A Reply to Father Tacelli
| AR Articles on White Racial Consciousness |
|---|
| Twelve Years of American Renaissance (Nov. 2002) |
| Race and the American Identity (Dec. 1998) |
| The Morality of Survival (Jul. 1995) |
| Morality and Racial Consciousness (Jan. 1995) |
| More news stories on White Racial Consciousness |
Fr. Tacelli’s critique of the ideas expressed in American Renaissance (see last week’s classic article) is particularly valuable and thought provoking because he writes as a conservative—even a reactionary—rather than as a liberal. Unlike liberals, who refuse to consider the premises of racialism and thereby dismiss it as “hate-mongering,” Fr. Tacelli accepts those premises. In fact, he explicitly states some of the basic tenets of any thoughtful racialism:
That our heritage is “the precious thing we have a duty to hand on.”
That “there is no convincing evidence for this doctrine of [racial] equality; the overwhelming weight of evidence is against it.”
That a preference for “your own kind” is “the most natural thing in the world.”
That “the presence of blacks in sufficient numbers involves the disintegration of a way of life into something they [whites] do not (and really should not) wish to tolerate.”
These four propositions alone amount to a rejection of the vision of multi-racial America shared by liberals and mainstream “conservatives” alike. And yet, Fr. Tacelli then goes on to say that racialism—the perspective that would seem to follow naturally—is “wrong-headed and doomed to failure.” Why?
At the heart of his resistance to “making the ‘white man’ … [our] rallying cry” is the view that racialism can arise only out of a materialist, non-theistic philosophy, and that this philosophy destroys morality. I believe both views are mistaken, but since theological debate is difficult and usually inconclusive, let us for now merely take note of this key objection and return to it later. Fr. Tacelli has other—entirely worldly—concerns that fall short of a complete rejection of racialism, and that bear reflection and reply.
The Question of Animus
Is AR anti-black (or anti-Hispanic, -Asian, -immigrant, etc.)? Insofar as we are being dispossessed by these people, AR certainly devotes a great deal of attention to them. It is impossible to harbor kindly thoughts towards groups that are transforming our nation and have no compunction about displacing us. However, animus towards non-whites simply because they are non-white is wrong and if AR exhibits such animus it is wrong to do so.
A point that has often been made in these pages is that when blacks take advantage of affirmative action or when Mexicans go on welfare, they are behaving normally. They see opportunity and exploit it. They are also squeezing the life out of white America, and it is natural to view this with dread. However, they are only doing what misguided and suicidal white people let them do.
If one returns to the formerly-white neighborhood of one’s childhood and sees the wreck that non-whites have made of it, how can one not feel bitter? Of course, it does no good to “hate” the newcomers, who are only establishing the kind of society that it is their nature and custom to establish. If anyone is to be hated, it is the whites who brought this about in the name of “integration” or “diversity” or “cultural enrichment.” White integrationists and the non-whites they welcome into our midst are a mortal threat, not because they are likely to kill us but because their increasing numbers destroy our habitat, without which we cease to exist as a people.
The problem is that most whites do not see the long-term threat that immigration and multi-racialism pose. The urgency with which racialists oppose it therefore seems to them absurd, perverse, and hateful. Ironically, it is non-whites, who have a vivid racial consciousness of their own and who know very well what the shift in population balance will mean, who most easily grasp a white racialist’s fears.
Our struggle is one of survival. Even if the threat is nothing more than the natural and not-always-hostile expansion of other races into the vacuum left by our own capitulation, there are certain emotions one cannot avoid feeling for those who would displace us. Animus may not be the right one, but affection is impossible.
Hard Doctrine
Part of AR’s purpose is therefore to alert sleepwalking whites to the fate that awaits them. As Fr. Tacelli concedes, the races are not interchangeable. Liberalism insists that they are—at least when it is not claiming that whites are uniquely blameworthy. Part of AR’s task is to refute liberal foolishness about the equivalence of races, and that is one of the purposes of “O Tempora.”
As a school or neighborhood or region turns non-white, whites find it so alien that they must move on. In the case of blacks and Hispanics, differences in average intelligence (and probably in other behavioral traits as well) are an important part of what makes them alien. It is part of why, in the aggregate, they are not like us and will never be like us. Whites must learn to grapple rationally, humanely and honestly with this.
Fr. Tacelli writes that this is “hard doctrine,” and perhaps it is, but do Catholics suppress doctrine just because it is hard? Original sin is hard doctrine. Eternal torment for unbelievers may be the hardest doctrine ever propounded. Does the Church not enjoin us to build our lives squarely upon doctrine, be it ever so hard?
It may be true that the facts of racial differences cannot be expressed without wounding people, but surely Fr. Tacelli does not suggest that we fashion a nation upon a deliberate untruth because the truth is hard. This would be just the sort of squeamishness about hurting feelings that has prevented any effective opposition to affirmative action, “inclusion,” “diversity,” and any number of other liberal schemes that are destroying us.
On a different matter, he is right to say that most whites do not think of themselves as “white,” or do so only after an unpleasant encounter with non-whites. This is only a recent aberration. One of the compliments Kipling paid Gunga Din was:
An’ for all ‘is dirty ‘ide
‘E was white, clear white, inside
In A Child’s Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson speaks these words through the voice of a child:
Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo
Little Turk or Japanee,
O! don’t you wish that you were me?
Until the 1950s or 1960s, most Americans knew that they were white and that their country and culture were white. They took whiteness for granted and could not conceive of being washed away in a rising tide of color. And here, I believe, is one of the crucial, missing elements to the cultural rebirth that Fr. Tacelli—and I—so earnestly desire. Is it a coincidence that white racial consciousness and pride disappeared during the horrible 1960s, when every standard of decency came under assault?
The call for racial consciousness is not a call for something new but for a return to something old. In his nostalgia for a more certain and more spiritual time, is Fr. Tacelli not evoking an era when racial pride was no less taken for granted than belief in God? As he suggests, Liberalism in its most virulent forms rejects God.
Fr. Tacelli writes that if only we were sure of ourselves and of what we were about, the rest would be mere details: how many immigrants to let in and what to make them learn. But surely, a fundamental part of our loss of identity has been the loss of our pride as the white, European heirs to Western civilization. No people can carry on its traditions unless it feels in its bones that the ways of its ancestors are true and best. Once the biological identification with the creators of those traditions is severed, once one’s own culture and race are not merely relativized but demonized, even the will to survive may disappear.
It is no coincidence, by the way, that it is both the white race and European “dead-white-male” culture that are demonized. Unlike the deluded white defenders of “inclusion” and “multi-culturalism,” who pretend that Haitian refugees can be made into Jeffersonian republicans, those who would displace us know very well that the race and culture are one. Without the race, the culture dies.
I agree entirely with Fr. Tacelli that we have shamefully neglected our patrimony. Nevertheless, I suspect that if whites still had Stevenson’s and Kipling’s innocent pride in being white, their culture might not have become the plaything of the likes of Madonna and Screwdriver.
Race, therefore, must be our rallying cry. It was within the context of racial consciousness that our precious heritage arose, and we can be certain that racial dilution only hastens its decline. We cannot be sure that whites, once disengaged from non-whites, would not wallow in swill. But we know that if we throw in our lot with the rest, we will have no end of Snoop Doggy Dog and Niggaz With an Attitude.
At every opportunity, blacks and Hispanics rename our schools, pull down our monuments, rewrite our textbooks, and revile our heroes. Groups that are destroying our heritage cannot be expected to hand it on to future generations. We may yet fail to do this ourselves, but only we will even try. Fr. Tacelli urges us to rededicate ourselves to the great culture and civilization to which we are heirs, and he is right; we must do this. But it will have little effect if we do not regain our racial consciousness. Indeed, only through racial consciousness can we end our dispossession and begin the task of cultural renewal.
Materialism
To return, finally, to what I take to be Fr. Tacelli’s main critiques of racialism: First, that it can spring only from Godless materialism. This is clearly wrong. Many of the Founding Fathers, British imperialists, Confederate generals, and Southern segregationists were both racial nationalists and devout Christians. Many readers of AR are professing Christians. In important respects Fr. Tacelli is himself a racialist. To acknowledge a preference for one’s own kind and to observe that non-whites, in sufficient numbers, transform society in unacceptable ways are clear expressions of racial consciousness.
Second, Fr. Tacelli writes that unbelievers are incapable of even “a minimally decent moral vision.” Hard doctrine! To say of people that they are incapable of basic morality comes close to calling them less than human. This is a far harsher division of sheep from goats than anything to be found in AR, and is the very opposite of the call for unanimity with which Fr. Tacelli ends his remarks. Decency and integrity have never been the monopoly of believers.
I do not think that Western Civilization can be restored by issuing a call only to believers and without regard to race. I would return to Fr. Tacelli’s poignant evocation of what the Cloisters of New College came to mean for him. What an Italian-American Jesuit felt in the presence of those ancient British statue-corpses is what a Frenchman, German, or any European-American might have felt, whether Christian or unbeliever. I do not think that a black or Hispanic-American, no matter how deeply Christian, would have been moved in the same way for the same reasons.
We cannot afford to let questions of faith divide us; it is our race and our belief in our heritage that must unite us.
(Posted on April 6, 2007)