2667 On Being White in America

Although I haven't found a scholarly article that traces when the worm turned and it became bad to be White in America, I'm sure I could find such a chapter in a Tammy Bruce, Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly book (I'm aware of them, but haven't actually read any of their titles). At the university level, however, such an expose wouldn't get you promotion or tenure in 2006, and even having such a title or article in your library, might get you censored or suspended.

It would make an interesting bibliographic essay or review article--just tracking the literature, beginning around 1965. But because wiping out WIA, all vestiges of the European in the United States, is a positive goal for academics, I'm not anticipating finding a department or area studies** program to determine and anlyze the motives, money and machinations behind this movement among historians, educators, sociologists and college administrations. Economists and political scientists are still a bit conflicted--waiting to see which way the wind blows. Just throwing the phrase "marxist hegemony" or "mainstream media" at the problem just doesn't explain such self-hatred, or why the majority have bought into the brainwashing. Have our collective brain synapses been tangled by our entertainment industry? Is it the fast food that is causing our brains to turn to mush? Is it the happy, clappy music at church in place of Euro-based liturgies?

This theme ungirds just about everything I read about "diversity" or "multiculturalism." The push for multiculturalism is not rooted in the idea that we all benefit from exposure to difference cultures (although the early proponents may have thought that), but that it is bad and evil for this country to be majority white and anglo. Every other culture and ethnic group has value--but ours must be destroyed. The push for abortion begins and ends with the educated white women, not with the poor and minority women, whose offspring still have value. Increasingly, being Catholic, if you are also white, will get you no "brownie points" (pardon the pun); and if you are a middle-class or wealthy African-American, you just might be white on the inside (oreo) and have sold out your heritage since you are too rich and educated to be an Uncle Tom. If your surname is Hernandez you will be more welcome in academe than if it is McAdams, even if your grandfather settled in Indiana and no one has spoken Spanish for 3 generations.

If you've seen a bibliographic essay which traces this peculiar death wish for the last 40 years in our society, please point me to it.

[These thoughts emerged while reading A Companion to American Immigration (Blackwell, 2006), which although it depends heavily on secondary sources, also includes many interesting (and biased) scholarly works.]

**In a flash of library humor, some of our workshops on handling specialized digital material when I was at Ohio State, used the fictional "Department of Canadian Studies"--perhaps the organizers thought there was no such field, at least not in Ohio. However, wiping out the White Canadian is also a goal of multiculturalism, so we share more than a long border.

[Disclaimer: I used to call myself an 8th generation American, but then I started doing genealogy in retirement and dug up all manner of evil white ancestors on our eastern shores and colonies before the 18th century.]