Credit: American Antiquarian Society’s Historical Periodicals Collection
23
A WHITE HAVEN
This chapter will be about race, one of the most difficult subjects to address with objectivity or clarity. What we see—or choose to see—is almost invariably clouded by emotions and interests. After all, we’re talking about ourselves. But let me revise what I just wrote. Race isn’t just a “subject.” Whether we’re confronting a reality or figments in our minds, what we conceive as races have consequences rewarding or encumbering actual human lives.
That said, there are no official definitions for what constitutes a race, let alone how many there are, or the boundaries for each one. So here are some guidelines this chapter will observe.
• For present purposes, the United States has two dominant races, usually called black and white, encompassing persons of African and European origin. They comprise the nation’s most distinct racial divide. Of course, no one is literally or wholly black or white, but respective colors and complexions are distinctive enough to allow the division to persist. (Native Americans and Native Hawaiians can also be identified in racial terms.)
• Two other aggregations are not racial. Hispanic refers to a language, countries of origin, and a varied culture. But in physical appearance, Americans subsumed as Hispanic can evince European, African, and native ancestries, in many cases intermixed. Such diversity is even more vivid with an omnibus groups called Asians. The term subsumes not only Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, but also Pakistanis, Filipinos, Saudis, and Yemenis, indeed everyone with forebears from anywhere in that gigantic continent. (Israel is also in Asia.)
• The artifacts we call races are human creations, crafted for a variety of reasons. This means they can also be erased if we choose. In fact, this has occurred. For many years, in many locales, it was common to speak of a “yellow” race. It handily embraced individuals of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean lineage. (“Oriental” and “mongoloid” were variants.) Yet soon after the end of World War II, the term fell from general usage. Those once in it were merged with many others under the aforementioned Asian umbrella.
• The epithet “racist” has been applied to some Republicans, due to broad pronouncements or policies they direct at groups like Mexicans or Muslims,1 such as associating them with violence, whether conventional crime or acts of terrorism. It remains to add that neither Mexicans nor Muslims are races, since both encompass a range of cultures and colors. Such indictments, based on national and theological aspects, seem part of our time and are unlikely to disappear soon. So we may see racism being extended to include them.
• Now it’s time to return to one of the races cited earlier. More than any of the others, it provides most of the impetus for the racial anxieties and enmities we see and hear. I am alluding to Americans deemed to be white. Many of these individuals of European origin feel grimly vulnerable. On one side, they sense hostility from their fellow citizens of African origin (as with athletes who don’t kneel for the anthem); on the other, from arrivals from Latin America, the Middle East, and places with other languages, unfamiliar faiths, and darker hues. It’s best to open with the black-white bifurcation and extend the analysis when applicable.
The Republican Party was founded in 1854. Barely a decade and a half later, it avowed its interracial identity. Nor was this surprising for the home of Abraham Lincoln. In homage to his death, its leaders amended the Constitution to secure the vote for Americans who had recently been freed from bondage. In ensuing decades, the party sent twenty-one men of African origin to the US Congress, all from former Confederate states. (Two were senators representing Mississippi.) But this was a short interlude. By the time the century had ended, the region’s white populace had regained its earlier domination. Under the Democratic Party of that time, black citizens were basically barred from political life.
Black citizens in Northern states could vote, and continued to cast their ballots for the GOP. That allegiance persisted through the presidency of Herbert Hoover. Even so, loyalty netted them only a single congressman, Oscar Stanton De Priest, who was elected from Chicago in 1928. Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency brought a massive change. Black Americans outside the South shifted all but wholly to the Democratic side. Since then, the GOP has rarely roused black support exceeding single digits.
So for eight decades and counting, the Republicans have for all practical purposes been a white party. In vivid contrast, each year sees the Democrats becoming a multiracial and multiethnic coalition. In 2012 and 2016, whites provided only a bare majority—55 percent—of the votes cast for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
On the nation’s racial makeup, it’s probably best to begin with the official count. The census allows individuals to describe themselves racially, and it simply records the responses it receives.
This makes sense, since in almost all cases, people give the designation that others would apply to them. In a 2018 count, the most detailed at this writing, just 60 percent of the overall population cited “white” as their sole identity. (Parents did it on behalf of children.) In doing so, they were attesting that all of their forebears had arrived from one or another country in Europe. So today, persons are considered fully white if their ancestors came anywhere from Spitsbergen to Salonika, with complexions from pale to tawny, and varied physical builds.
But note that the 60 percent for whites counts only individuals who are fully of European stock. To accord with current demography, the census has devised an accompanying category. It is available for individuals who might want to have Hispanic (or Latino) recorded as all or part of who or what they are. In 2018, fully 18 percent of Americans checked this box.
This was an all-time high, and it makes them the second-largest sector. Those who do check Hispanic or Latino have their own reasons. They may be saying that Spanish is their family’s ancestral language. Or that their people are from one of the countries composing Latin America. Or that they identify with a culture prevalent in that region. All that noted, it must be added that Hispanics vary widely in race. Some, as in Argentina and Chile, seem almost wholly of European stock. Others, as in the Dominican Republic and Cuba, have pronounced African origins. Many in Central America show strong indigenous antecedents. Peru has long had Spanish-speaking communities of Japanese origin, one of whom was elected the nation’s president.
So now it must be added that among the 18 percent who say they are Hispanic, about two-thirds also check the white box. (Others say they are black; but even more leave it blank, averring they feel no need of a racial designation.) On paper, describing yourself as Hispanic-plus-white is analogous to those once called Irish American or Italian American. However, in the public purview, they are usually seen principally as Hispanic, and secondarily as white. As was just noted, this stricture no longer holds for citizens having European pasts. For them, being white has primacy, with a nationality sometimes but not always appended. Cases in point would be Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. No one has called them “Italian” jurists, although no one ignores that Clarence Thomas is black. So far, though, Hispanic heritage remains a barrier to being fully white. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have had to settle for this provisional status. At the same time, it needn’t preclude the presidency, any more than having some African ancestry has. Indeed, the notion of being not quite fully white has a long history.
The original Republicans were predominantly of English, Scottish, and Welsh extraction. In an earlier generation, Alexis de Tocqueville had denominated them “Anglo-Americans.” In many ways, that phrase still bespeaks the party’s prototype. Its first demographic challenge came with Germans, who had began arriving before the Civil War. At first, there was concern that absorbing them might undercut the Anglo paradigm. But Germans were predominantly Protestant. They soon learned English, and many intermarried or modified their names. A rite of passage was serving in the Union army, easing their entry into Republican ranks. Their presence, along with sundry Scandinavians, helped give the party successive majorities from 1864 through 1928.
All the while, though, immigration was taking another turn. Another great wave came from Ireland, spurred by destitution and religious subordination. They created a dilemma for Republicans. Ireland was a Northern European province, with English as its official language, albeit carrying a distinctive accent. True, too, they weren’t Protestants; but German Catholics were fitting in. The problem was racial, even if that term wasn’t used. Republicans found it beyond their reckoning to think of the Irish as fully white. That mood was caught in two depictions by Thomas Nast on an 1876 magazine cover, pictured below. On one side was a liberated black man, with a beguiling face. Across from him was a scruffy man, with subhuman features, and clearly of Irish origins. In a sardonic gesture, Nast wrote “white” under the second figure, as if to convey he had even less claim to that marque than the black man across from him. In a word, the Irish weren’t white enough for Republican recognition. They, along with Southern and Eastern Europeans and other strains, could be consigned to the Democrats.
But that hauteur couldn’t hold. The arrival and integration of immigrants enlarged the electoral rolls. Most pointedly, there were no longer enough whites of Anglo aspect to assure majorities for the Republicans. Indeed, in that 1864–1928 span, Democrats had higher presidential pluralities on six occasions. Still, out of pride or principle, the Republican Party sought to keep its white identity. Social developments made this possible by providing an opening. The end of World War II saw a mushrooming of subsidized suburbs, with many of the newcomers arriving from older immigrant neighborhoods. To facilitate this process, those once disdained as lesser breeds—as the Irish had been—were given a transitional status, variously called “white ethnics” and “ hyphenated Americans.” In a word, the white party was recasting its racial parameters, most distinctly during the Nixon and Reagan presidencies. (Not coincidentally, both had parvenu origins.)
Americans of Irish and Italian stock found they were welcomed by the party, as were Poles and Greeks, Slovenians and Lithuanians. By the time the twentieth century had ended, allusions to ethnicity and hyphens were hardly heard. So by erasing intermediate gradations, the party could now address its constituents as a common bloc. A singular white race, melding all European origins, eclipsed national divisions.2 It remains to be seen whether and how far Republicans will expand their white parameters. Until now, their most notable additions have been Cuban Americans of their exile generation. There have been no moves to give Asians some kind of white standing, nor are there signs they want it. It will be revealing to see what designations are bestowed on offspring with Asian and white parents.
Each year finds the white portion of the population declining. The most visible cause is the current flow of immigration. Today, few Europeans want to move permanently to the United States, because they like living where they are. Instead, Latin Americans and Asians lead the list, with the Middle East not far behind. Each annual census shows the United States to be less white. As noted, their latest count was 60 percent, well down from a high of 90 percent as recently as 1950.
A second cause of white decline is that its adults are not producing enough infants to sustain their numbers. A basic demographic dictum is that every one hundred women in a group must have at least two hundred children to replicate their share of the species. Natality figures released in 2018 reported that each 100 white women were having 164 children.3 This means that many couples are stopping at one child, or having none at all, which together diminishes the white ratio. Not the least reason is that youngsters are more expensive than ever, given the many amenities they are expected to have. Another is that more men and women are deciding that parenthood isn’t for them, or are finding it’s too late to start.
A common Republican charge is that Democrats focus on “identity politics.”4–5 For example, its stress on attributes like gender, disability, and sexual orientation. Instead, it is argued, voters should be addressed as Americans and citizens, with a common stake in national prosperity and security. Hence too the party’s embrace of patriotism, hands over hearts, and flags in lapels. Still, the issue of identity raises a question. Isn’t affirming one’s self as white also avowing an identity? At 60 percent of the population, whites aren’t a minority, although their 52 percent of births—today’s babies are tomorrow’s population—shows they are only a few points from that status. Not to mention that they are now down to 30 percent of the student body at UCLA and 28 percent at Berkeley.
Pastors often find they can base their sermons on one Biblical passage, say, Exodus 6:27 or Matthew 3:14. In the same vein, responses to a single survey question can expose apprehensions and anxieties that are rarely voiced, let alone debated and discussed. An example was posed by the Public Religion Research Institute, in the spring of 2017, to a sample of white adults. Here were its findings:
| Today, discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.6 | |
| White Republicans Agreeing | 73% |
| White Democrats Agreeing | 30% |
An initial reaction might be puzzlement. Why, it may be wondered, do so many white Republicans see themselves as facing bias based on their race? Nor is this all. They see this prejudice as oppressive as that faced by conventional minorities. And it remains to ponder why so many fewer white Democrats feel so aggrieved.
By objective measures, Republicans are doing quite well, with the party’s center of gravity well up in the middle class. Over a third of its 2018 voters had incomes over $100,000. Plus a hearty 80 percent had attended or completed college, a hallmark of at least modest success. These indices prompt a two-part question: who is victimizing white Republicans, and what forms does this bias take?
It is altogether true that under affirmative action, whites have been on the losing end, as when they may feel that a position they sought was given to another applicant in the name of diversity. When this occurs, it becomes more than a onetime episode; there’s a multiplied effect.
Suppose that a police department is hiring a new chief. Imagine that twenty-four of the twenty-six applicants are white and two are black. Posit further that the search ends with hiring one of the black candidates. Due to that decision, all of the two dozen white entrants can come away suspecting that a race-based choice impeded their careers. In other words, all it takes is just one black appointment to lead twenty-four whites to feel they suffered discrimination. Even whites contending for traditionally well-paid posts—say, a college presidency—can imagine they faced barriers based on their race.
If most Republicans feel they are being treated unjustly—as the survey attests—there is little point in trying to persuade them that this isn’t the case. It is striking that seven of ten white Republicans are equating their own situation with groups that have long been subjected to suppression. And they hold this view at a time when Americans of European stock still preponderate in the population, even more in the electorate, and especially in regions where the GOP prevails. So it remains to ask what prompts their distress and whom they believe might be benefiting in their stead.
In fact, whites who say they encounter discrimination could be employing this term to vent another complaint. For most of this nation’s history, white citizens of all conditions were allowed, if not encouraged, to see themselves as embodying a superior human strain. Knowing they were construed as white sufficed for millions of men to face death for the Confederate cause.
So to be deemed white has been to possess an existential asset, an attribution that has solaced millions of ordinary lives. In fact, for many of modest status, this ascription has been their most crucial advantage. Moreover, it was an identity its owner could never lose. (Historically, in Europe and the Americas, no white person, no matter how debased, could ever be consigned to slavery.)
Republican responses to the survey bespeak a lament over losing pride of place in the national scheme. To be sure, European lineage still has considerable stature. Norwegian origins open more doors than Nicaraguan parentage. Even so, European lineage does not command a deference it was once accorded. So when white Republicans say they face prejudice, they are saying that their race no longer affords the esteem earlier generations enjoyed. Or the preferment they feel is their due.
A 73 percent response rate doesn’t occur overnight. It’s likely this racial festering has been growing for a considerable time. Even so, established candidates like John McCain, Mitt Romney, and the younger Bush forbore from fomenting race-based resentments. (However, the senior Bush famously did.)
It took the unexpected arrival of Donald Trump to bring white grievances closer to the surface. Thus race was one of several readings for his pledge to Make America Great Again. Of course, it promised a renewal of the nation’s industrial and military might. But it was also read as restoring the stature that citizens of European stock once had. The “again” was heard as reproducing a past era, a pledge that white Americans would regain their preeminence. If Hillary Clinton was the nominal opponent in 2016, a coequal adversary was Barack Obama’s eight years of residence in the White House. This animus rose less from his supposedly radical policies than from his African background. If a disquiet was never openly acknowledged, to be governed by a man of his heritage was deeply demeaning to scions of a superior civilization.
It’s not just that many whites still regard persons of another race as being innately inferior. Their African ancestry is a reminder that the nation was built on enslavement, a discomfort that will not readily go away. At the least, Republicans call for a cessation of racial accusations, protests, and complaints. Witness the sharp reactions to the phrase Black Lives Matter and kneeling football players. If we must have descendants of enslaved persons in our midst, why can’t there be recognition of progress, if not some murmurs of gratitude?
Almost as intense are alarms over newcomers, relatively few of whom can be counted as white or black. Much Republican derision is attuned to nationality and religion, as with Mexicans and Muslims, albeit for different reasons. With the former, the unease is economic and cultural, over an undercutting of wages and a disinclination to assimilate. With Muslims reactions to unusual creeds mingle with fears of terrorism. While a race can’t be strictly applied to Salvadorans or Palestinians, the passions they rouse parallel those with racial roots.7
Why are so many fewer white Democrats worried about the declining standing of their race? As noted earlier, they and white Republicans have somewhat similar educational and economic profiles. (Although Democratic rolls have more minorities with lower incomes.) On the material side, of those earning $200,000 and up, 51 percent went for Trump, and 49 percent supported Clinton, close to a statistical tie. The partisan divide within the well-off says much about our times.
It may be that white Democrats are more personally secure, with less need for race to figure in their lives. Or they may not see their careers threatened by demographic shifts. We can say that white Democrats—from union members to wealthy celebrities—knowingly participate in a multiracial party. In fact, it is one where they barely hold sway. As has been noted, whites accounted for only 55 percent of Democratic voters in 2018, while in the GOP they made up 88 percent.
So white Democrats have consciously chosen a diverse party. At its 2016 convention, black delegates comprised fully one quarter of those present, double their number in the general population. By contrast, the GOP could only muster eighteen black delegates, less than 1 percent of the 2,472 who were present. That the party made no effort to increase that number, if only to present a more diverse face, bespeaks its contentment with its white core.
Personal responsibility is what we need. (Minnesota)
My ideal would be to completely cut off immigration. (Pennsylvania)
Putting the interests of white Americans first and keeping our heritage is my most important reason for being a Republican. (Ohio)
There are too many things we need to take care of first before allowing immigrants to come into this country and receive all kinds of services. (California)
When the government helps the poor, it shields them from the consequences of the bad decisions that made them poor. (Indiana)
It’s all about pro-life. This tops every other issue or agenda. (Florida)
When you hold someone responsible for their immoral or criminal conduct, that usually means punishing them. The left is willing to soften punishment, based on extenuating circumstances. (Indiana)
I believe we are responsible for our own success. (Texas)
Immigration needs to be cut. Jobs need to stay here. (North Carolina)
By adopting America First, the Republican Party represents all Americans without dividing everyone into identity groups. (Michigan)
We need to stop the homosexuals from infecting the earth with their ungodly principles. (Rhode Island)