{"id":158,"date":"2011-07-22T19:55:29","date_gmt":"2011-07-22T23:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=158"},"modified":"2011-07-22T19:55:29","modified_gmt":"2011-07-22T23:55:29","slug":"american-exceptionalism-and-identity-politics-reconsidered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/07\/american-exceptionalism-and-identity-politics-reconsidered.html","title":{"rendered":"American Exceptionalism and Identity Politics Reconsidered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dean Malik has recently written a piece for American Thinker <\/em>in which he contrasts what he calls \u201cAmerican exceptionalism\u201d (AE, from this point onward) with \u201cidentity politics.\u201d\u00a0 The former is good, he maintains, while the latter is bad.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

This essay is problematic for a variety of reasons\u2014questionable presuppositions and unfair distortions continually rear their ugly heads.\u00a0 First, I will focus on Malik\u2019s comments concerning AE.\u00a0 Next, I will turn to his account of identity politics, with particularly close attention paid to his remarks in connection to what he refers to as \u201cwhite supremacy.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

American Exceptionalism (AE)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interestingly, Malik fails to explicitly define the notion for which his essay is an apology.\u00a0 Fortunately, this in and of itself doesn\u2019t pose much of an obstacle to engaging his argument, for what he does <\/em>say coincides closely enough with prevailing understandings of AE.\u00a0 The idea that Malik appears to champion is the doctrine that America is the only land in all of human history to have been founded upon the principle<\/em> that such contingencies as race, ethnicity, and religion\u2014considerations that define the character of every other society the world over\u2014are irrelevant to membership in that association that we know as the United States. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The historically dubious nature of this statement of America\u2019s founding aside, contra Malik, while the doctrine of AE certainly entails the idea of an America that has always \u201cstood for the promise of escape from tribal loyalties and hatreds, the limitations of social heredity, and\u2026the cruelties of religious intolerance,\u201d it is just as certainly not <\/em>interchangeable with it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even a society all of whose members recognized the importance of racial, ethnic, and other particular bonds\u2014what Malik disdainfully refers to as \u201ctribal loyalties\u201d\u2014could just as passionately and stridently aspire to ameliorate \u201chatreds,\u201d privileges owing to \u201csocial heredity,\u201d and \u201cthe cruelties of religious intolerance.\u201d\u00a0 Like the Jacobins of the eighteenth century in reply to whose abstract and universalistic ideology Edmund Burke formulated the most eloquent statement of what has since been recognized as conservatism, Malik is guilty of precisely the same charges that Burke leveled against his rivals.\u00a0 Malik is guilty, not just of error, but of hubris.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As Burke observed, by the rationalist abstractions\u2014\u201cthe Rights of Man\u201d and the concomitant idea that only those governments erected upon \u201cthe consent\u201d of \u201cthe People\u201d were legitimate\u2014of the defenders of the French Revolution, every government, however benevolent, stands condemned.\u00a0 Similarly, if AE refers to something uniquely American, and if this something is America\u2019s \u201cpromise of escape from tribal loyalties and hatreds, the limitations of social heredity,\u201d and \u201cthe cruelties of religious intolerance,\u201d then what Malik implies is that every other society that has ever existed offers no such relief. \u00a0<\/p>\n

There is indeed much about Americafor which to be thankful. \u00a0My admiration for its distinction as a nation is second to none.\u00a0 But surely no one believes that what fundamentally distinguishes our country from every other, <\/em>what renders it \u201cexceptional,\u201d <\/em>is that we eschew racially, ethnically, and religiously-oriented intolerance while other nations do not.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s founders were overwhelmingly of a single race, a single ethnicity, and a single religion.\u00a0 They were white, English, and Protestant.\u00a0 They suffered no delusions regarding their identity, and never could have dreamt of any reason why they should be in the least bit apologetic for it.\u00a0 The country of which they were pioneers (not <\/em>\u201cimmigrants\u201d) was forged through the very same historical accidents\u2014bloodshed, violence, slavery\u2014that characterized the origins of every other human society, it is true, but because these phenomena assumed an inter-racial character in America, our founders were that much more self-conscious of their distinguishing features than they otherwise would have been had their conflicts and achievements occurred within a racially, ethnically, and religiously homogenous context.<\/p>\n

Neither is there a shred of evidence that our founders saw themselves as creating a nation within which the members of every conceivable racial, ethnic, and religious group could and would co-exist as equal citizens<\/em>.\u00a0 Being Christian, it is doubtless correct that they attributed equal worth <\/em>or equality before God <\/em>to all persons.\u00a0 But, contrary to the conventional, politically correct, mushy-minded wisdom of our generation, it is anything but a small step from this belief to the conclusion that there is a universal entitlement to American citizenship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thomas Sowell\u2014a black <\/em>thinker\u2014once remarked that talk of race more so than that of any other issue taps our rationality.\u00a0 The stellar intelligence, withering logic, and rigorous reasoning that are brought to bear on other issues are conspicuously absent when it comes to this<\/em> topic.\u00a0 To see both that Sowell is correct on this score and that the doctrine of AE is indeed designed to conceal the racial, ethnic, and religious dimensions of the founding and history ofAmerica that its champions haven\u2019t the wherewithal to acknowledge we need look no further than Malik\u2019s exposition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Identity Politics<\/strong><\/p>\n

After all, Malik does<\/em> contrast AE with what he calls \u201cidentity politics.\u201d\u00a0 Judging from the examples he cites, La Raza, the Congressional Black Caucus, and such \u201cwhite supremacist\u201d organizations as Jared Taylor\u2019s American Renaissance<\/em>, to mention but a few, it is clear that the \u201cidentity politics\u201d that principally concern him is predominantly racial in nature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Malik\u2019s analysis of identity politics warrants some remarks.<\/p>\n

First of all, that Americans have always organized for various purposes along racial, ethnic, and religious lines may not in itself justify this practice; it does, however, put the lie to the notion that it is somehow \u201cun-American.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Secondly, no one has so much as tried to establish that there is anything in the least bit morally objectionable about Americans (or anyone) assembling for reasons of race, ethnicity, and\/or religion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thirdly, that people feel a closer affinity for their racial, ethnic, and religious brethren no more shows their proclivity for indulging \u201ctribal <\/em>loyalties and hatreds\u201d and \u201cthe cruelties of religious intolerance\u201d than does our partiality toward our own families establish our hatred and intolerance of other families.\u00a0 Presumably, not unlike virtually everyone else, Malik thinks it is a fine and good thing that we tend to love our own spouses and children more than we love the spouses and children of others.\u00a0 And we know that he holds patriotism\u2014<\/em>partiality toward one\u2019s country\u2014to be a virtue.\u00a0 However, we are left to ask: if the commitments to one\u2019s co-religionists, co-ethnics, and co-racialists are repellent because of the tribalism that they supposedly embody, why aren\u2019t commitments to one\u2019s family and one\u2019s nation not similarly repellant?\u00a0 Why or how are they not also species of tribalism?<\/p>\n

Fourthly, Malik refers to the likes of Sam Francis and Jared Taylor as \u201cwhite supremacists.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWhite supremacy,\u201d he contends, is the product, the effect, of minority identity politics.\u00a0 Interestingly, I think Malik\u2019s observation is astute as far as it goes; the problem is that it only goes so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Francis and Taylor are both white, yes, but neither are \u201csupremacists.\u201d\u00a0 Malik is arguing in bad faith here.\u00a0 It is true that Francis and Taylor, being particularly interested as they are in the genetic foundations of human behavior, focus on IQ differences between racial groups. Yet there are a couple things of which to take note here.<\/p>\n

The data on which Francis and Taylor center their attention is exactly the same data that every <\/em>student of IQ accepts\u2014statistics that no one from\u00a0Richard Herrnstein\u00a0(a Jew) to Dinesh D\u2019Souza (an Indian) to Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams (both black) denies.\u00a0 If <\/em>there is anything that can be said to distinguish Francis and Taylor from their peers, it is the dominant role which they assign to biology in their analyses of IQ.\u00a0 They may very well be incorrect; I for one take exception to their conclusions.\u00a0 Yet a belief in the error of another\u2019s ways is in no wise incompatible with a respect for his intellectual seriousness.\u00a0 For Malik, sadly, the two evidently are mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n

Moreover, if Malik really knew anything at all about Taylor and Francis, he would know that even in the terms of their own reading of IQ and race, <\/em>Taylor and Francis\u2014like most \u201cwhite nationalists\u201d\u2014think that on average Asians, <\/em>northern Asians specifically, are intellectually superior to whites.\u00a0 The Japanese, for example, consistently register a higher average IQ than whites. So, if Malik remains determined to label Taylor and Francis \u201csupremacists,\u201d he should make sure to refer to them as proponents of Asian <\/em>supremacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fifth and finally, as Malik himself remarks, what he terms \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d is a reaction to minority identity politics.\u00a0 That blacks, Hispanics, and other non-white groups should organize along racial lines for the sake of advancing their collective interests is enough to provoke some measure of racial consciousness within whites.\u00a0 But when the realization of the ends that racial minorities pursue demands that the government surrender its impartiality with respect to all citizens and substitute for laws<\/em> that equally bind all of the associates of the legal association that we know as the United States policies <\/em>designed to benefit non-whites over whites, it is understandable that these same whites should seek to organize similarly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This, incidentally, is exactly the point made by VanderbiltUniversitypolitical science and law professor, Carol M. Swain.\u00a0 Swain is the author of a couple of books on \u201cwhite nationalism,\u201d and while she doesn\u2019t identify with this orientation, she is remarkably sympathetic with it.\u00a0 It is remarkable <\/em>that she should sympathize with it mostly because Swain is black.\u00a0 <\/em>At any rate, she certainly treats it more charitably, more justly, than does Malik.<\/p>\n

Americais supposed to be \u201ca nation of laws,\u201d not of men.\u00a0 What this means is that when the government favors the members of one racial group over those of another, America\u2019s character is corrupted.\u00a0 Thus, when identity politics is nothing more or less than the enterprise of appropriating government for the sake of racial favoritism, it is an enterprise gone to the bad.\u00a0 When, however, as in the case of \u201cthe white nationalists\u201d that compose the object of Malik\u2019s disdain, as well as, say, black civil rights activists in 1950\u2019s and 1960\u2019s, it is a matter of insuring that government refrain <\/em>from privileging some racial groups at the expense of others, it is entirely appropriate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In these latter cases, though, it isn\u2019t really identity politics at all of which we are speaking.\u00a0 Rather, it is a movement oriented toward preserving the rule of law.<\/p>\n

Jack\u00a0Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

originally published at American Thinker<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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