the woke left's favorite talking points/rhetorical bludgeons to wield against patriotic Americans, but it simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The reason that nonsense like the 1619 Project has largely failed to catch on anywhere outside the wokest of woke enclaves is that the plain text of "We hold these truths as self-evident..." is right there for all to read.

Let’s look at some of the other things Thomas Jefferson wrote about race:

In his Notes on the State of Virginia:

The first difference which strikes us is that of color. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less suffusions of color in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favor of the whites, declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the orangutan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of color, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. Perhaps too a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late ingenious experimentalist has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part with more of it. They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labor through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in labor. An animal whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. — Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination…

… I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications. Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them? This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these, embarrassed by the question `What further is to be done with them?’ Join themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice only. Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master. But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.

It would be easy for me to dig up plenty of other quotes not only from Jefferson, but also from Madison - who, remember, was the two-time president of the American Colonization Society, an organization solely and explicitly dedicated to achieving the mass deportation of blacks back to Africa - and from Franklin, and John Dickinson, and Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln, about their explicit denial of racial equality and about their desire for the entirety of the American continents (North and South!) to be populated exclusively by white people. In Jefferson’s case, he even specified that they should all be Anglo-Saxon.

The sad thing, though, is that you purport to be a Real American Patriot, yet you don’t seem to want to hear what the Founding Fathers said outside of the one or two documents they authored that you agree with. Because in your heart of hearts, you are a bleeding-heart liberal, and you truly believe, in full agreement with the left, that racism and white supremacy are the most evil things in history. And since you don’t want to believe that the Founders were evil, you need to believe that actually they were all anti-racists, it’s right there in the Declaration, la la la la la I can’t hear you when you quote all the other stuff they said and talk about the way they actually lived their lives.

If you were to really deal with the totality of the truth about these men, you would either have to abandon them or abandon your other beliefs. And since you can’t imagine any third position other than “the Founders were racist, and that makes them evil and this country illegitimate” and “the Founders were not racist, which is the reason this country isn’t evil or illegitimate” you’re forced to just lie and obfuscate.

But there is, in fact, a third option. “The Founders were white supremacists, and that’s totally fine, and white supremacy was a legitimate goal and it doesn’t reflect negatively on the men who founded this country, or any other colonial outpost of white/Western civilization.” It’s the position I’ve been thumping since I got here, and you keep telling me that I’m the unpatriotic anti-Western America-hater, when I’m the one here trying to rescue and rehabilitate the Founders for who they actually were and what they actually said that they wanted.

If you were to really deal with the totality of the truth about these men, you would either have to abandon them or abandon your other beliefs. And since you can’t imagine any third position other than “the Founders were racist, and that makes them evil and this country illegitimate” and “the Founders were not racist, which is the reason this country isn’t evil or illegitimate” you’re forced to just lie and obfuscate.

I couldn't agree more here. Their world view is basically if the 1619 project was DR3. The funny thing is that the 1619 project is actually a more realistic view of US history because at least they acknowledge that the US and Europeans did often treat non-whites very poorly and that those actions were every popular at the time. From the responses below, I kept asking him who the real racists were that the real Patriotic Americans were fighting against in a quest for equality in the 1960's and apparently like today it was only the Democrats and white progressives:

You ask me who were the people on the opposite side of the CRA debate, and my reply is the same people who are supporting segregation today, namely college-educated white democrats. The specific terminology they use to justify their beliefs might change, but the substance of those beliefs (racial segregation, mob justice, and various flavors of Marxist nonsense) hasn't.

I don't think there are any fundamental challenges in 'important person believes very intelligent correct thing A and very dumb incorrect thing B'? The world we live in is incredibly complicated, and in an individual's attempts to comprehend it they can simultaneously attain great insight and leadership in one area while being uninterestingly incorrect or simply insane in another area. Every person alive 1k years ago held beliefs that are (correctly) deemed patently ridiculous and immoral. And that isn't just culture-war-related beliefs. Beliefs like 'the way to treat diseases is to apply herbs that don't work and pray' or 'we should kill members of other Christian sects because they are corrupting our souls'. Plenty of beliefs both people here and normies have will be (correctly) judged in the same way in the future.

It might clash with some desire to worship the whole person of a leader, but that's more a personal tendency than it is an intractable problem.

The problem is that progressives really dislike racism and hurting, or doing things that sorta look like hurting, the downtrodden, and that 'the founders were nazis' is sort of like that, not that 'the founders or nazis' is an intractable problem for a smart liberal.

They literally restricted immigration to white people and allowed slavery. This is also there for all to read. More recently, were George Wallace and Strom Thurmond members of the woke left? Are you denying that conservative whites, especially in the South, were deeply racist until very recently? David Duke almost won in Louisiana in the 1980s!

David Duke almost won because his opponent was literally a criminal who coined the phrase "vote for the crook" which has since caught on in the francophone world.

First off you seem to be conflating immigration with naturalization/citizenship. The US didn't start restricting immigration at federal level a until 1866, prior to that our borders had basically been open with anyone who could afford the boat ride welcome to settle. What was regulated was who could vote or run for office, the requirement being that you had to own property within the states and been a resident for a minimum of 5 years. Slaves obviously weren't going to be owning property, so they were out, which is where the old "wealthy white landowner" line comes from. However, the "white" part is complicated by the fact that we also see multiple occasions in the northern colonies of free blacks successfully asserting their "white" status in court by dint of being both Christian and (in kind of an inverse of the one-drop rule) being of English/European descent.

Given that most of the immigration laws of the 19th and early 20th century were specifically targeted against "Asians and other non-Christians" I think the annoying Evangelicals have a much stronger case for arguing that the US had been founded as an explicitly Christian nation, than the woke white kids do of claiming that it was founded on white nationalism.

Coming back to the issue of slavery, reading contemporary accounts of the founding it's clear that it was a very contentious topic at the time and one who's can kept getting kicked down the road. It was so contentious in fact that one of the bloodiest wars in recorded history up to that point would be fought over it. The anti-slavery camp won that one.

As for more recent history I'm not "denying that conservative whites are racist" so much as questioning your definition of "conservative". The coalition of business-owners and conservative Christians that originally backed the civil rights act and ultimately defeated segregation was largely Republican and has remained so.

The typical woke retort is to bring up the alleged "southern strategy" but this is just another one of their talking points/bludgeons that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Contra popular narratives about the two major parties pulling a switch-a-roo in the 60s as a result of the CRA, it's not until the mid to late nineties that the south becomes reliably republican which is kind of awkward for democratic partisans because it suggests that as the South became less racist, they also became less inclined to vote for the party of Woodrow Wilson and George Wallace.

You didn't respond to anything I asked you. This is just a rambling about things that apparently annoy you.

Were George Wallace and Strom Thurmond members of the woke left? Are you denying that conservative whites, especially in the South, were deeply racist until very recently? David Duke almost won in Louisiana in the 1980s.

Who were these people in the Jim Crow South voting for it? Did the woke left travel back in time and vote in those elections or did every Southern state except Texas in 1968 vote for Republicans or a segregationist after the CRA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_United_States_presidential_election

The coalition of business-owners and conservative Christians that originally backed the civil rights act and ultimately defeated segregation was largely Republican and has remained so

Were the people on the opposite side of this debate? The woke left? Were the woke left the ones beating black protesters here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches#%22Bloody_Sunday%22_events

You didn't respond to anything I asked you.

I did actually.

You claimed that founding fathers restricted immigration and I pointed out that this was false.

You claimed that founding fathers allowed slavery and I replied the issue was a bit more complicated than that.

You ask me who were the people on the opposite side of the CRA debate, and my reply is the same people who are supporting segregation today, namely college-educated white democrats. The specific terminology they use to justify their beliefs might change, but the substance of those beliefs (racial segregation, mob justice, and various flavors of Marxist nonsense) hasn't.

The founding fathers never intended for this country to be populated with majority non-whites. This isn't debatable.

You claimed that founding fathers allowed slavery and I replied the issue was a bit more complicated than that.

How was it more complicated? They allowed it. Everything is complicated so that is a ridiculous "argument".

You ask me who were the people on the opposite side of the CRA debate, and my reply is the same people who are supporting segregation today

Wait so the woke left and Marxists were running the Jim Crow South? You are delusional. Today I learned that George Wallace was the same as the college educated democrats today just the "terms" are different.

...and there it is, the agenda you were trying slip by under the mask.

You ask how is it more complicated? My answer is for the same reason it's rude and/or to ask anti-natalists why they're posting manifestos on the internet instead of huffing nitrogen or overdosing on heroine. Ditto pointing out how Joe Biden and the people who vote for him are unusually supportive of murdering baby both in the abstract through support of abortion and in the particular through financial support for Hamas.

You ask if woke Marxists were running the Jim crow south? My answer is that this is a trick question. Would the folks running the Jim crow south have called themselves "woke Marxists" at the time? No of course not. Were they the same sort of people (and in some cases literally the same people) who identify as "woke Marxists" today? Yes, absolutely. The Black Bloc and the KKK are the same picture with a minor palette swap.

So just so I'm understanding this correctly, the KKK, George Wallace, and David Duke are/were essentially woke leftists and Marxists? And the people running the Jim Crow South and supporting the KKK were more or less motivated by the same ideology as The Black Bloc and Antifa? Is this what you are saying?

More comments

Were the people on the opposite side of this debate? The woke left? Were the woke left the ones beating black protesters here

You're asking if the people who wanted segregation back then are different from the same as people who want segregation now? Why would an affirmative answer be in any way surprising?

He thinks they are the same

You ask me who were the people on the opposite side of the CRA debate, and my reply is the same people who are supporting segregation today, namely college-educated white democrats. The specific terminology they use to justify their beliefs might change, but the substance of those beliefs (racial segregation, mob justice, and various flavors of Marxist nonsense) hasn't.

Sorry, I switcharood the negations in my brain somewhere along the line of writing that sentence. Yes, it seems to make sense to me that people who want segregation now will have the same ideology as the people who wanted segregation back then.

So the "woke" left today full of non-white people has the same ideology as the people running the Jim Crow South?

More comments

They are doing a giga DR3 and implying the American Right and Red Tribe were apparently never racist. I'm just trying to get them to admit that's what they are doing.

they also became less inclined to vote for the party of Woodrow Wilson and George Wallace.

I know this is kinda tangential to your point, but George Wallace found Jesus, had a change of heart on race issues, and managed to talk the NAACP into endorsing his run for Alabama governor in the 80's. Kind of a microcosm of the south's racial progress.

I knew that he had a "come to Jesus moment" later in life and had approached both John Lewis and Vivian Jones asking for forgiveness but I did not know that the NAACP had endorsed his final run for governor. TIL.

Edit: Also goes to support my repeated contention that history/reality is under no obligation to conform to expectations.

If you think they were meaningfully similar to the modern white nationalists, they were also commies and ancaps and monarchists all at the same time.

But generally if you talk to them, they do reason through things similar to the worst sorts of leftists. I generally get bored with them and start using the arguments I learned here to argue for them.

Was there a single one who thought whites and blacks could live next to each other as equals? I'm not aware of a single one. On the other hand, you had many who thought them to be naturally suited for slavery, and even if they opposed slavery, were willing to compromise on it and found having a united nation more important than outlawing race based slavery. I think it's pretty obvious they didn't care very much about the well being of blacks and found them to be inferior both biologically and spiritually.

But I agree using their political beliefs and mapping it onto today's is a pointless because they lived in a very different world. They were much closer to the Thirty Years' War than our own time. But OP seems to think that they were concerned with racial equality which is frankly absurd. They would have closer views on race to white nationalists than they would OP. But they would be very different from them as well. Nationalism in Europe was just barley getting started. It was a very long time ago.

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