Divorcing Whiteness from Western Civilization

Minoan fresco. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The following is an opinion contribution and reflects the author’s views alone.

When I first told my friends about the title of this article, I received every response imaginable. Some said it was a good idea, others said that it would be difficult or controversial. But the most interesting feedback given came from the extremities. Interesting because it was the same: this is impossible.

The American political system is awash with partisan claims of race being the defining attribute behind either its successes or failures, despite such claims originating in the margins.  There are critical race scholars that presuppose white supremacy as the driving force behind our legal system. At the same time, there is a U.S. representative who frequently defends the demographic purity of the country.

It is not beneath anyone to tell them that they are wrong and why. It is actually our responsibility to do so. Furthermore, it’s the unwillingness to engage with this topic – that of tying the successes and failures of a Western country to its racial heritage – and each other, that prevents the solution that most anyone would agree with: whiteness shouldn’t be married to the West.

To begin, the philosophical, moral, and legal foundations of the West did not begin with white people and, for over half have its existence, its home was outside of Western Europe. Greek culture was the progenitor of the Western versions of logic, ethics, democracy, and science.

These were people with brown skin and curly hair, who thought equally little of the white barbarians to their north and the black barbarians to their south as they did of the brown barbarians to their east and west. Many of them lived in what is now Turkey and were almost culturally and physically indistinguishable from their neighbors in Mesopotamia, the modern day Middle-East.

And by heading precisely in that direction, one steps directly into the heartland of Western religious belief. The Judeo-Christian values that are so often condemned began near the Western shores of the Levant and spread south into Africa, east into India and China, north into the Caucuses, as well as west into Europe. The communal social-religious values that formed the bedrock of European law are derived from the same teachings of olive-skinned theologians as those shared by many modern-day Ethiopians and Han Chinese.

Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the most influential fathers in the Catholic and Protestant faiths, was a North African descended from native nomadic Berbers. Nearly half of Augustine’s life experiences were that of a Manichean, a religion founded in present-day Iran, before finally converting to Christianity.

Augustine and other non-white philosophers and theologians are recognized as saints by Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican and by nearly all other Western Christian churches. They are the namesakes of cities and cathedrals throughout Europe and North America. Hardly the act of those concerned with the sanctity of skin color.

Nonetheless, racial preferences did exist. None of the history or figures mentioned above are able to explain away the slave ships that ran non-stop between Africa and the Americas, or the death camps of Nazi Germany. Just a century ago, Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech to American women on their responsibility to give birth to sons and daughters in order to prevent the racial suicide of the nation.

How did Western history come to possess clear evidence of both plurality and racial stratification? By the time of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Exploration, the home of Western civilization had shifted from the shores of the Mediterranean to the mountains and forests of Western Europe. It was at that point, with unprecedented levels of contact between people of different races, who had often never even known of each other’s existence, that people of all races began codifying themselves by skin color.

For only a fraction of its existence, but by no means a short duration, the majority of countries comprising Western civilization identified themselves by their race. Laws were passed and norms and mores were formed that ensured the strict adherence to this social stratification. At the height of the Spanish Empire, there were over a hundred racial classifications in the colonial societies of West Indies and South America.

But it was even at this time that minorities were making some of their greatest contributions to Western civilization.

At the height of the Antebellum South in the United States, black freedman used the words of their white and brown cultural forebears to lambast their light-skinned neighbors for allowing the hypocrisy of slavery to exist in their country. In Rochester, New York, during the July heat of 1852, Frederick Douglass, while also speaking of the sand swept cities Jerusalem and Babylon of the Levant said:

“You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence… Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will … in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery – the great sin and shame of America.”

Douglass was far from the only one making permanent changes in Western culture. Robert Smalls escaped from slavery while conscripted in the Confederate army, stealing one of their ships in the process. Smalls went on to help found the Republican Party of South Carolina and became an elected state representative. By 1875, just ten years after the American Civil War and at the beginning of his tenure as a congressman, Robert Smalls was not the first but the eleventh black man to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, along with four others.

It was at the height of racial injustice in America that minorities like Smalls and Douglass were making lasting contributions to Western civilization. That is why eight out of the twenty-five black Medal of Honor recipients during the Civil War were awarded for actions taken while protecting the United States flag. That is why Frederick Douglass always resisted Back-to-Africa and separatist movements, eventually switching from “your country,” to “our country,” when talking of the nation that once held him in chains.

However, it is well known that wasn’t the end of racial privileges in America. It took another century before any semblance of equality could be made between whites and non-whites in Western civilization. That was another hundred years of the legal codification of racial discrimination, with Jim Crow, redlining, and the failures to act by those meant to enforce what precious rights had been gained by the hard-fought victories of both black and white Americans.

But again, it was the tools of Western civilization – the rigid club of logic and the powerful swing of moral integrity – that finally came crashing down on Western hypocrisy. While writing about Greek philosophers and of Jewish theologians and prophets traversing the sandy treks between Middle-Eastern villages, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote to his fellow white pastors:

“Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds… when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see the tears welling her little eyes… I have longed to hear white ministers declare: ‘Follow this decree because integration is morally right, and the Negro is your brother.’”

It is clear from the list of names comprising the greats of Western culture that it is a civilization comprised of ideas and not of race. This list starts with tan men who are the namesake of white men, and then white men who are the namesake of black men: Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a black pastor named after a German priest born over five centuries prior. It is through this connection, not by race, that he wrote in the same letter: “I would agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all.’”

Because the West is a collection of ideas, black men could gain freedom and independence by using the very same words white men wrote to gain their own.

Western Civilization never began with racism, it crept its way in. Through the actions of brilliant westerners, both black, white, and of all races and ethnicities, it has been nearly pushed out. Now we live in a time when the revered black economist Thomas Sowell’s words certainly carry more truth than the alternative: “Racism is not dead, but it is on life support – kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists.’”

You cannot with one breath lay the crimes of Western civilization at the feet of people based on their skin without giving strength to those who would use it to attribute it to its success. Western civilization has crafted lasting good for the world, and it has wrought incredible suffering. But neither of this has to do with where the mean lay on the statistical distribution of melatonin content in its population.

What would it look like if we applied the same metrics to other cultures? Should we attribute Japan’s premier success at attaining doctoral degrees or its crushingly high public debt to its 98% ethnic homogeneity or its incredibly stringent immigration process? Can we thank Botswana’s systemic discrimination for being the least corrupt and most democratic country in Africa or for having one of the fastest growing GDP’s in the world?

These kinds of arguments seem preposterous when used on countries outside of the West yet permeate our political discourse. This can only exist in a society where white Democrats see racial discrimination as more of a problem than actual minorities, including black Democrats. With a growing number of white supremacists, we are increasingly becoming caught between righteous masochism and delusional self-aggrandizement.

Western nations are consistently rated among the top forty when it comes to economic equality. What does it mean when the majority of its inhabitants perceive racial relations to be one of the most serious issues? While Western politics becomes crippled by accusations of systemic racism and white privilege, it continues to prove itself to be the most tolerant when it comes to views on race. What does this mean for the state of rest of the world?

The only thing that seems to be easily agreed upon is the visible effects of this rhetoric on our society.

Most of us grew up believing that sharing each other’s culture was something valued and uniquely American. Now our society is more saturated with cries of cultural appropriation than shared celebrations in diversity. This all the while successful minorities are harassed for “acting white.”

We are now to the point where attempts to shamelessly herd minority communities along political lines meet no recourse, with even a sitting U.S. Congresswomen stating, “we don’t need anymore black faces who don’t want to be black voices.” Juxtapose this to a white Senator who makes claims of “environmental racism, economic racism, criminal justice racism, and health care racism,” after apologizing to the Native American community for making false claims of a shared heritage for political gain.

Americans have a responsibility to actively put a stop on this headlong rush towards a racial conflict, if not for themselves then for the rest of the world.

This ruthless and unscrupulous attack on the foundations of our own society does not only fail to recognize, but actively harms the contributions the West makes to the rest of the world, especially those in need.

It was Western society that put together the United Nations, created and continues to actively promote universal human rights, while funding and manning nearly the entirety of the worlds NGOs and charities. While these agencies provide resources for 97.9 million – 72% percent of the world in need of humanitarian assistance – Western scholars write papers condemning their actions as white supremacy and colonization that are published in academic journals.

This is more than just an Orwellian joke. Careful and precise refinement of our society is vital to a better future, but the wanton bludgeoning of our culture risks the lives of the very brown and black people that are purportedly being harmed.

Moreover, while racism may be on its last leg we are still plagued with chilling moments like Charlottesville that provide evidence for the hate that still exists in America when rallied beneath one banner. Just last week, at a conference held by Turning Point USA the Q&A was hijacked by a group of white nationalists. This scene resulted in a feud between them and Rob Smith, a gay black conservative and Iraq War veteran disputing claims that he shouldn’t be a part of the Republican party. The weight of the whole conservative movement should have been behind Charlie Kirk, TPUSA’s founder, when he rebuffed them.

As mentioned from the beginning, the goal of removing any mark white supremacy has on our society should be universally held. Nationalists must be explicit and repetitive in the belief that they are defending a nation of ideals and principles. Not only to stem the rise of white nationalism but also to hamper the growth of self-conflagration and race goading on the left.

As for the left, its rush to destroy the ground it stands on does nothing to promote the worldly agenda it seeks to proclaim.

Globalization isn’t wiping Western history from the face of the earth, it’s recognizing the merits of each society and contributing them to one another.. Its apparent we’ve reached reckless factionalism when we attack the already limited charity to the poverty stricken, non-white regions of the world outside of the U.S.

At a certain point, we need to recognize that much of what constitutes Western scholarship and civilization was crafted for the many and not just for the few. A black pastor writes from a Southern jail. His parents named him after a white German. He quotes the words of a brown-skinned nomad turned saint who lived on the shores of the Mediterranean, while speaking fondly of the sand-swept walls of Middle-Eastern cities. At some point you have to give it up. It’s not about race.

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