‘Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege’

Affirmative Action,Education,History,Labor,Race,Racism

            

JAMES WEBB is a good guy. So I’ve said for some time—ever since my correspondence with him during the dark days of the Iraq war, when I was THE ONLY antiwar writer on WND, and was cursed and threatened daily for it. Webb, of course, opposed the war. We exchanged friendly emails, which he initiated pursuant to one of many anti-war-on-Iraq columns I had written.

Citing Pat Buchanan, this courageous man has now come out against “government programs to help all ‘people of color'” as “unfair.” Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, Webb argues as follows:

“After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.

Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.

In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. [A point upon which I expand in my new book.] These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived. …

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all “people of color”—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites.”

The clearest example of today’s misguided policies comes from examining the history of the American South. …

At the height of slavery, in 1860, less than 5% of whites in the South owned slaves. The eminent black historian John Hope Franklin wrote that “fully three-fourths of the white people in the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery.”

The Civil War devastated the South, in human and economic terms. And from post-Civil War Reconstruction to the beginning of World War II, the region was a ravaged place, affecting black and white alike.

In 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt created a national commission to study what he termed ‘the long and ironic history of the despoiling of this truly American section.’ At that time, most industries in the South were owned by companies outside the region. Of the South’s 1.8 million sharecroppers, 1.2 million were white (a mirror of the population, which was 71% white). The illiteracy rate was five times that of the North-Central states and more than twice that of New England and the Middle Atlantic (despite the waves of European immigrants then flowing to those regions). The total endowments of all the colleges and universities in the South were less than the endowments of Harvard and Yale alone. The average schoolchild in the South had $25 a year spent on his or her education, compared to $141 for children in New York.

Generations of such deficiencies do not disappear overnight, and they affect the momentum of a culture. In 1974, a National Opinion Research Center (NORC) study of white ethnic groups showed that white Baptists nationwide averaged only 10.7 years of education, a level almost identical to blacks’ average of 10.6 years”…

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4 thoughts on “‘Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege’

  1. John McNeill

    I don’t agree with everything he says in the article, but I respect Jim Webb’s courage in defying liberal orthodoxy. It remains to be seen whether or not he will be able to push for positive change within the Democrat party.

  2. Myron Pauli

    Webb correctly points out the complete absurdity whereby a wealthy child who attended elite private schools all their life is considered “DISADVANTAGED” if their father is a half-Somali, half-French Sorbonne-educated hedge fund operator and their mother is a WASPish academic (due to ethnicity which trumps everything else). A poor white working class “hick” from rural Kentucky government (“public”) schools is counted as “ADVANTAGED”. Many (most??) “blacks” who are promoted upwards via Affirmative Action are mixed-race people from upper-middle-class backgrounds.

    Webb also points out how the South was devastated for 80 years by the good old Lincoln/Civil War/Liberation/Reconstruction that the academic/historian/media elite always celebrate. The alliance of religious fundamentalists and Klanocrats (such as Robert Byrd) who dominated the region not only brutally suppressed blacks but also kept the white majority downtrodden as well.
    Mencken mentions this extensively in his writings.

    Certainly Webb and Congressman Shuler (NC) aren’t economic libertarians but it is healthy to have a few semi-decent Democrats as a counter-balance to such warmongering, big spending, “compassionate conservative” statist Republicans such as Lindsey Graham, McCain, and Dubya. It is why I caution those against unthinking devout worship at the Fox News – Hannity – Limbaugh Church of the Holy Republican.

  3. james huggins

    The above-mentioned historical facts and the conclusions reached were preached to me as a boy by my grandfater,father and uncles. They knew what they were talking about. The situation will not change as America degenerates into a third rate, third world power.

  4. DENNIS

    A few questions: 1. Why is there no mention of Blacks who owned slaves? 2. Why no mention of Black African slavers who sold their people and other tribe’s people into slavery? 3. Why is there no mention of the efforts of Great Britain and United States that ended the trans-ocean slave trade? 4. Why no mention of Islamic slave trade, i.e. ubeed & slave = same thing, that continues today? 5. Why no mention of native American Indian tribes that owned slaves? Ah, but not to worry. Many states are considering POPULAR VOTE election of the PRESIDENT. Forget the Constitution…real democracy will take hold without an Electoral College protector. At that point, I will consider proposing a law that makes SLAVERY legal – BY POPULAR VOTE. First, all those who are violators of minor laws will be put on the auction block, then druggies, etc., etc. THEY WILL BE RETURNED TO PRODUCTIVE SOCIETY! Oh my! I’ve gone over the edge. This madness must stop. It is impossible to totally remedy the injustices of the past and to continue thinking they can be totally remedied is an absurdity. Initiate a meritocracy now.

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