Eliminating white spaces

George Weigel at First Things sings the praises of Jackie Robinson, who broke the National Baseball League’s “infamous” color line.

Now, I strongly disagree with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that there is something iniquitous about separate public schools for separate races.  Races have their own distinct cultures, histories, and identities and rightfully wish to pass these on to their children.  Forcing blacks and whites into the same schools meant that only one people’s collective memory could be taught.  In this case, it was the collective memory of the negroes that was imposed on the whites, as we see from the fact that history and social sciences are taught from a relentlessly anti-white perspective, with no one even bothering to ask what motives other than malice whites might have had for building their distinct societies.  Still, it’s a legitimate concern that blacks will be at a disadvantage when their schools are inferior, and forced integration is one way to deal with this.

Similarly, I see nothing wrong with a golf club or other social organization that caters to only one race or ethnicity.  Spontaneous associations, what some American conservatives call “civil society”, are a good thing, and racial consciousness is not a bad thing.  Still, I have heard the argument that these groups are important places for professional networking, so groups not invited can be at a disadvantage.  This is not a strong enough reason to suppress monoracial clubs, but it is a legitimate concern.

What possible reason, though, could there be to object to whites having a sports club to themselves?  It’s not that blacks didn’t have opportunities to play baseball.  Robinson himself started in a separate negro league.  How does it hurt anyone else if white America wanted to have a sports league for just those of European descent?  How are blacks in any way at a disadvantage in school or in the professions because of this?  Weigel seems entirely incurious about the motives of these “bigots” who objected to yet one more of their spaces being violated.  One suspects that America’s “original sin” that he invokes but does not name is actually the existence of whites as a consciously distinct people.

If anyone wants to play the “Oh, how would you feel…” card, go ahead.  I have zero problem with other races having activities from which outsiders like me are excluded.  I don’t mind even when they’re the majority.  I’ve said before that I agree with Catholics being excluded from the British crown.  I’ve said before that the group of immigrants that included my ancestors were a net negative for America.  If my group were to end up in the position of blacks in 1940s America, some things about that would bother me.  The majority having a sports league to themselves wouldn’t be one of them.

9 Responses

  1. It was not uncommon in high school for blacks to attempt to extort sex from white girls by appealing to racial guilt – “what’s a matta, yo’ daddy in the Klan??”. Is it wrong to want school segregation for reasons like this?

  2. “I’ve said before that I agree with Catholics being excluded from the British crown.”

    I strongly disagree. Great Britain was Catholic before it was forcibly converted to Protestantism for no good reason, which destroyed much of its heritage. Having a Catholic monarch would not only be compatible with British identity, but would even reconnect Britain with the best aspects of its history.

    But even if Britain had always been Protestant, it wouldn’t matter. Catholic social teaching says that not only all individuals, but also all governments ought to embrace Catholicism as the only true religion. The Church is required by her Divine Founder to work for the conversion of all persons and all governments. Catholicism isn’t just one culture among others, but is meant by God to be the basis of all cultures. If local customs conflict with God’s revelation, they must be abandoned.

  3. But since the Anglican church itself claims to be catholic, with many of its members claiming to be Catholic as properly so called, this would not seem an unbridgeable gap. The objection, indeed, did not seem to be significantly raised when James II came to the throne, and as far as I can tell seems mostly to be political, with the intention of protecting the interests of a certain class and of the international bloc associated with it at the time, hence nobody caring that King William was a Calvinist or King George a Lutheran (though I’m not sure, come to think of it, if the latter converted).

  4. Richard Spencer is not a Christian but his talk at Auburn this week was exhilarating:

  5. “Races have their own distinct cultures, histories, and identities…”

    I think it would be more accurate to say that nationalities have their own distinct cultures &c, the primary vehicle being language.

    Of course, there are common cultural elements that distinguish those countries that experienced Roman conquest and administration and those that did not; those in which the Reformation triumphed and those in which it failed; those long subject to Ottoman rule, particularly where Islam was adopted as the national religion, as in Albania and parts of the Caucasus.

    It strikes me as fanciful to pretend that a Parisian academic and a Chechen peasant share, in any meaningful sense, a common culture, however similar their genotype.

  6. It sounds plausible that a Britain without any state religion would be worse than a Britain with a heretical state religion. However, any form of endorsement of a false religion is intrinsically evil. Hence, Catholics cannot actively support the continued establishment of Anglicanism. Therefore, I don’t believe they are at liberty to actively support or endorse the continued exclusion of Catholics from the throne, especially in order to preserve an intriniscally evil situation.

    At most, it could be argued that Catholics should not actively fight for the disestablishment of the Church of England or for the admission of Catholics to the throne. Mere tolerance is the most we can offer to false religions.

  7. “In this case, it was the collective memory of the negroes that was imposed on the whites, as we see from the fact that history and social sciences are taught from a relentlessly anti-white perspective”

    Antiwhite animus was *not*, generally speaking, the collective memory of negroes. See the slave narratives for example. This was something introduced largely from the outside. Negroes obviously have never controlled the content of the history books or the standards and practices of the history profession. That was mostly the Rockefeller created American Historical Association and the international communist party (who spent the first half of the 20th century trying to turn blacks into a revolutionary vanguard).

  8. David Konietzko

    One could take the view of the Catholic peers who opposed disestablishment in Ireland.

    Many English Catholics, especially the Remnant Catholics, distinguished between the Church in England and Ireland and the heretical ministers who had been intruded into its sees and benefices. For them, the “Anglican Church” had no corporate existence; there were simply 2 provinces, 26 sees and some 9,000 parishes of the universal Church in England, into which unworthy persons had been intruded by the civil power. In defending the Irish Tithe, they saw themselves as defending the liberties and immunities of the Church.

    For that reason, they opposed the restoration of the hierarchy, which they regarded as a tacit acknowledgment of the Anglican Church’s separate existence, preferring the old arrangement od Vicars Apostolic to deal with what they regarded as a temporary situation.

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