The American Nation: Identity
Note from the Editors: This dialogue is a follow up to Lafayette Lee & Darryl Cooper's The American Nation: Ethnogenesis, contained in our fourth print edition.
Lafayette Lee & Darryl Cooper debate Scott Greer & Benjamin Roberts on White Identity.
Lafayette Lee: In our recent dialogue, Darryl Cooper and I explore American identity and ethnogenesis. We both found ourselves agreeing that the civic nationalism of our parents and grandparents is inadequate to provide meaning and sustain identity, but we also shared doubts that racial identitarianism could be a viable alternative...
Scott Greer: I think it's unrealistic to expect a colorblind national identity to thrive in a minority-white America. America is great because of the people who made it. Those people were whites with an Anglo-Protestant culture. Much of the Left understands this when they denounce America for its "whiteness"... Whiteness refers to the way that whites, our customs, our culture, and our beliefs operate as the national standard. The Left sees this fact as an abomination. I see this as a great testament to our unique civilization and its contributions, and in turn what we should preserve...
The Right shies away from this because of the great taboo around a positive white identity. Generations of whites have been taught to wince at this subject...
Civic nationalism thrived in a nation that was majority white...
Colorblindness is a luxury of a nation with an established, solidly positioned, yet tolerant majority. This is not America in 2024...
Lafayette Lee: Following up on Darryl, I agree that America sprang from a largely Anglo-Protestant culture and that the racial composition of the nation remains relevant... But I think it's important to point out that given its unique history and physiography, America has always had the capacity to reinvent itself while remaining positively "American."...
On localism, I'm all for states and towns clawing back power from the federal bureaucracy. But hoping this solves all our problems is not enough...
Benjamin Roberts: First and foremost, the Left obviously has no signs of stopping their anti-White jihad against America...the psycho-political effects for most White Americans will be to double down on their Whiteness...
Scott Greer: The 1965 Immigration Act was passed only with the false promises that it wouldn't change America's fundamental white makeup...Whiteness is arguably the fundamental fact of American history...
Benjamin Roberts: White identity is fundamentally distinct from other American racial identities. White Americans generally associate themselves with pride in the unique constitutional character of America – winning the World Wars, things of this nature. Victim mentality in general is simply alien to the archetypal White American... American culture, everything that's ever been done in our history, is attributable to the foundational race-culture of White people...
Related
Lying to People about History Doesn't Help Them - Like it or not, high civilisation is "Eurocentric", by Theophilus Chilton, The Neo-Ciceronian Times, 21 March 2024.