Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Lost Cause

Ta-Nehisi Coates blames the Black Undertow on The Lost Cause

Dixie

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kevin Levin are singing a hilarious duet across BRA’s blogosphere about the lack of interest of African-Americans in the Civil War.

It turns out that the Civil War deserves its own special numbered post at Stuff Black People Don’t Like. In a long winded essay at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates explains how The Lost Cause has robbed African-Americans of their psychic sense of greatness and created all the social problems of the Black Undertow.

There is an obvious rebuttal to this argument: African-Americans haven’t exactly excelled at science, mathematics, technology, or literacy either. Less than 1 percent of all visitors to the National Parks are black. Less than 1 percent of artists in America are black. Less than 3 percent of aircraft pilots and flight engineers are black.

What is stopping black people from visiting the National Parks? What is stopping black people from excelling in science, art, mathematics, and technology? What is stopping black people from graduating from integrated high schools? What is stopping black people from being fighter pilots? Why aren’t they taking advantage of Lincoln’s “New Birth of Freedom”?

22.6 percent of government interviewers for federal grant programs are African-Americans. Here in Alabama, African-Americans are responsible for 62 percent of homicide, 55 percent of rape, 77 percent of robbery, 55 percent of aggravated assault, and 59 percent of burglary. They are also 69 percent of TANF welfare users.

John C. Calhoun argued that African-Americans were unworthy of liberty and that freedom would prove to be a curse rather than a blessing to them. The last 150 years of American history has proven that Calhoun was right. Freedom failed.

Black people have used their freedom to speak ebonics, organize flash mobs, collect welfare checks, sell crack on street corners, spread infectious diseases, impregnate teenagers, and murder and assault each other while contributing virtually nothing of value except the super soaker water gun to the progress of the human species.

If White people disappeared from America, “African-Americans” would find themselves living in a country like Liberia where 85 percent of the population lives below the poverty line in one of the poorest countries in the world. Freedom failed there too.

The history of post-colonial Africa has shown the ability of black people to take over prosperous countries like Ghana, Congo, and Rhodesia and utterly destroy them. Similarly, America’s great cities like Birmingham and Detroit have also been destroyed by African-Americans.

The Lost Cause isn’t responsible for the various failures of black people in America. Abolition is responsible. The whole project was based on the flawed premise of racial equality. White Southerners anticipated its failure at the time.

BRA’s shrine to MLK now sits on the National Mall. It was Made in China because 150 years after the abolition of slavery there were no African-Americans capable of creating the “Stone of Hope.”

Some historians have estimated that 40 million Chinese died in the twentieth century under communism. 23 million Russians and 7 millions Germans died in the Second World War. Japan got hit with two nuclear bombs. 3 million Japanese died in the Second World War.

What does that say about African-Americans who suffered the indignity of drinking out of a separate water fountain in the twentieth century? Is The Lost Cause holding them back or have African-Americans failed to succeed in a free society?

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

27 Comments

  1. In BRA, nothing, absolutely nothing is Black People’s fault. “It’s not my fault” is the recurring mindset of our jails and prisons . “It’s not my fault” is also the dominant slogan of drug addicts and alcoholics. “It’s not THEIR fault is the preferred opiate of DWLs. I wonder how many headstones should have “it wasn’t my fault” on them.

  2. In a very interesting development flying in the face of today’s accepted biology science, a black Nigerian couple gave birth to a beautiful white-skinned, blue-eyed and blonde-haired baby this week. The scene was certainly shocking and newspapers in England, where the family now lives, have been questioning how this could possibly happen. Investigators are looking at the background of the parents– Ben and Angela Ihegboro– but have so far determined they have absolutely zero white ancestors. They’re conducting DNA tests and quizzing the wife about her fidelity. But one aspect that has not been addressed by the mainstream media is that the couple are devout Christians.

    The child has been named Nmachi, which means “Beauty of God” in their language. She is adorable and smiling, a perfect bundle that any happy American family would be pleased to welcome into their home. This is indeed a precious miracle for a couple that certainly knows and loves their Savoir. Could this be some sort of sign from God? Could the child be a reward for their service and their prayers? Only He knows the answer but that answer may just prove to be the key to black-white relations not only in Africa but in America as well.

  3. TabuLa- All I can say, is WHY do you include this here? Is Jer. 13:23 not scripture? Is God not the FAMILIAL God only of “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel?”

    And do you realize what you or that author of the piece is saying? Do you realize how utterly damning of the entire Black race such a sentiment is, that only by “becoming white,” can they become Christians? This is crueler than holding them apart or outside of the biblical covenant, as we are commanded to do! Is this Biblical? Or is it more like Wm. Blake’s fevered imagination?

    The Little Black Boy
    My mother bore me in the southern wild,
    And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
    White as an angel is the English child,
    But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

    My mother taught me underneath a tree,
    And, sitting down before the heat of day,
    She took me on her lap and kissed me,
    And, pointed to the east, began to say:

    ‘Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
    And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
    And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
    Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

    ‘And we are put on earth a little space,
    That we may learn to bear the beams of love
    And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
    Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

    ‘For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear,
    The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
    Saying, ‘Come out from the grove, my love and care
    And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice’,’

    Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
    And thus I say to little English boy.
    When I from black and he from white cloud free,
    And round the tent of God like lambs we joy

    I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear
    To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;
    And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
    And be like him, and he will then love me.”

    If that first conclusion was not your intent, and instead, was meant to ‘prove’ that Whites and Blacks are the same race, the Human race, I deny it. And will deny it to my dying breath. NEGO!

    Blake was NOT an orthodox Christian, his imagination was considered mildly mad, and while some of his poems are worthwhile, his concepts of Biblical Man are UTTERLY flawed. As is this blasphemous birth.

    Until one can find explicit DNA evidence that this child is their own- even if it were- this sole birth does not ‘prove’ that the Negro is ontologically the same as the Caucasian Man, anymore than the Birth of the Antichrist can be called a ‘son of Man’ when such a spawn issues from the adulterous loins of the jewish whore that will engender it. This birth merely proves that fornicating Adamkind’s genes (Present in both parents) randomly joined together to birth an abomination of hominidity.

    And that in a people which, (had they not been in England) if they had been left alone in their tribe in deepest Africa would surely have killed the child in their hut in the veldt, as a ‘demonic’ baby.

    More importantly, what will the child’s IQ, his demeanor, and his upbringing lead him to? Will he be a White in his actions as well as in his visage? Or will he be a ‘wigger’? Clearly, the outcome of this ‘baby’ is already incomparably biased in his outcomes, by the parents expressing a faith (Christianity) that is as foreign to them, as cannibalism is to White Europeans… so, we shall never know what this spawn WOULD have been like, because the contagion of ‘Europeanness’ will forever cloud his perceived genetics, as he will ‘fit in,’ no matter what his true ethnicity is, precisely because he will ‘appear white.’

    And, why should we expect his own seed not to be ‘tainted’ or ‘spoiled’ [Jer. 49:10], should he -nay, almost assuredly, (now that the Black Man is the Dying Englishman’s new ‘Incarnate [sic] god,’ rather than Christ) will marry a White Woman, upon his achieving Manhood?

    No, the older European consensus that such births should not be allowed to live, is the better, purer, more sane model to follow in instances like this.

    “They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness. When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled.

    “O my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens.
    But now, O our God, what can we say after this? For we have disregarded the commands you gave through your servants the prophets when you said: ‘The land you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the corruption of its peoples. By their detestable practices they have filled it with their impurity from one end to the other.

    Therefore, do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them at any time, that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it to your children as an everlasting inheritance.’ [Ezra 9:2-12]

  4. In Cuba blacks are truly happy, living in a slave state worshipping the magic man. That old jewboy Karl Marx would have a fit to find that out that the only human group happy under his rule has a mean IQ of 80 and must be supervised by whites in a carefully orchestrated manner that falls between superstitious worship of the great white man and quick merciless force. Hell for fun let us call this Niggerism in honor of old Karl.

  5. The comments on the Atlantic site are disgusting. The USCTs are the second generation of the Founders? A movie about the USCTs should be made showing them destroy white Southerners in some ‘Inglorious Bastards’ type frenzy?

    Hunter, I used to think that you were over the top with your idea that the South should have never joined the Union. Now, I am not so sure.The more I see what is happening in the world, not only do I think you are right but I wonder what, if anything, it would take for the American Left to understand what they are advocating. I have often thought that just one more Mahogany Mob is enough to wake people up. After reading what I did on that Atlantic comment section, I am convinced that there are many whites in this country who dream lurid dreams of their own destruction at the hands of blacks. It is sick.

  6. I hate to chip away at the one contribution of the Black race, but I used to play with a toy that was very similar to to a Super Soaker in the 1950’s, decades before we were blessed with that great Black invention.

    Here’s something that is off topic but relevant:

    http://cofcc.org/2009/01/3rd-world-detroit/

  7. Jack they do that because there is no counter to what is painful to their psyches. If they agree that whites should be eliminated they get a little respite and maybe a treat.

    Our side instead quibbles the details which does nothing to relieve the great masses of any of the pain the anti-whites inflict upon them.

    We at BUGs are pretty much ending the free run the anti-whites have had, and we are giving the masses a tool in which not only defeats the painful noise of the anti-whites it drives them away, utterly defeated.

  8. Jack,

    It’s clear to me that Whites have been and are currently continually psychologically front-loaded with a suicide meme. We have been programmed to destroy ourselves and like it. There is no other way to put it.

  9. As Hank Hill says, that boy ain’t right. His little headshot on the Atlantic webpage tries to make him look like sort of a tough hipster, although he writes about nerd stuff a lot, and he talks about being really fat before. Here you can see what a total nerd he is.

    He’s banned me about four times. I like to “keep it real” over at the Atlantic, but black people can’t stand white people “keepin’ it real”.

  10. @Tabula Raza

    Isn’t that baby simply an albino? I mean, what’s so extraordinary about that? There are albinos all over Sub-Saharan Africa. I recall a story a couple years ago, where albinos in Tanzania were being hunted and cannibalized because their flesh was believed to have magic powers. Why was that baby a news story..?

  11. Chris- If you read the article, they said the baby was Not an Albino- but it certainly is a Negro. Facial features etc.

    As I noted in my post, it is an abomination.

  12. @Fr. John

    If the baby has negroid features and was born to negroid parents, but is still absent the appropriate pigmentation, then it’s just an albino. Case closed.

  13. Don’t be so dismissive of the Super Soaker, Hunter. That was just preamble. According to this report its inventor is on the point of solving the energy problem.

    In part two of “the Energy Lie”, we continue the documentation by various news organizations (Sky News Dublin, CNN, fox 26 news, Action 6 News) of Inventions which some refer to as “Zero-point” energy.
    two company known as Excellatron, and Johnson research & development, both founded by the engineer who brought the world the “super-soaker” water gun, are currently working on Clean Energy products. the companies founder engineer, Lonnie Johnson, discusses his Lithium air battery, which can provide up to 10 times the energy of the most powerful batteries available today. part two, also talks about Johnson’s other ground breaking invention, the j-tech engine that converts heat into electricity, which was awarded,breakthrough prize in 2008, by popular mechanics magazine.

    Don’t be put off by the atrocious English; these guys really have succeeded in repealing the laws of thermo-dynamics. No, really.

  14. Chris- Definition of Albino: –

    “a congenital disorder characterized by the complete or partial absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes due to absence or defect of an enzyme involved in the production of melanin. Albinism results from inheritance of recessive gene alleles and is known to affect all vertebrates, including humans. While an organism with complete absence of melanin is called an albino ( /æl?ba?no?/,[1] or /æl?bi?no?/),[2] an organism with only a diminished amount of melanin is described as albinoid.[3] – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism

    Since the article was clear that the child has BLOND hair, and BLUE eyes, rather than WHITE hair, and PINK eyes, I would be willing to note ‘albinism’. But the child is not, technically, an ‘Albino.’

    Case Closed.

  15. Blacks with any historical literacy at all are aware that blacks’ first collective chance at “Glory” came during The War. In it, they were led by whites and, truth be told, didn’t do all that well (Fort Pillow, Fort Wagner, The Crater, Occupation of The Carolinas, etc.). And, yes, they have been failing as a race ever since.

  16. Alright fellas. I’m from the South and prefer the South. I endeavor to move back as soon as possible. I also think I probably have more in common with a “good ol boy” from The South than I do folks from other parts of the country. But I also have a critical eye. For all.

    While much of the banter here seems based upon deeply held beliefs and a higher than average knowledge of historical events, I’m puzzled at a few big omissions and the editorial slant placed on said historical events. I’m also a bit puzzled as to how a true Christian can be at true peace with God and also fine and dandy with some of the positions stated here — especially given how Christ chose to treat all those he encountered (sans the money changers, LOL).

    1) How can one NOT acknowledge the near impossibility of a group of people (black Americans) flourishing while and after being subjected to physical and emotional violence for hundreds of years? Living for years while being absolutely “bulldozed” by the majority population. Slavery times – Reconstruction- Jim Crow. It’s a foregone conclusion that we could look upon them years later and say knowingly “See, I told you they’d fail.” Well……it’s hard NOT to fail when a hellhound is breathing down your neck. It’s especially troubling when the hellhound is on your trail simply because you had the nerve to seek equal freedom and access to liberty.

    2) How in the heck did the bulldozed population and anyone else whose Christian heart at the time thought it right to try to improve their subservient situation become labeled as a bad guy? How did the people who exhibited paranoia, greed and a very violent strain of psychosis (“honor”) become the celebrated heroes? How did the big and powerful rich guys get their slate wiped clean for completely using and abusing the majority of the male population that were not slave owners? I get a bit angry thinking about all of the Southern whites from the pre-war and post-war years whose voices have been co-opted for modern day purposes. Some folks chose to fight the Union, but it doesn’t mean that they feared the spector of a “Black Run Amerika “. Obviously, some did buy into the propaganda machine. But many did not. Why not champion those folks and downplay the others?

    I don’t know about y’all, but I challenge my positions and my own intellectual honesty all of the time. I’m black and I have no problem whatsoever calling out every single broken thing I see about black America and every pathological and cultural cancer that afflicts the group in large numbers. However, I also know a bit of history and can clearly see cause and effect. I wish that I was seeing the same proclivity from many who are sharing their ideas here on this blog. Why is it so hard to own up to the prevalence of pathological and delusional insanity in the Confederate population of the pre-war and post-war periods? Black Americans, like others, also pass down family history stories. You might not be surprised to know that many of the heart wrenching stories that I’ve heard passed down don’t quite see all of the Confederate minded folks as “heroes”. The roving bands of terrorists and the murders and trickery found in Louisiana parishes and the counties of other states made it hard to see the heroism. You might, however, be surprised that there are also stories passed down of Southern folks that were good hearted and courageous. Friends to the end — despite color differences.

    I, like a good hefty chunk of black Americans, am descended from slaves as well as white Confederate soldiers and their families. It’s just a theory, but I sometimes wonder if that perhaps makes some folks more likely to nuance in these matters than the majority population is inclined to see. When I visit an old plantation or family grave site, I’m often visiting land that was run by my family (the owners or overseer) and worked by family (the slaves). Nice fodder for deep thought, multiple sources of pride and BIG fun for a genealogist.

  17. SouthernBred,

    (1) “African-Americans” really are “flourishing” relative to their black counterparts in other parts of the world. They enjoy highest standard of living of any blacks in the entire world. That is because of their unique historical circumstances of living in a White society that is run by Jews and Yankees for their benefit.

    (2) We can easily test this notion that “slavery” and “Reconstruction” and “Jim Crow” is responsible for the backwardness of African-Americans. Thousands of “African-Americans were resettled in Liberia. They missed out on decades of slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow.

    How is Liberia doing these days? Do a Google search for “General Butt Naked” and you will find out. Freedom failed there too. It is also worth noting that “Jim Crow” was a Southern system of race relations. The North has been integrated since the 1870s and 1880s.

    (3) The critics of abolitionism predicted that abolition would fail in the United States. It had already failed in Haiti and the West Indies. There was a precedent for the creation of the Black Undertow. Freedom also failed in Brazil and Africa.

    (4) “African-Americans” have enjoyed “freedom” and “equality” in the Northeast since before the War Between the States. Blacks were citizens with voting rights in New England in 1860. How have African-Americans fared while living among the Yankees? Freedom failed in Yankeeland too.

    (5) In the Antebellum South, society was organized around the ancient Indo-European honor code. Southerners had a different ethical system. That ethical system stretches back through Northern European culture to beyond even Greek and Roman times.

    If anyone was suffering from a “psychosis,” it was John Brown whose proposed constitution for his multiracial republic was clearly written in a psychotic state. Radical egalitarianism is clearly a type of mental illness in that its premises have never corresponded to empirical observation.

    “Equality” is proclaimed everywhere, but it is never demonstrated. Countless trillions of dollars have been spent on this mad quest to make two races equal which either God or Nature made unequal.

    (6) As previously noted here, Japan was destroyed by the US Air Force and hit by two nuclear bombs. Somewhere around 40 million Chinese died in the twentieth century through war and communism. Germany and Russia were destroyed by the Second World War.

    What about African-Americans? Oh wait, there was “lynching,” right? First, most of the “African-Americans” who were lynched were criminals who were guilty of some kind of heinous crime. Second, “lynching” is a Scots-Irish frontier custom that has nothing to do with race or slavery. More Whites were lynched than “African-Americans.” Third, more blacks die every year from black-on-black homicide than were lynched in the entire Jim Crow era.

    Hiroshima got hit with the atomic bomb. Detroit, which had been integrated since the 1870s, got hit with black people. Unlike Hiroshima, Detroit never recovered.

    (7) This isn’t true.

    “Black Run Amerika” was clearly envisioned by the prewar secessionists. See the Texas Declaration of the Causes of Secession. See the Democratic Party’s attacks on the Republican Party.

    John C. Calhoun imagined the creation of BRA in his 1850 Southern Address which was signed Jefferson Davis and the most prominent Southerners of his time. Later, Strom Thurmond’s Southern Manifesto of 1956 similarly envisioned the creation of BRA.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Manifesto

    (8) The difference between Democratic propaganda and Republican propaganda in the 1850s and 1950s is that the former was prophetic whereas the latter was clearly based on false premises.

    Antebellum Southerners predicted that the abolition of slavery would result in the creation of the Black Undertow. Segregationists like Theodore Bilbo predicted that the abolition of Jim Crow would result in an orgy of black-on-white violent crime.

    What about their opponents? They predicted that “prejudice” was the cause of racial differences. If “prejudice” or “racism” were simply removed, “African-Americans” would thrive in a free labor system and become the equals of White people.

    Guess what happened? Whether it was the Antebellum South or Haiti or New England or Brazil or the Democratic Republic of Congo or Somalia or South Africa or Rhodesia, everywhere freedom was tried, freedom failed spectacularly.

    It was based on the false premise of racial equality. The institutions of discrimination were abolished. In fact, new institutions have been created (i.e., BRA’s institutions) that explicitly discriminate against Whites to uplift “African-Americans.”

    Man cannot make equal what God or Nature has made unequal. It is a futile enterprise which inevitably ends in failure.

    (9) If slavery was the cause of the Black Undertow, then how is that the former slaves in America enjoy the highest standard of living in the world? What about Haiti where slavery was abolished decades earlier and where blacks have been independent for two centuries? What about Liberia where the blacks were liberated and were removed beyond the realm of “white supremacy”? What about Ethiopia or the Congo or Zimbabwe?

  18. 1) How can one NOT acknowledge the near impossibility of a group of people (black Americans) flourishing while and after being subjected to physical and emotional violence for hundreds of years?

    That would hold water if sub-Saharan Africans weren’t WORSE OFF without Whites around. But they are. Slavery’s the only reason “American” Blacks are 20x wealthier than African Blacks.

  19. Southern Bred back again. Short on time, but wanted to say that I appreciate the detailed responses. I have no quarrel with a good deal of what you’re saying. I never said that extreme foolishness and utter nonsense isn’t occurring in Africa. But before I make another long winded comment like my first one and begin vigorously debating and rebutted the specific assertions that I disagree with, I must confess that I mistook the nature of this website and the strong views prevalent here. I was just up for some good and fun discussion about a fascinating topic, not what I consider dogmatic racial positioning and “team” identities (e.g. Black guys vs. White Guys) . Case in point, Svigor mentioned the following earlier in reference to my statement about being black :

    “You might put that first next time so we know not to bother using reason on you.”

    Coming from a Christian perspective, that kind of sentiment about my being black sounds illogical and alien to my ears. As a result, I am actually inclined to say the same thing about to the ineffectiveness of reason when speaking with YOU. Perhaps it’s my own shortcoming (since the whole world isn’t Christian), but it’s hard for me to engage with folks that don’t seem Christ-like in their behavior. Some things and some folks are like oil and water, and in that vein we probably agree. As I get older I am less inclined to be bothered with butting my head against against non-Christian behavior, especially if it serves to only increase the likelihood of sparking my own non-Christian behavior and thinking.

    My apologies for disrupting the flow of your blog entry with outsider views. Perhaps I’ll jump back in if another topic pops up.

    Merry Christmas.

Comments are closed.