At Free Media Productions, Iceman makes a few controversial points about American racialists. Here is my response:
1.) Jews did play a major role in the demise of American racialism.
2.) Negroes and American Indians were not assimilated into American culture at the time when they were extended citizenship.
3.) The idea that America is a “nation of immigrants” wasn’t popularized until the 1950s. The phrase “nation of immigrants” comes from an essay penned by JFK for the ADL.
4.) Anglo-Americans are indigenous to North America. They were the original settlers.
5.) America was a “white man’s country” until the mid-twentieth century.
6.) Chinese immigration was banned several times in the 1880s.
7.) Japanese immigration was restricted by the Gentleman’s Agreement between TR and Japan.
8.) Korean, Vietmanese, and Cambodian immigration was banned under the Asian Exclusion Act.
9.) “Free blacks” were legally considered “persons” not “citizens” under the Constitution until the ratification of the 14th Amendment. The Dred Scott decision excluded negroes from citizenship on the basis of their race.
10.) Non-European Caucasians were denied American citizenship on the basis of “whiteness.” See the racial prerequisite cases.
11.) Imperialism did play a major role in the demise of segregation. No argument there.
12.) Jews played an instrumental role in the reconceptualization of America as a universal, cosmopolitan nation. See the New York Intellectuals.
Prozium,
“11.) Imperialism did play a major role in the demise of segregation. No argument there.”
Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself here, but I wonder if anything good comes out of an imperial mindset. Temporary gains in land and wealth for a season’s ruling class only to be followed by decay and degeneracy for the imperial civilization itself.
It opens up our domestic institutions to foreign criticism.
http://www.freemediaproductions.info/Editorials/?p=555
I commented on your response, though I actually think there was an extent of agreement even if there was also disagreement in our stances.
A few points . . .
1.) Generally speaking, Non-European Caucasians were not considered “White” in the United States. They were denied American citizenship and were excluded by our immigration laws. This can be seen in three lines of evidence:
– The Asiatic Barred Zone of the Immigration Act of 1917 banned immigration from all of Southwest and South Asia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Asiatic_Barred_Zone.png
– In United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Supreme Court retroactively stripped all Indians living in the United States of their citizenship.
– The racial prerequisite cases that denied citizenship to Arabians, Afghans, and Syrians.
2.) America was a “white man’s country” until the mid-twentieth century. This belief enjoyed the same currency in the past that the egalitarian consensus holds in our own times. It completely dominated the mainstream political conversation.
3.) The adoption of the English language and Protestantism by negroes had little to do with 1.) extending them citizenship and 2.) their ultimate integration.
4.) Read up on the Dawes Act. It was an attempt by the U.S. government to assimilate and detribalize Indians.
5.) Racialism grew more intense and extreme from 1890 to 1940. In some areas, negroes could be lynched with impunity. This period is often called the “Nadir of the Negro” by historians. I’m not sure why you are arguing that Jim Crow was “mild racialism.” It was nothing of the sort.
6.) See Kevin MacDonald’s Culture of Critique.