November 25, 2012

Whiteness as the recessive identity in 21st Century America

It's widely assumed that in the future everybody (except maybe blacks) will try hard to grab for the brass ring of White Privilege by identifying as white whenever possible. In reality, the opposite seems to be happening.

For example, here's a dull NYT op-ed on the recent Puerto Rican statehood plebiscite by a New York literary agent named David Royston Patterson, who was born and raised in North Carolina. He doesn't even have much of an opinion on the subject. What he does have is an identity: Puerto Rican. 

He's Puerto Rican in that modern sense, like the way Obama is black, only nobody can even notice by looking at this Tarheel (U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, '96).
Will Puerto Rico Be America’s 51st State? 
By DAVID ROYSTON PATTERSON 
ONE of the little-noticed results of the Nov. 6 elections was a plebiscite held in Puerto Rico on the island’s relationship with the United States. The outcome was murky, much like the last century’s worth of political history between Washington and San Juan, and the mainland’s confused or disinterested attitude toward Puerto Rico that abetted it. ... 
Despite what my name suggests, I am Puerto Rican. I grew up with a mother from the island and a Scots-Irish father in a small town in rural North Carolina, at a time when there were so few Hispanics in the area that my mom liked to go to a Mexican restaurant just to speak some Spanish.

Wouldn't that suggest he is as as Scots-Irish by nature as he is Puerto Rican? And a lot more Scots-Irish by nurture? So, why not say you are both?

Of course, a lot of privileges come with identifying as a Puerto Rican that don't come with identifying as a Scots-Irishman.
That was 20-odd years ago. The local Latino population has grown so much since then that my mom, who retired two years ago, was able to work for a decade as a translator for the local school system. 

Thank God.
I was used to being “discovered” as Puerto Rican. Sometimes when this happened, I’d be called upon to explain things. In fourth grade, that meant being assigned to give the class — half black kids, and half white kids — a show-and-tell presentation on Puerto Rico and its strange status as a self-ruling commonwealth, with its own governor and legislature, the American president as its head of state, but whose residents lack a vote in national presidential elections or voting representation in Congress despite being American citizens. 
I was asked, “Do you eat a lot of tacos?” The answer, “Probably not any more than you do.” I was also asked, by one of the two dark-haired girls that I had a crush on, this one a doctor’s daughter, “Why don’t we just sell it?” 
Even fourth graders can be left speechless. It later occurred to me that I should have answered: “You can’t just sell it. It’s not your beach house!” 
If Puerto Rico were our beach house, we’d pay more attention to it.

And pay more attention to me. Did I mention I'm Puerto Rican?

(But did I also imply that I'm the kind of Puerto Rican whose clan has beach houses? It's so hard to get the balance just right.)
It has long been conventional wisdom among many Puerto Ricans that the status quo will hold because neither of the American national parties has decided that converting the island into a state would benefit them politically. 
Paired with this is the conventional wisdom that the Republican Party doesn’t actually want nearly four million more Hispanic voters, and their corresponding electoral votes, at play in national elections. (Both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum did pronounce themselves pro-statehood when courting votes — and fund-raising dollars — on the island during last year’s Republican primaries.) 
When Spain granted Puerto Rico to the United States in 1898, President William McKinley initiated a project that he defined as “benevolent assimilation” on an island filled with people who already had a strong identity of their own and who, of course, primarily spoke Spanish. 
Some of the same people who had resisted rule by Spain, and who had even achieved an extremely brief autonomy — nine months — for the island before the American Navy’s arrival, continued to resist rule by the United States. 
Luis Muñoz Rivera.
Among them was a family member — the poet, journalist and statesman Luis Muñoz Rivera. It was during the Spanish reign that he had written, “Annexionism had always seemed to me absurd, depressing and inconceivable.” Though Mr. Muñoz Rivera continued to make the case for autonomy, he was also essential in the creation of some useful accommodations to American rule, like the Jones Act. 
Luis Muñoz Rivera’s son, Luis Muñoz Marín, was the first democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico — and my grandmother’s first cousin.

In other words, let me also make clear to the kind of Puerto Ricans who read the New York Times that I am the right kind of Puerto Rican, if you know what I mean.
David Royston Patterson is a literary agent at Foundry Literary + Media in New York.

61 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since all of humanity started in Africa, it's time to declare all of us as 'Africans'. I want my entitlements now.

stari_momak said...

"Why don't we just sell it?"

Darn good question.

Anonymous said...

Well, according to the International Herald Tribune, Anglo America is finished:

"The same newspaper carried an interview with Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, who said that Anglo-Saxons no longer dominated U.S. politics.

“Demographic change is allowing us to start exercising political power,” the Democratic congressman told ABC. “In the past it was Anglo-Saxon communities that dominated national politics. Now we’re seeing a change.”

According to Spain’s La Razón, the conservative Madrid government has praised President Obama’s “Hispanidad”, noting the president’s belief in the key role of Hispanic culture in his country’s future.

Interest in Hispanic-related developments in the U.S. has even reached Avilés, the northern Spanish birthplace of the founder of St. Augustine.

The local La Voz de Avilés, reporting on the claim that Don Pedro hosted the first Thanksgiving in America, declared: “That would be the last straw for the Anglos.”"

("Thanksgiving's Hispanic Roots, America's Hispanic Future," Harvey Morris)

Syon

Anonymous said...

"In other words, let me also make clear to the kind of Puerto Ricans who read the New York Times that I am the right kind of Puerto Rican, if you know what I mean."

Sr. Royston, there ain't enough Boricuas like you to huff and puff and blow away a single balsawood shithouse on the whole Isla del Encanto even with help from the entire population of Newyorqueño conscripts.

I too, grew up in a small hick NC town with parents of Scotch-Irish-English-German and Lumbee Indian ancestry, lived in Latin America, made successful and mutually profitible long term merchantile business dealings with sane Puerto Ricans, am married to a "Latina" and I know what I'm talkin' about peckerwood.

Puerto Rico is a basketcase "Charles Foxtrot" POS pueblo all the way around and deserves summary independence. No jodas con tus pendejadas en las páginas de NYT.

Castilian said...

If the economic and political elites of the future are Hispanic, and if said Hispanics are like this guy, then I suppose we have nothing to worry about, because the Hispanics will just be people like me: i.e., Anglo-Iberians. Move along, nothing to see here. European culture will continue, just with the Spaniards leading the pack again, like they did in centuries past.

Now excuse me whilst I go bask in my non-whiteness at my university department's late Thanksgiving party. Viva la raza!

Anonymous said...

Do yourselves a favor and google Linda Martin Alcoff (oppressed white Hispanic) and Malea Powell (oppressed white Indian) for some academic examples of oppressed whites who know how to deploy their watered-down ancestry to their own advantage.

Anonymous said...

America is becoming high comedy... I wish I wasn't living hear so that the tears wouldn't get in the way of the laughs.

Anonymous said...

Interesting. His facebook likes consist of standard SWPL cultural markers: This American Life, Slate Culture, NPR, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Barack Obama, The Baseball Codes, and stuff about sabermetrics; however, he doesn't like *anything* related to Puerto Rico or hispanic culture.

Anonymous said...

whoops... hear = here

Semi-Employed White Guy said...

I was also asked, by one of the two dark-haired girls that I had a crush on, this one a doctor’s daughter, “Why don’t we just sell it?”

Even fourth graders can be left speechless.


Probably the most intelligent question ever posed in the New York Times and it comes from a fourth grader!

It later occurred to me that I should have answered: “You can’t just sell it. It’s not your beach house!”

It's not a beach house. It's more like a timeshare. You can't sell it, because it costs more to maintain than it's worth. You can't even give it away.

Anonymous said...

If the plan is to make everyone want to be white, wouldn't that require making an explicit virtue of whiteness, rather than an unearned privilege?

Hunsdon said...

Their Scotch-Irish or our Scotch-Irish? (To the people who hate that, well, I'm sorry. It's almost become iSteve mythos.)

anony-mouse said...

'When Spain granted Puerto Rico to the United States in 1898...'

Um, er.

I hate to remind people here the circumstances by which PR became an American protectorate. PR didn't quite join the US as the US sort of joined PR.

I suppose instead of 'selling' PR, the US could just return it. Its owners may be about to lose Catalonia, so it might make up.

corvinus said...

I was also asked, by one of the two dark-haired girls that I had a crush on, this one a doctor’s daughter, “Why don’t we just sell it?”

Who'd want it?

Bohemian Quarterback said...

Well, it could be worse, he could be a Massachussetts Senator/Harvard Professor who got ahead by pretending a minority heritage is 1/32 fictional Indian somewhere...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the way out of this mess is actually the reverse of what's implied in the article- for all whites to jump on the minority bandwagon, declare themselves the great-great-great-great grandson of a Bantu peanut inspector, or whatever, and muck with the process.

DYork said...

He looks Louis CKish.

Which would be appropriate.

Louis CK - Being White

Anonymous said...

I'm Asian, I've never told anyone this in real life but I want to be White.

Old fogey said...

The amazing thing to me is that we are letting the people in Puerto Rico decide if they want to become a state instead of asking the people of the United States if they want Puerto Rico to become a state. Unbelievable.

Whiskey said...

Bohemian is right, and Elizabeth Warren was always going to be on the other side.

However, the danger of every White person jumping on that bandwagon is that you'll have the reverse paper bag tests, and blacker/darker people will have greater privilege/standing/power.

Most of this stuff is driven by White women. NY Beta Times is completely devoid of testosterone or things men like. What stands out for that guy is the complete lack of testosterone in him. Hence the beard.

Jason Sylvester said...

Actually, this kind of thing makes total sense since the "Civil Rights movement" ascendency as an American Mythical Moment of Triumph, right up there with the Revolution, the 'Civil War' (as seen through abolitionist eyes in the history texts we all grew up with), and the "Greatest Generation" narrative that has hit its apogee just as the last of those who fought WWII were passing. On that last, I highly doubt any of those men who assaulted Utah beach thought they were doing so on behalf of such things as "Disparate Impact" - or any other of our ongoing diversity-mongering projects - that would effectively work against their grand and great-grand children's interests, but let's put that aside.

Basically, what you make (1) cool and, more importantly, (2) profitable to "be," to self-identify as, will rule the day. In the nineties, I went to work for a company in Oklahoma City, now defunct, that managed customer service for pagers (remember those?). An attractive blond, with green eyes, that I worked with informed me one day that she was worried about her son, who was down with some serious encounter with the flu: she was taking him to the "Indian Clinic" as soon as she got off work. Though I have should have known better - I've lived in Oklahoma for most of my life, and have seen many similar such examples of same - I burst out incredulously "you're Indian?" like a novice white person fresh to the Sooner land, or any "non-Native" person for that matter, might. In this specific case, my lapse into visual reality was prompted by the fact that the "Indian" in question looked like a bit chubbier version of Brigitte Nielson, circa "Rocky IV." And her five year old son looked like Dolph Lundgren would have, if he'd had the same blondish crop of hair paired with brown eyes...

So, yeah: this guy Patterson insisting on his status as "Puerto Rican" - hell, I look more Hispanic than he does, in a world of visual reality divorced from the Racial Spoils Sweepstakes - surprises me not in the least.

One is tempted to call it the Yglesias Syndrome, except the phenomenon far outdates him and his recent epiphany that he was, and should identify as, Hispanic. I'd wager that a solid quarter of the American Indians in Oklahoma, as carried on the tribal rolls in 2012, look more like Brigitte Nielson or Dolf Lundgren than they do like brown-eyed, brown-haired white boy me: intermarriage/breeding with lots of white folks you live in close proximity with to the third and fourth generations will do that for you. In Oklahoma, this has been going on since 1889, more or less, and the result is you get a lot of folks who, visually, look like they are born partakers of the evil fruit of "White Privilege," who can, nevertheless, legally and justifiably take their blue-eyed, tow-headed kid to the American Indian clinic for the taxpayer funded treatment of ailments both serious and minor.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course; I'm all for sick kids of whatever stripe getting to see Doctors who can help them: but pretending folks who look like Dolph Lundren clone are part of the ancestral and generational tab owed to Red Cloud's ghost breaks down, on any number of levels, at some point.

Anonymous said...

I knew one guy back in high school who declared himself "Hispanic" on college applications, simply because he happened to have one grandmother who was born in Spain. I had always just assumed he was a garden-variety Italian-American, but I'm sure he managed to snow the admissions officers. The kicker was that, had you asked him outside of an admissions context, he would have freely admitted that he didn't think of himself as anything other than a typical white American; calling himself "Hispanic" was just a matter of checking a box, and nothing more.

Anonymous said...

"I'm Asian, I've never told anyone this in real life but I want to be White."

Looking at all the extreme plastic surgeries, skin bleaching, hair dying and color eye contact wearing Asians do, you are not alone. Many of us already knew.

Lugash said...

It's not a beach house. It's more like a timeshare. You can't sell it, because it costs more to maintain than it's worth. You can't even give it away.

Maybe we can gin up a war with Cuba and/or Venezuela, take a dive, and then unload P.R. to the 'victors'.

alexis said...

This is from the Onion, right?

Anonymous said...

Rivera jr has an impressive resemblance to the old man. Imperious gaze, lantern jaw, ruddy complexion. Too bad he's not seeing the bigger picture. The old man is probably spinning horizontally.

Gilbert Pinfold.

Matthew said...

OMG, this guy was asked (by fourth graders) whether he ate lots of tacos and whether we could just "sell" Puerto Rico. Oh, the unbearable oppression he must suffer. How dare fourth graders be so uncouth, so unfeeling.

I propose not selling Puerto Rico, but paying it $100 billion (~$27,000 per resident) plus a mutual defense accord and free trade agreement, to go away, with all of its present residents.

Statehood isn't something Puerto Rico has the right to "demand," anymore than one member of a couple has the right to "demand" marriage. Marriage must be agreed to by both parties. The relationship can be severed by either member of the party, however, whether the other agrees to it or not. Puerto Ricans may want statehood. That's fine, but do we want statehood for them?

Matthew said...

This guy looks like he just came charging down out of the Scottish Highlands with his claymore over his head ready to assault the English invaders. Well, except that he'd be dragging his claymore behind him, given that he appears to have the upper-body strength of a Keebler elf...

Anonymous said...

Why couldn't he like comb his hair for a photo?

AMac said...

"It has long been conventional wisdom among many Puerto Ricans that the status quo will hold because neither of the American national parties has decided that converting the island into a state would benefit them politically."

Pattersoñito then channels the analysis of his wise Latina and wise Latino compatriots. Republicans:

"the Republican Party doesn’t actually want nearly four million more Hispanic voters, and their corresponding electoral votes, at play in national elections."

Check. On to the Democrats:

"[crickets]"

Such valuable insights from these conventional Puerto Ricans.

Gene's Foot said...

"Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course; I'm all for sick kids of whatever stripe getting to see Doctors who can help them: but pretending folks who look like Dolph Lundren clone are part of the ancestral and generational tab owed to Red Cloud's ghost breaks down, on any number of levels, at some point."

- What's wrong with it is the view that there IS an ancestral and generational tab owed to Red Cloud's ghost, or rather the descendants who benefit immensely, regardless of whether they are !00% brown or 99% white. That's true for any of the minority groups getting privileged treatment. Screw them all and the pony they rode in on. You should get what you work for.

The Wanderer said...

""Why don't we just sell it?"

Darn good question."


Who wants to buy a ghetto? You can't kick the people out or there would be an international outcry. So you're basically buying a few million dependents.

Anonymous said...

Castilian said...
If the economic and political elites of the future are Hispanic, and if said Hispanics are like this guy, then I suppose we have nothing to worry about, because the Hispanics will just be people like me: i.e., Anglo-Iberians. Move along, nothing to see here. European culture will continue, just with the Spaniards leading the pack again, like they did in centuries past.

Now excuse me whilst I go bask in my non-whiteness at my university department's late Thanksgiving party. Viva la raza!

___________

I'm not real sure what to make of your screed Castilian, but I find it strange that the Novo Hispano-Iberian ascendancy on the world stage now consists of granting permanant residency to Russians and Chinese who will purchase a house of at least $200K in value.

Anonymous said...

I think independence is the way to go for Puerto Rico. They won't have to deal with the nasty Anglos anymore.

Anonymous said...

http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/cloud-atlas-edelstein-schulz-2012-10/

ben tillman said...

I knew one guy back in high school who declared himself "Hispanic" on college applications, simply because he happened to have one grandmother who was born in Spain. I had always just assumed he was a garden-variety Italian-American, but I'm sure he managed to snow the admissions officers. The kicker was that, had you asked him outside of an admissions context, he would have freely admitted that he didn't think of himself as anything other than a typical white American; calling himself "Hispanic" was just a matter of checking a box, and nothing more.

Some Indians believe their Indian ancestors are descended from the Vikings.

Lizard Writes said...

Yeah but it is CRAZY for us to speak of Whites being wiped out, right? Isn't this pretty much what happened to the Indo-Europeans who settled in India? They got "absorbed", i.e. went extinct as a distinct group. And boy, that worked out great for India.

Chicago said...

He looks like a safe type of PR who can explain them to the book and newspaper reading white audience. Heck, he's been doing it since the fourth grade, he should be good at it by now. At least now he gets paid. Perhaps he should start wearing a beret; that would increase his exoticism quotient and might lead to increased opportunities for him.

ben tillman said...

He looks Louis CKish.

Which would be appropriate.


Are you implying he's Jewish?

Matthew said...

OT, but the Boston Herald has an article this morning lamenting...the disparity between whites and blacks in the lengths of their commutes:

"Among Greater Boston workers, white commuters who drive have the shortest trips to work — averaging less than 27 minutes each way — and black bus riders the longest, exceeding 46 minutes each way. But a gap exists even among those who take the same mode, with shorter commutes for white workers whether they drive or ride mass transit. The biggest gap is by bus. Black commuters spend an extra 66 hours a year waiting, riding, and transferring than white bus riders."

The article hints at the fact that some of the disparity is due to the differing reasons whites and blacks may use mass transit. For me (and most whites) mass transit is a strategic decision: does it save us money while not costing too much time (mass transit almost never saves you time). Some whites use it to be environmentally conscientious, but still not if it costs them too much time.

OTOH, blacks who use the bus do so mostly because they can't afford to own a car, or have had their licenses suspended.

Interesting that the press never worried much as commute times got longer and longer for white, middle class schlubs, who have to live 45 minutes from work to find a safe, affordable neighborhood where their kids won't be raped, assaulted, mugged, robbed and/or murdered merely for being white.

Oh, and they never worry about longer commute caused by mass immigration.

Of course I understand that Boston, unlike many other cities, has its working-class Irish shock troops to keep blacks in line.

rjp said...

In other words, let me also make clear to the kind of Puerto Ricans who read the New York Times that I am the right kind of Puerto Rican, if you know what I mean.

The question is whether David Royston Patterson is la cucaracha or not?

Me thinks yes.

Anonymous said...

Who'd want it?

Looking at its ethnic/cultural make up, Cuba would be an ideal owner, give it to them.

Anonymous said...

The amazing thing to me is that we are letting the people in Puerto Rico decide if they want to become a state instead of asking the people of the United States if they want Puerto Rico to become a state. Unbelievable.

It should be both, both parties have to agree.

Paul Mendez said...

"Why don't we just sell it?"

Don't laugh.

A friend of mine made a fortune when real estate was hot taking apartments condo. I wanted him to help me develop a realistic plan for selling off Puerto Rico the same way -- letting Puerto Ricans keep their privately owned land, and then giving them first rights to buy government-owned land and assets. Instead of setting up a condo association, you set up a provisional government. Sell the rest of the island to the highest bidders.

I figured I could get enough funding from multinationals to at least pay my salary to lobby Congress for the next decade or two about the idea.

Anonymous said...

Latin American attitude toward US used to be used 'Yankee go home and leave us alone'.

Now, it's 'Gringo, let us in'.

Not just people but the entire nation.

Mexico might as well be state 52.

Anonymous said...

That cons in the South tend to be wary with blacks but cons in SW tend to be easy with Mexers tells us something. If Texas had tons of blacks than browns, would Bush family be calling for unity of whites and blacks?

Moonlight Rambler said...

Why did so many Asian-Americans vote Democratic?

Maybe they are used to taking handouts. After all, Asian countries got a lot of handouts from US after WWII to rebuild their economies. So, even though Asians did work hard, they also got special favors from us, and so they may have developed 'special favor' mentality. Think of all the US aid that went to Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, etc.

Another thing... the shame culture thing may be less effective over here than over there. Asia is still a shame culture, and so, many Asians may not wanna be known as 'dependent on government'.
But in America, Asians can disappear among the crowd. And America today is not a shame culture society at all. Asian-Americans will feel less shame in taking handouts here than over in Asia. So, Asians feel far less stigma about taking stuff from government over here.

Also, Asians might have this view that AMERICA IS RICH, AND SO, AMERICA CAN AFFORD TO GIVE PEOPLE STUFF. For most of modern Asian history, Asians likely saw the world in terms of WEST RICH and EAST POOR. Though Asia had made great strides, old habits die hard.
And even today, Americans are still much richer than even Asians in advanced nations.

Hapalong Cassidy said...

Don't know if the above anonymous poster was joking, but I'm not. I'm half white and half asian, and I've always wished I was white. Being Asian in America is the worst of both worlds; you dont get affirmative action bennies and you have to put up with racial slurs and insensitive comments. I care nothing for Asian culture, yet I will jump at the opportunity to call out anti-Asian racism wherever I see it. For the sole reason that whatever is being said reflects on me, whether I want it to or not. Anyway, I just hope my 3/4 white son doesn't grow up with the same complex and passes for white with no trouble. Heck, I hope he passes for Hispanic rather than be thought of as Asian

Reg Cæsar said...

I'm Asian, I've never told anyone this in real life but I want to be White.

No, you're not. You're Truth.

Nice try, though.

Dennis Dale said...

I want to know if this grasping a--hole speaks Spanish.

This piece comes off like a resume seeking a position in the burgeoning field of professional Hispanics.

"Sorry, Patty, we're absolutely swamped with applications here! Have you considered broadening your skill set by going gay? In this political economy you can never have too many qualifications!"

CMC said...

Is it just me, or does this guy have at least a hint of the Habsburg jaw?

Anonymous said...

"The amazing thing to me is that we are letting the people in Puerto Rico decide if they want to become a state instead of asking the people of the United States if they want Puerto Rico to become a state. Unbelievable.

It should be both, both parties have to agree." - Congress will have to approve it I think. Which they promptly will.

Paul Mendez said...

Congress will have to approve it I think. Which they promptly will.

Yikes!

Guess I had assumed state legislatures would have to approve, like a Constitutional Amendment. But Article 4 Section 3 simply says, "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union..."

Not even anything about a 2/3rds majority.

That really sucks!

Truth said...

"Reg Cæsar said...

I'm Asian, I've never told anyone this in real life but I want to be White.

No, you're not. You're Truth."

No he isn't there, Reggie.

Anonymous said...

"When Spain granted Puerto Rico to America in 1898.."

Make that,,,

"When America siezed Puerto Rico from Spain after an uncalled for war of aggression with no legal or moral justification."

Anonymous said...

I can't for the very life of me understand what good Puerto Rico has ever been to the USA. It has not switched to speaking English, is quite poor and has no vital resources Ameica needs or wants. I have never been able to see the upside for America in holding on to the place.
The whole Spanish-American war was a disaster for America. The USA obtained places deep in the Pacific which eventually led to war with Japan. In the Phillippines Americans committed the very atrocites they falsely accused the Spanish of doing in Cuba. Talk about a Pyrhic victory.

ben r. tillman said...

"When America siezed Puerto Rico from Spain after an uncalled for war of aggression with no legal or moral justification."

And who opposed that war of aggression? The "racist" Senators from the South like Ben Tillman:

Ah, if we have no other consideration, if no feeling of humanity, no love of our fellows, no regard for others' rights, if nothing but our self-interest shall actuate us in this crisis, let me say to you that if we go madly on in the direction of crushing these people [of the Philippines] into subjection and submission we will do so at the cost of many, many thousands of the flower of American youth. There are 10,000,000 of these people, some of them fairly well civilized, and running to the extreme of naked savages, who are reported in our press dispatches as having stood out in the open and fired their bows and arrows, not flinching from the storm of shot and shell thrown into their midst by the American soldiers there.

The report of the battle claims that we lost only seventy-five killed and a hundred and odd wounded; but the first skirmish has carried with it what anguish, what desolation, to homes in a dozen States! How many more victims are we to offer up on this altar of Mammon or national greed? When those regiments march back, if they return with decimated ranks, as they are bound to come, if we have to send thousands and tens of thousands of re-enforcements there to press onward until we have subdued those ten millions, at whose door will lie these lives -- their blood shed for what? An idea. If a man fires upon the American flag, shoot the last man and kill him, no matter how many Americans have to be shot to do it.


http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/gilded/empire/text7/tillman.pdf

ATBOTL said...

As whites decline, expect more people to opt out of whiteness on the flimsiest excuses.

In a diverse society, no one wants to be part of the one group that doesn't look out for each other.

Anonymous said...

I grew up in a blue-collar town in a rural area with a half-Puerto Rican "redneck" of sorts (the term is a little unfair to him, but succinct). If memory serves, he had pink skin, blondish-brown hair and light brown eyes; he could have easily passed for German or Polish. His late father (God rest his soul) had darker hair and skin, but culturally, the elder man was a pretty typical rural American with a strong local accent, whose main hobbies seem to have been deer hunting, smoking, and absentmindedly making halfhearted threats of violence against his children.

My acquaintance, though, seems to have been too far down the social ladder to try to play Patterson's game of claiming grievances and angling for unofficial affirmative action benefits. The only time he invoked his Puerto Rican-ness that I recall was after he told a mildly racist joke, invoking his own minority status to defuse the ire of an offended party. Rather than making a career of whining to the New York Times, he ended up joining the Marines.

Alcalde Jaime Miguel Curleo said...

The Weekly Standard used to have a guy who would write updates about Venezuela. The updates were kind of uninteresting (except for learning how many tens of millions of bucks get wasted just on political TV advertising in an oil-welfare state during an average month). But what really killed me was the byline on these pieces--can't be bothered to look it up now but I seem to remember it was something like "Thor Gundersson Valhallasmund" etc. The irony here of just another rant about "outside influences" and interlopers from a standard-issue Venezuelan jerk originating under this specific kind of name may well have been lost on the TWS subscription base. (--unless he was merely making use of a sarcastic nom de plume a la John Heartfield)

David said...

I come from the South. I can tell you anyone in the South who signs and goes by three names, and is in his 20s or 30s, has a significant likelihood of being a lunatic. The type who belongs to every "anti-racist" group and has memorized every word of To Kill a Mockingbird. If not those things, then some other weirdness. It's anecdotal but trust me.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps he uses three names (or includes middle initial) because NY already has a famous David Patterson.