Dec. 07, 2016
America: Racial and religious turmoil coming (and
already here)
There is no denying: America was
made by, and for, the “free white,” a term meaning, essentially, the protestant
Europeans of English decent. Don’t mind the Declaration of Independence and its
“self-evident [truths] that all men are created equal” or the Constitution’s
preamble: “We the People of the United States...” These did not include the
Native Americans who were considered “merciless Indian Savages” in the
Declaration of Independence, nor the black slaves who were considered property
pure and simple (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 1857). In her book “Thomas
Jefferson’s Qur’an,” Denise A. Spellberg rightly mentions that Jefferson
accepted the hypothetical citizenship of Muslims, and by extension the more
realistic one of Jews and Catholics (some claim that he reneged on Islam after
the Barbary Wars in the early 19th century).But these people were white.
Jefferson did not include the blacks or the Indians, or any non-white race, in
this gesture. Indeed, he, like most of the founding fathers, fought the Indians
and owned slaves.The white political hegemony lasted unperturbed until the
second half of the 20th century. Indeed, the first black Cabinet member was
appointed in 1966, under President Lyndon Johnson, and the first Hispanic
Cabinet member in 1988, under President Ronald Reagan.
But deeper changes were starting to
take place at that time in the ethnic composition of the American citizenry. In
1960, over 85 percent of the population was still classified as “Non-Hispanic
White.”
By the end of that century, that
percentage had fallen to 69 percent. At present, it is approaching 60 percent.
According to official projections, the percentage of the “Non-Hispanic White”
population will fall to under 50 percent in about 25 years.
More alarming, the white population
was losing its political clout. In the presidential election of 2008, John
McCain received 55 percent of the white vote, a percentage that, earlier, would
have given him a sure win, but he lost the election to a black candidate,
Barack Obama.
In 2012, Mitt Romney received 59
percent of the white vote and lost the election to the same black candidate.
Race relations deteriorated significantly during this period. One hundred days
after Obama’s election to the first term, a Times/CBS Poll showed that 70
percent of the people still believed that race relations in the U.S. were
generally good. After the second Obama win, only 25 percent thought so.
And things kept getting worse for
the white population. Between the two presidential elections of 2012 and 2016,
the white population of voting age increased by 2 percent, while that of the
minorities (blacks, Hispanics and Asians) increased by 10 percent.
On the scene appeared Donald Trump.
He promised to reverse the march of
history. He pledged to rid America of the 11 million illegal Hispanic migrants,
build a wall to stop illegal immigration from the south, halt the immigration
of Muslims and other undesirables, while, at the same time, invite white
Europeans to come and live in the United States and become citizens.
The election of Trump and the
rhetoric of his campaign emboldened the extremist movements, especially the
white supremacists among them. The “alt-right” movement, the major white
supremacist group in America, immediately held a nationwide meeting, sponsored
by the National Policy Institute, in the Ronald Reagan federal building, few
blocks from the White House, to celebrate the event with chants of “Hail
Victory,” “Hail Trump,” accompanied by Nazi salutes and signs that read “Make
America White Again,” replacing Trump’s slogan of “Make America Great Again.”
Its leader, Richard B. Spencer,
concluded the long meeting with a fiery speech: “America,” he said, “was, until
last generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It
is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us. ... We’ve crossed
the Rubicon in terms of recognition.” Members of the audience rose to their
feet when Spencer described the choice facing the white people of America as to
“conquer or die.”
Crossing the Rubicon with the
alt-right were other white supremacist groups such as the Aryan Nations, the
White Aryan Resistance, and the World Church of the Creator. These groups
contemplate a successful racial revolution by the white population. They are
presumably inspired by William Pierce’s novel “Turner Diaries” where such a
revolution ends, after untold violence, in a white victory (making America
white again).
A major addition to this group is a
plethora of anti-immigration, Islamophobic organizations.
By far the most prevalent among
them, is ACT for America, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a
reputable nonprofit organization dedicated to the combat of hate, intolerance
and discrimination through education and litigation. ACT is headed by a
recently naturalized Lebanese American, Brigitte Gabriel, who claims to have
learned “the truth” about Islam during the Lebanese Civil War. “Islamic
terrorists,” she wrote once, “are ... doing exactly what the Koran teaches and
their mullahs exhort them to do.”
And in a lecture to the Defense
Department Staff College, as part of a course on Islam, she declared that
Muslims should be prohibited from serving in public office on the basis of
their faith ... [A] practicing Muslim,” she explained,” cannot be a loyal
citizen to the United States of America.”
What is adding fuel to the fire at
this time are some of the nominees that Trump has already chosen or is
seriously considering for his Cabinet and team of advisers.
Here’s briefly a short but
meaningful sample: Steve Bannon, chief strategist and senior counselor,
possibly the closest post to the president, was the executive chairman of
Breitbart News, an online publication, which he described as a platform for
alt-right. Jeff Sessions, attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer
of the government and in charge of enforcing civil rights laws, was nominated
for a federal judgeship in 1986 by President Reagan and rejected by Congress
because of racist comments he had made regarding black and civil rights
organizations.
And, certainly not least, Michael
Flynn, nominated national security adviser, the job that coordinates all
intelligence information for the president. Flynn said that fear of Islam is
“rational,” not a phobia. “Just like we faced Nazism, and imperialism and
communism,” he said in a speech last August, “this is Islamism ... a vicious
cancer inside the body of 1.6 billion people on this planet, and it has to be
excised.”
To him Islam is a “political
ideology” hiding behind religion. He is known to spread falsehoods, which is
doubly dangerous for a person in charge of intelligence. Colin Powell called
him a “right-wing nutty.”
The real and rapid decline of white
power, the Trumpian rhetoric, the extravagant rise of racist and anti-Muslim
organizations, and nominations by the president-elect, to crucial Cabinet
positions and senior advisory posts, of openly racist and Islamophobic persons,
couldn’t but be reflected in an enormous rise in the already high-rate of hate
incidents in the country. FBI data indicate that, during 2015, hate incidents
amounted to 16 per day (59 percent because of race and ethnicity and 18 percent
because of religion).
The data collected by SPLC so far in
2016 show that, during the 10 days following the election, the number of hate
incidents rose almost five times, to around 90 per day.
In addition, the 2016 incidents
differ qualitatively from the past ones in that they are more daring and
unabashed.
Because of this, The New York Times
decided to publish, on a regular basis, a selection of incidents to show the
scope of the problem. The first in the series was published on Nov. 29 under
the title: “Threats of an Anti-Muslim Holocaust.”
The hate incidents are not one-way,
although still overwhelmingly against the minorities. Hate crime brings hate
crime in the opposite direction. The causes of tensions are going to be with us
for some time; some of them, like the decline of white power and the rise of
racist and Islamophobic organizations, will likely intensify as America comes
closer to becoming a country of minorities.
Maybe this is not a harbinger of
civil war; but it looks at least like the beginning of a period of serious
social conflict and of racial and religious turmoil.
Riad Tabbarah is a former ambassador
of Lebanon to the United States.
A version
of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on December 07,
2016, on page 7.
