One of The Bagpipe’s recent issues featured an article titled, “What Does it Mean to be White?” It argued that “the primary mark of being White is being blind to White culture and the effects of being White,” and that the “effects of being White'' are privilege and a lack of cultural awareness stemming from an almost complete lack of culture.
I won’t address all the ins and outs of White culture. I’ll also leave various praises and critiques of “White culture”—grilling, lawn mowing and privilege—for later. Most importantly, I won’t write to defend the White “tribe” from the charge of blindness. That would only fuel the wildfires of race-based division and tribalism. I am writing a response to the increasing popularity of ideologies that lead to defining people primarily around race that seem to be gaining popularity in the forms of White nationalism on the far right and critical race theory on the far left.
In my time living and working with multiple strands of White culture, I have noticed that White people avoid speaking in racial terms. In every interaction I’ve experienced with White people, whether suburban businessmen, Southern firefighters or college students, I have never once heard someone say, “I am proud to be White.”
It makes sense. Why should someone be proud of their race? It’s not something they choose.
What I have heard said is, “I am proud to be an American.” Nearly every society unites around a shared race or tribe, but America is different. One is born into a tribe or race, but being American consists of accepting an idea. America is different from many nations in that its government is founded on a philosophical document, rather than a naturally occurring culture. The fact that nearly all residents of America either are or are descended from immigrants implies that being American is a choice.
The American ideal was articulated on July 4, 1776, when 56 White representatives of the American people signed the Declaration of Independence. Many of them were slaveholders.
These flawed men wrote the sentence that best sums up the American ideal: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This statement didn’t affect all Americans at the time, but Martin Luther King Jr. called it “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” The best of American history has shown a striving toward greater equality and freedom.
In a political echo of the Bible’s “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus,” the American ideal transcends race with the philosophy and values of the Declaration of Independence. To look at life in terms of “Whiteness” and to judge people based on race is un-American.
To be American means giving up race as your primary identity to unite around something better. An American believes we are equal before God to live freely.
Today, we see a backlash against that ideal, stemming from our fallen and innately tribal nature. Intellectualized leftist race theory and far-right white nationalism hold this in common: they judge people on race, not character.
It is easy to see why. Judgment based on race is simple. If you buy into such theories, you can tell by someone’s skin color whether they are one of us or one of them, privileged or oppressed, perceptive or blind; it is morally upright to choose the hard road of judging people as individuals, weighing and sorting their intentions, circumstances and actions. This doesn’t require the abolishment of race, but, rather, its subjugation to something better.
Anyone who values race over the American ideal trades our national birthright for another idea that is old, tribal and corrupting. All Americans should claim their God-given right to be judged on merit, virtue and the truth.