Chapter 7: Racism Justified

Chapter 7 

Racism Justified 

 As an adult, I saw racism revealed over and over again. I found a common thread in political views running through every racist that I encountered. All of them held conservative views.  Conservatism is always a reaction to a challenge to an existing order becoming  self-conscious and reflective when other ways of life and thought  appear on the scene,  against which it is compelled to take up arms in an ideological struggle.                                                             

Situationally, conservatism is defined as the ideology arising out of a distinct but recurring type of historical situation in which a fundamental challenge is directed at established institutions and in which the supporters of those institutions employ the conservative ideology in their defense. Thus, conservatism is that system of ideas employed to justify any established social order, no matter where or when it exists, against any fundamental challenge to its nature or being, no matter from what quarter. Conservatism in this sense is possible in the United States today only if there is a basic challenge to existing American institutions which impels their defenders to articulate conservative values. 

The Civil Rights movement was a direct challenge to the existing institutions of the time, and

conservatism as an ideology is thus a reaction to a system under challenge, a defense of the status – quo in a period of intense ideological and social conflict. 

The very notion of a race of people that was;  at our beginnings as a country, only considered to be 3/5’s of a human being,  now having equal footing with those that actually believed in this idea, is a direct challenge to a long held  social concept. It denied the idea of white supremacy as legitimate. It’s surprising how many people still cling to this idea, and will go to extreme lengths to perpetuate it. 

The idea that a person that could have been your slave at one time, could today be your boss, or even President of the United States, is more than some people can deal with on an emotional level.  White supremacy as an institution is renounced, discredited, and dismantled, and that is a major blow to an existing order, and conservatism is always a reaction to a challenge to an existing order. These are people that desperately need somebody to look down to in order to validate their own self-worth. “Sure, life is tough. But at least I’m White.” They can no longer rely on a policy that used to be institutionally enforceable. When that is removed by law, hostility is the result;  hostility for those that have been emancipated by law and elevated to equal status, and hostility for the law itself including those that proposed it and passed it.  

Thus, hatred for African-Americans and for the Liberal’s and liberal policies that endorse their equal status is fully embraced by the conservative. 

 Letting go of the past is difficult to do. An entire race of people becomes an easy scapegoat for one’s own failures. Hate is passed on from one generation to the next. Parents teach their children to hate.

The cure for hate is education, so every attempt to keep schools segregated was an important factor. Every attempt to de-segregate schools was resisted. Integrated schools are a way of leveling the playing field and a sign of equality and equality is a challenge to the social fabric. The more narrow the view point, the more ignorant the person becomes and  the easier it is to promote fear and fear promotes hate.  Fear always promotes hate.  

The conservative mind embraces a narrow point of view.  It doesn’t like being challenged.  It resists new information.  A liberal mind by definition is open to change, but change always threatens the existing order, so the liberal is not to be trusted. He is feared, and hated because he challenges the existing order. 

Another glaring problem is that the conservative knows there is no rational justification for his racism. He knows that it’s wrong, intellectually, but he’s imprisoned by an ideology without a basis, and this ideology appeals to his “Gut” and not his brain. As Charles Pierce wrote,  “The Gut is the roiling repository of dark and ancient fears. It knows what it knows because it knows how it feels”. Richard Hofstadter points to this when he says, “Intellect is pitted against feeling”, he writes, “on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or the diabolical”. The Conservatives  entire set of values is wrapped in a theory of rationality that was handed to him by somebody else with a nice big bow. His way of life is now threatened by a truth that contradicts his beliefs. To admit that it was flawed and without any basis, is to admit that, foundationally, everything he believed in is flawed and that means that he could be wrong about something.  And that also means that there is no justification for the pain and suffering that his ideology has inflicted on others. An entire war was fought and over 600,000 lives were lost in order to continue a way of life that was baseless. Rather than admit that his beliefs were in error, he clings to the ideology of hate and directs that hate toward the object that is the very cause of the hate: The Black Man. The Black Man is a constant reminder that his ideology is flawed, a reminder that his hatred is baseless. Holding on to an ideology with no basis is irrational.  

Rather than dump this irrational way of thinking, he embraces irrationality as a way of life. He becomes a justificationist, and looks for anything that will justify his flawed ideology. He looks for passages in the Bible as a justification for slavery and therefore a justification for his beliefs.  He finds a refuge in the Bible and religion, (conservatives a very religious bunch) and this becomes the foundation that he “feels”  he can stand on. But he fails to recognize that that the Bible cannot be its own basis. That’s circular reasoning.  A criteria cannot be its own criteria. If we claim a basis gives us truth, we then are making the implicit claim that truth requires bases. But then it is plainly obvious our own basis lacks a basis, as it cannot be its own basis. The Bible might justify slavery, but what justifies the Bible? Well…it’s the inspired word of God. According to whom? According to the Bible.  That’s circular reasoning.  That’s a logical fallacy. Clinging to a logical fallacy, when you know it’s a logical fallacy is irrational. Conservatives  insist on a foundationalist way of thinking,  and the basis, the foundation of this idea all rests on something claiming itself as its own foundation. So…what is the foundation for the foundation, or the basis for the basis? They don’t like being pressed on this because that requires defending a stated  position based on something, and that leads to an infinite regress vs. their dogma. Trying to justify a basis leads to more justification for yet another basis and that leads into a black hole of one justification after another. There is no exit.                                                                                                                                      

Conservatives oppose the “liberal agenda”.  But what is that “agenda”? Liberalism challenges the status-quo. Conservatism opposes any challenge to the status-quo. And there you have it. But what is the justification for the status-quo, especially one that keeps an entire race of people suppressed because of an ideology without a basis? 

African-Americans are fully aware of this attitude coming from conservatives, which is why so few align themselves to this ideology. Conservatives talk about trying to reach out to the African-American community, but fail to understand that nobody wants to hang with people that hate you.  Blacks understand the source of this hatred, and are not likely to embrace it. Until conservatism renounces racism and purges racists from the Republican Party, they’ll never reach the African-American in any significant numbers. 

As pointed out by Professor Robert C. Smith, “African American thought has always been mainly a system-challenging, dissident thought.  However, until the 1950s and 1960s this thought had not been linked to a powerful mass movement. And the mere articulation of a dissident ideology does not produce conservatism until the ideology is embraced by significant social groups. Once it appeared that the black movement presented “ a clear and present danger” to the existing order, a self-conscious conservative movement would necessarily emerge, and it would also necessarily be for the most part a racist movement”.  It was in the 1950’s that the Conservative Movement had its beginnings as a backlash to the challenges presented by African American thought.  

In my previous book, Political Logic, I pointed to Russell Kirk and his book The Conservative Mind. 

“In his lecture on “The Origins of the Modern American Conservative Movement” given to the

Heritage Foundation in 2003, Dr. Lee Edwards cited Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind as providing the central idea upon which American conservatism is essentially based, calling it ordered liberty”.

 

Kirk described six basic “canons” or principles of conservatism:

1.A divine intent, as well as personal conscience, rules society;

2.Traditional life is filled with variety and mystery while most radical systems are characterized by a narrowing uniformity;

3.Civilized society requires orders and classes;

4.Property and freedom are inseparably connected;

5.Man must control his will and his appetite, knowing that he is governed more by emotion than by reason; and

6.Society must alter slowly.

 

Edwards states that “the work established convincingly that there was a tradition of American

conservatism that had existed since the Founding of the Republic. With one book, Russell Kirk made conservatism intellectually acceptable in America. Indeed, he gave the conservative movement its name. 

Lest we minimize the writings of Kirk, we should point out that one of his biggest supporters was “Mr.Conservative”, President Ronald Reagan. Reagan said this of Kirk:

“As the prophet of American conservatism, Russell Kirk has taught, nurtured, and inspired a

generation. From . . . Piety Hill, he reached deep into the roots of American values, writing and

editing central works of political philosophy. His intellectual contribution has been a profound act of patriotism. I look forward to the future with anticipation that his work will continue to exert a profound influence in the defense of our values and our cherished civilization.”  

—Ronald Reagan, 1981 

For several years he was a Distinguished Scholar of the Heritage Foundation. In 1989, President

Reagan conferred on him the Presidential Citizens Medal. In 1991, he was awarded the Salvatori

Prize for historical writing. Dr, Kirks conservative credentials are established. He is a conservative. He is qualified to speak on the meaning of conservatism. 

This prompted me to examine a few of Kirks ideas which he put forth as his 10 principles of

conservatism, in addition to his 6 “canons”. Kirk begins with his first principle as being that “the

conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order”.  

He states, “Twenty-five centuries ago, Plato taught this doctrine, but even the educated nowadays find it difficult to understand” . The problem of order has been a principal concern of conservatives ever since conservative became a term of politics. Putting it mildly, Plato’s view was that we are ineradicably social, and that the individual person was not, and could not, be self-sufficient. In fact, Plato offered up humans like so many animals that could do nothing for themselves unless they had constant and detailed direction from those who were to be their leaders:  

“... And even in the smallest manner ... [one] should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals ... only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently ... There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.” (The Republic.) 

In his chapter on southern conservatism, Kirk writes “that while human slavery is bad ground for

conservatives to make a stand upon, yet the wild demands and expectations of the abolitionists were quite as slippery a foundation for political decency” Describing “Negroes” as “the menace of debased, ignorant and abysmally poor folk” he argued they “must tend to produce in the minds of the dominant people an anxiety to preserve every detail of the present structure, and an ultra-vigilant suspicion of innovation”. 

Ok…so this is the guy that influenced Ronald Reagan.  His views were also more or less adapted by William F. Buckley, National Review, and other conservatives after Brown v Board of Education. 

Professor Robert Smith of the University of San Francisco writes; “Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s Buckley and National Review opposed the civil rights movement. In 1957, Buckley wrote an editorial entitled “Why the South Must Prevail”. He wrote; “National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, and then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of minority, in which case it may give way, and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence”. 

This sentence stands out to me: “ It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority”. It appears that Mr. Buckley had Kenya  in mind with this comment.  “The question, as far as the White community is concerned , is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage.” Actually, the question becomes, how civilized is a society that enforces racist White Supremacy?  Is Mr. Buckley defining “civilized standards” for all of us, including those living under the suppression of a racist overlord? I seriously doubt that anybody living under Jim Crow thought they were living under civilized standards. Being denied the most basic human rights including the right to vote, to an education, to being on a street after sundown, and facing the prospects of being  lynched if you defied  the norms of this kind of community hardly paints a picture of a civilized society to these eyes. 

This led me to Ronald Reagan. In 1980, Ronald Reagan began his campaign, not with a speech on supply side economics. He began it with a speech supporting “states rights” just outside Philadelphia, Mississippi at the Neshoba County Fair, the very community where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. This was a deliberate appeal to white racists that he was on their side and was part of a Republican strategy going back to the 1960’s to build a conservative majority on the basis of racism.  

This is not a way to attract blacks to the conservative movement.  But that was never the intention. The conservative isn’t looking to appeal to Blacks. They’re looking to suppress them. 

I found this an outrageous move on the part of Ronald Reagan. Of all the locations in the United States to launch a campaign…he picks this one? What did he think that would say to the African American community? It’s pretty clear whose votes he was courting.   

According to Smith; “The South is and always has been the most conservative part of America, 

conservative in an almost militant promotion of Lockean principles and institutions, and the only part of the country that claimed some kind of Burkean aristocratic conservatism. The South has also always been the most racist part of the country.  This is probably the most direct connection between racism and conservatism in America; despite all the denials of southern intellectuals and politicians, past and present, the South’s militant conservatism was rooted fundamentally in its hyperracism”. 

“The schizophrenia that is part of “southern thought”, is that while it embraced John Locke for whites, it denied Locke to blacks. But at the same time, many of the South’s leading thinkers rejected Locke because slavery could not be squared with his idea of inalienable natural rights. It was one thing to deny Africans civil rights as northern whites did, but to deny them liberty and their property in their labor was more difficult, leading to a full-bore embrace of a bastardized Burkean Aristocracy”. 

“Southern conservatism is an integral part of American conservatism. And if one looks at it, you’ll find racism at its core. Its militant laissez-faire capitalism, it’s emphasis on the soil, limited government, states rights, concurrent majorities, tradition, and all the rest are little more than reactions to modernity and to anti-racist movements.”