Looking at the hysterical reaction of the far-left Media Matters to CNN's March 4 article Are whites racially oppressed? by John Blake, one would think that it had celebrated VDARE.com Editor Peter Brimelow as a Civil Rights advocate. [CNN Article Legitimizes "Pro-White" Commentators, by Todd Gregory, March 4, 2011.]
Blake's article was certainly a step above what normally passes for analysis about race in the Main Stream Media. But it nonetheless does reflect the standard left-wing view on race in America.
The fact that some right wingers are happy about the piece (even Brimelow's reaction was uncharacteristically benign), and that the Left is infuriated, simply shows how the current paradigm on race is so badly slanted against the Right (and, of course, reality).
What got Media Matters so upset?
Usually, MSM pieces on "racism" completely ignore intelligent voices that defend white Americans. At most, they will give a few out-of-context or fabricated sentences to make them look unreasonable. To his great credit, Blake sought out Peter Brimelow and Political Cesspool host James Edwards.
Blake quoted Brimelow as saying "diversity is not strength" and continued
"Some may see him as extreme, but Brimelow argues in his columns that more white Americans are moving toward his stance on immigration and other issues.
"He cites as proof the rise of the Tea Party movement and the racial makeup of Beck's march on Washington. He says more whites recognize, even if it's only on a subliminal level, that they have common interests to defend.
"'Of course, they would deny this, quite sincerely, if you put it to them because the idea of whites defending their interests as whites is quite new,' he says. 'Americans are trained to think that any explicit defense of white interests is 'racist.' "
Blake quoted Edwards as saying, "There is nothing wrong for Jewish organizations to promote the self-interest of Jews or black organizations to promote the interest of blacks…There is no organization to stand up to advance the interests of the dispossessed majority." And that "Anything a white conservative does that a liberal doesn't like is called racism."
In the past, Media Matters did not argue that people like Peter Brimelow should never be interviewed, but rather that articles must emphasize just how much of a racist he is. Thus past hit pieces on VDARE have been headlined "Associated Press identified VDARE.com as an 'immigration-focused Web magazine' — not noting that it publishes 'white nationalists,'" and "Post's Knight omitted VDARE's 'white nationalist' connections" .
But Blake was careful to say that the Southern Poverty Law Center ($PLC to VDARE.com) has named VDARE a "hate site" and Edwards a "white nationalist".(They don't call Edwards's website a "hate site" but they call his radio show "hate radio.")
So what's wrong? Media Matters's Gregory writes:
"The most glaring problem with CNN's treatment of Brimelow and Edwards is that it presents the nature of their views as a he said/she said matter—i.e., the Southern Poverty Law Center says they run hate groups, but they deny that. Any fair-minded look at their public statements would show that they espouse the view that minorities are inferior to white people."
Oh yeah? What evil "public statements" has Brimelow made? The worst Gregory could come up with is
Anglos, to coin a phrase, have not yet begun to fight. They could. But will they in time?
I increasingly feel it hardly matters. This is all going to end in tears anyway.
To adapt another phrase, the historic American nation (= Anglos) will fight on the beaches, or it will fight in the hills. Even outnumbered, Anglos in Texas and America would be a formidable force—one which probably could not be contained within the current political framework.
[ "It's Basically Over For Anglos" In Texas. Or Have They Not Yet Begun To Fight?, By Peter Brimelow, VDARE.com, February 27, 2011]
Even if you considered this to be "Hate speech," it is no more "extreme" than what Blake reported as Brimelow's beliefs.
Gregory's second complaint,
"Another important point about this treatment of white racial anxiety: It is completely unfair to white people who don't hold hateful views of minorities. If you are seeking perspective on 'what white people think about race,' you have committed journalistic malpractice by quoting people like Brimelow and Edwards. They can't be said to be in any way representative of what white people think."
Bunk! Blake did no such thing. He quoted Brimelow and Edwards along side three white liberal academics as well as neoconservative Mona Charen (who apparently thinks that a majority of whites voted for Obama) and a white Tea Party activist, who both gave the colorblind conservative line.
Gregory's complaint was all more spurious because Brimelow was quoted saying that most of the Tea Party "quite sincerely" deny that they are focused on race. Brimelow explicitly said that he did not speak for most conservative whites, much less all whites.
Even for Media Matters low standards, this attack is a stretch. The message is clear: they do not want any Americans exposed to VDARE.com's ideas in any circumstances.
Of course, if we applied the Media Matters standards in the other direction, there is plenty to gripe about in the CNN piece.
Blake describes Southern Poverty Law Center as a "group that tracks extremists." We could object that they should be described as an ideologically-driven left-wing fundraising scam.
Additionally, the piece quotes Tim Wise, [Email him] described as the "author of White Like Me
Thus Gallagher and Wray are portrayed as disinterested academics. But they are both involved in the field of "Whiteness studies", which is on the far left of the already slanted academic field (more on this later). A quick look at their CVs reveals several articles about "white privilege".
Tim Wise is one of the most vitriolic anti-white writers. After the 2010 election, he notoriously yearned for the death of "white folk" stating, "We just have to be patient. And wait for your hearts to stop beating. And stop they will." [An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum, Tim Wise, Daily Kos, November 3, 2010]
But Blake's CNN article absolutely no mention of the anti-white biases of these men.
The double standards in reporting aside, what about Blake's initial question: "Are whites racially oppressed?"
But Blake does very little to actually examine this question. He does not talk about how the Attorney General of the United States specifically stated that Hate Crimes laws were not designed to protect whites or Christians. He did not even mention Affirmative Action: i.e. government mandated discrimination against whites.
Of course, there is an important qualification to be made here. Unlike blacks in the time of Jim Crow, whites are oppressing themselves. If White Americans suddenly decided they would no longer accept anti-white discrimination, the problem would disappear overnight.
In fact, the real question of the CNN article is: Do whites believe they are racially oppressed? Blake gave seven indicators to suggest they are, and it's worth going through each one.
"U.S. Census Bureau projections that whites will become a minority by 2050 are fueling fears that whiteness no longer represents the norm. This fear has been compounded by the recent recession, which hit whites hard."
This is of course completely true, but how much whites recognize this as a group is hard to say. I have not seen a single poll about immigration that even asks whites about the racial aspect of immigration. And absent Pat Buchanan, I can't think of a single major commentator who is willing to say this is something to be concerned about.
"A recent Public Religion Research Institute poll found 44% of Americans surveyed identify discrimination against whites as being just as big as bigotry aimed at blacks and other minorities. The poll found 61% of those identifying with the Tea Party held that view, as did 56% of Republicans and 57% of white evangelicals."
I took a look at the full report of this poll, and amazingly, it simply did not break down the results by race. It is safe to assume that the percentage of whites who believe this fact is above the 44% overall figure for "Americans".
One could interpret these polls in many ways. It could be that whites see themselves oppressed, but it could also mean they are sick of minorities whining about discrimination, or both.
"A Texas group recently formed the 'Former Majority Association for Equality' to offer college scholarships to needy white men. Colby Bohannan, [Email him] the group's president, says white men don't have scholarship options available to minorities. 'White males are definitely not a majority' anymore, he says."
This is the only concrete example of whites really treating themselves as a conscious interest group, however. And it's just a few brave people who raised money for a few 500 dollar scholarships. This is crumbs compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars in minority scholarships given each year to corporate and government funded groups such as the United Negro College Fund.
I once spoke to someone who did fundraising for an elite Southern university who told me that so many alumni asked about scholarships just for whites that the school had to come up with a boilerplate response: it does not offer white scholarships, but individuals may set one up on their own. Unfortunately, there aren't too many people willing to openly advance this idea like Bohannan. If more of these White Scholarship Funds pop up, it will be worth taking notice.
"Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh argued in a radio show that Republicans are an 'oppressed minority' in need of a 'civil rights movement' because its members willingly sit in the 'back of the bus' and 'are afraid of the fire hoses and the dogs.'
"Fox talk-show host Glenn Beck led a march on Washington (attended primarily by white people) to 'restore honor,' and once called President Obama a racist with a 'deep-seated hatred for white people and white culture.' He later said he regretted making that comment."
Neither Glen Beck nor Limbaugh were saying that whites are oppressed. While the GOP and Tea Parties are certainly white "implicit communities", neither Limbaugh nor Beck have made that connection—in fact they explicitly deny it.
No one at Beck's rally complained about whites being an oppressed minority. Everyone bent over backward to invoke the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. ABC News reported that his niece, Alveda King, told the adoring tea partiers "that she hopes that white privilege will become human privilege and that America will soon repent of the sin of racism and return itself to honor." [Alveda King Speaks at Glenn Beck's DC Rally, Kevin Dolak, August 28, 2010]
"Conservative news outlets ran a number of stories last summer highlighting an incident from the 2008 elections, in which activists from the New Black Panther Party appeared to be intimidating voters at a polling place. Those claims were never proven."
Simply looking at video and testimony by poll observers that the Panthers said "you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker" is proof enough. The only person it has not been proven to is Attorney General Eric Holder—whom whistle blowers say refused to address the offense because the victims were white. The fact that Republicans and conservatives are willing to fight this is encouraging.
"More colleges are offering courses in 'Whiteness Studies' as white Americans cope with becoming what one commentator calls a 'dispossessed majority group.'"
Here Blake is hopelessly confused. "Whiteness studies" sis not an example of treating White Americans as an oppressed group, but an effort to make whites realize they are the oppressors. The late, great Sam Francis explained,
"The people who peddle whiteness studies make no pretense about their real purpose: to change how whites think about race so as to make whites feel guilt about who they are and what they or their ancestors have achieved and thereby to destroy whites' capacity to resist being shoved aside by non-whites" [The Real Meaning Of 'Whiteness Studies', June 30, 2003]
And, lest I be accused by Media Matters as relying on "racist" sources like Francis, the Washington Post described Whiteness studies as follows:
"The field is based on a left-leaning interpretation of history by scholars who say the concept of race was created by a rich white European and American elite, and has been used to deny property, power and status to nonwhite groups for two centuries.
"Advocates of whiteness studies—most of whom are white liberals who hope to dismantle notions of race—believe that white Americans are so accustomed to being part of a privileged majority they do not see themselves as part of a race." [Hue and Cry on 'Whiteness Studies' An Academic Field's Take on Race Stirs Interest and Anger, by Darryl Fears, Washington Post, June 20, 2003]
One of the pioneers in Whiteness Studies is Noel Ignatiev, a card-carrying communist former Harvard academic who publishes a journal called Race Traitor, the stated mission of which is to "abolish the white race" and the motto of which is "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity"
Blake must have just assumed that the fact that "Whiteness studies" was the white equivalent to "Chicano studies" and "African American Studies" which play up the victim card of each race. But the analogy is faulty because, as David Horowitz has aptly explained, "Black studies celebrates blackness, Chicano studies celebrates Chicanos, women's studies celebrates women, and white studies attacks white people as evil."
If these were the extent of resistance to anti-White discrimination, we would be in big trouble.
Fortunately, it is not that simple. There is clearly a growing segment of whites who are beginning to realize that their government and elites stand against their interests. But as Peter Brimelow stated, it is largely on a subliminal level.
Or anonymous—some whites know the score, but are afraid of speaking out publicly. One need only look at the comment threads at most news articles or YouTube videos that deal with race to see far more politically incorrect thoughts than anything written at VDARE.com.
Are whites racially oppressed is no exception. The article is one of the most popular posted at CNN, with over 8,000 comments and some 40,000 FaceBook recommendations. While the comments are mixed, the majority support the concept with such heterodox thoughts as ""Anti-racist" is a code word for anti-White" and "Every white country on earth is told to become multicultural and multiracial. EVERY white country is expected to end its own race and end its own culture. No one asks that of ANY non-white country".
These thoughts could become more explicit and less anonymous—which is exactly what Media Matters and its backers fear.
They do not want Americans exposed to VDARE.com and other unapproved sources because they are afraid that Americans will agree.
Ellison Lodge (email him) works on Capitol Hill.
