A Racial Liberal (part deux)

I accidentally deleted part 1 of A Racial Liberal. For those who read my public conversation with myself and commenters about whether or not I misused "liberal" in the article I'm working on, I offer this quote from Gery Gestle's American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century.

In this book, I argue that the pursuit of these two powerful and contradictory ideals--the civic and the racial--has decisively shaped the history of the American nation in the twentieth century. I show how both ideals influenced critical immigration and war from progressivism and the New Deal to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and civil rights, and animated the nation's communal imagination. I give special attention to American liberals:

[ah ha! this sounds like how I was defining liberals, at least on some level.]

These liberals and others, I contend, were the most influential architects of the twentieth cnetury nation. They were committed to the civic nationalist tradition in general and to equal rights for ethnic and racial minorities in particular. But many of them periodically reinscribed racialist notions into their rhetoric and policies. I examine the antinomies of the civic and racialist traditions in the writings and speeches of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and explore the ways in which these same oppositions figured in many of the moments that defined the nation they built, from Theodore Roosevelt's charge up San Juan Hill in 1898 to Lyndon Johnson's confrontation with the Mississippi Freedom Democrats at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. I am particularly interested in how liberals and their supporters wrestled with the contradictions between the two nationalist traditions, how they managed to adhere to both simultaneously, and why the tensions between them did so little for so long to weaken the authority or cohesion of the nation.

I will give you my definition of "white racial liberal," which sounds rather too blunt to me. I seem to swing between the extremes of nuanced-to-the-point-of-no-argument to blunt-to-the-point-of-losing-all-nuance.

Dah! I promised myself I would stop criticizing myself publicly. :-) Well, I'm learning.

Here's my definition:

"When I use the term “liberal,” I mean it in both the positive and sarcastic sense evoked by John P. Davis when he criticized Clark Foreman as being the “type of emancipated Southerner who likes to boast how liberal he is on the Negro problem,” all the while remaining bound to a white Southern attitude about race. By a white racial liberal, I mean someone who thought of themselves as not-racist and non-discriminatory, but who perhaps did not know or care that much about African Americans. There was a wide spectrum from someone ignorant of all racial matters to a committed interracialist like Foreman. The reader is advised not to equate a racial liberal with someone who desired civil rights or the end to segregation. The New Deal era was too soon for that."

A Racial Liberal (part deux)

I accidentally deleted part 1 of A Racial Liberal. For those who read my public conversation with myself and commenters about whether or not I misused "liberal" in the article I'm working on, I offer this quote from Gery Gestle's American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century.

In this book, I argue that the pursuit of these two powerful and contradictory ideals--the civic and the racial--has decisively shaped the history of the American nation in the twentieth century. I show how both ideals influenced critical immigration and war from progressivism and the New Deal to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and civil rights, and animated the nation's communal imagination. I give special attention to American liberals:

[ah ha! this sounds like how I was defining liberals, at least on some level.]

These liberals and others, I contend, were the most influential architects of the twentieth cnetury nation. They were committed to the civic nationalist tradition in general and to equal rights for ethnic and racial minorities in particular. But many of them periodically reinscribed racialist notions into their rhetoric and policies. I examine the antinomies of the civic and racialist traditions in the writings and speeches of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and explore the ways in which these same oppositions figured in many of the moments that defined the nation they built, from Theodore Roosevelt's charge up San Juan Hill in 1898 to Lyndon Johnson's confrontation with the Mississippi Freedom Democrats at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. I am particularly interested in how liberals and their supporters wrestled with the contradictions between the two nationalist traditions, how they managed to adhere to both simultaneously, and why the tensions between them did so little for so long to weaken the authority or cohesion of the nation.

I will give you my definition of "white racial liberal," which sounds rather too blunt to me. I seem to swing between the extremes of nuanced-to-the-point-of-no-argument to blunt-to-the-point-of-losing-all-nuance.

Dah! I promised myself I would stop criticizing myself publicly. :-) Well, I'm learning.

Here's my definition:

"When I use the term “liberal,” I mean it in both the positive and sarcastic sense evoked by John P. Davis when he criticized Clark Foreman as being the “type of emancipated Southerner who likes to boast how liberal he is on the Negro problem,” all the while remaining bound to a white Southern attitude about race. By a white racial liberal, I mean someone who thought of themselves as not-racist and non-discriminatory, but who perhaps did not know or care that much about African Americans. There was a wide spectrum from someone ignorant of all racial matters to a committed interracialist like Foreman. The reader is advised not to equate a racial liberal with someone who desired civil rights or the end to segregation. The New Deal era was too soon for that."

The patriot and the priest

As is probably clear from our recent blog posts, many of us find the culture wars endlessly fascinating. Yet one of the most difficult questions I get from students when we discuss the culture wars is how do we identify what is at stake in these debates? Two very recent news stories provide cases in point. The first comes from a blog post about the recent Medal of Honor recipient; the second about the election of the Catholic Bishop who will direct the United States Conference of Bishops.

Yesterday, President Obama awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Staff Sgt. Salvatore A. Giunta for actions in Korangal Valley, Afghanistan. According to the citation for valor, Giunta placed himself in the line of fire to try to save his fellow squadmates and comfort a wounded American soldier. There have been four recipients of this award for the Afghanistan war; Giunta is the only living recipient.

News of the ceremony sparked an interesting and apparently short-lived debate at the New York Times blog, The Caucus: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/medal-of-honor-for-bravery-in-afghanistan/. I find the comments section of any blog to be quite revealing (of course), and this post did not disappointment. Within the first few comments, “Charles B. Tiffany” from Kissimmee, Florida fired a zinger, choosing to denigrate those of a certain persuasion—readers of the New Republic, graduates of the Ivy League, fans of Rachel Maddow. The upshot of this post was that if Giunta partook in any of these pursuits (thus making him liberal) he would not have been in Afghanistan to rescue his comrades; in fact he would not have been in the military at all. Somewhat incredibly, the Times removed this comment. You can pick up the gist of the original comment from others who refer to it. Many people wrote in to decry the idea that liberals are not patriots or that members of certain educated class do not serve. Perhaps most interesting in terms of the culture wars was that many who contributed to this debate believed that the topic of a contemporary war was not an appropriate venue for brawling over our politics. Real wars trump culture wars.

This morning, we learned that Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop who runs the New York Archdiocese, had been elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Reportedly, Dolan was somewhat of a surprise choice because he was selected over Bishop Gerald Kincanas of Arizona who had served as vice president of the Conference and was seen as the natural successor to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. The key factor in this election, according to Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times, was that Dolan is a moderate conservative who represents a wing of the American Catholic Church that has come out in opposition to the new healthcare act and takes strong public positions on same-sex unions. Kincanas represents another wing of the church that focuses on issues of social justice such as immigration, workers’ rights, poverty, and peace. Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown observed that the election of Dolan was “a signal that the conference wants to be a leader in the culture wars.” Indeed, the article included remarks from Robert P. George of Princeton and a leading figure in the contemporary culture wars who pointed out that Dolan had been the host of meetings that produced the “Manhattan Declaration,” a flagship contribution to the culture wars from religious conservatives.

So, on the one hand we have a defense of liberals as patriots sparked by honoring a soldier for his valor in an utterly tragic situation and war; and on the other hand, we have the election of an American Catholic Bishop based on his ability to coordinate attacks against the healthcare act and same-sex unions. I know that we have debated whether liberals have won or are winning the culture wars, but what is one to make of situations in which Americans try to defend a liberal position as nothing less than patriotic and when the largest single religious denomination chooses to highlight opposition to healthcare and same-sex unions rather than peace, immigration, and poverty ?

The patriot and the priest

As is probably clear from our recent blog posts, many of us find the culture wars endlessly fascinating. Yet one of the most difficult questions I get from students when we discuss the culture wars is how do we identify what is at stake in these debates? Two very recent news stories provide cases in point. The first comes from a blog post about the recent Medal of Honor recipient; the second about the election of the Catholic Bishop who will direct the United States Conference of Bishops.

Yesterday, President Obama awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor to Staff Sgt. Salvatore A. Giunta for actions in Korangal Valley, Afghanistan. According to the citation for valor, Giunta placed himself in the line of fire to try to save his fellow squadmates and comfort a wounded American soldier. There have been four recipients of this award for the Afghanistan war; Giunta is the only living recipient.

News of the ceremony sparked an interesting and apparently short-lived debate at the New York Times blog, The Caucus: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/medal-of-honor-for-bravery-in-afghanistan/. I find the comments section of any blog to be quite revealing (of course), and this post did not disappointment. Within the first few comments, “Charles B. Tiffany” from Kissimmee, Florida fired a zinger, choosing to denigrate those of a certain persuasion—readers of the New Republic, graduates of the Ivy League, fans of Rachel Maddow. The upshot of this post was that if Giunta partook in any of these pursuits (thus making him liberal) he would not have been in Afghanistan to rescue his comrades; in fact he would not have been in the military at all. Somewhat incredibly, the Times removed this comment. You can pick up the gist of the original comment from others who refer to it. Many people wrote in to decry the idea that liberals are not patriots or that members of certain educated class do not serve. Perhaps most interesting in terms of the culture wars was that many who contributed to this debate believed that the topic of a contemporary war was not an appropriate venue for brawling over our politics. Real wars trump culture wars.

This morning, we learned that Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop who runs the New York Archdiocese, had been elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Reportedly, Dolan was somewhat of a surprise choice because he was selected over Bishop Gerald Kincanas of Arizona who had served as vice president of the Conference and was seen as the natural successor to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. The key factor in this election, according to Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times, was that Dolan is a moderate conservative who represents a wing of the American Catholic Church that has come out in opposition to the new healthcare act and takes strong public positions on same-sex unions. Kincanas represents another wing of the church that focuses on issues of social justice such as immigration, workers’ rights, poverty, and peace. Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown observed that the election of Dolan was “a signal that the conference wants to be a leader in the culture wars.” Indeed, the article included remarks from Robert P. George of Princeton and a leading figure in the contemporary culture wars who pointed out that Dolan had been the host of meetings that produced the “Manhattan Declaration,” a flagship contribution to the culture wars from religious conservatives.

So, on the one hand we have a defense of liberals as patriots sparked by honoring a soldier for his valor in an utterly tragic situation and war; and on the other hand, we have the election of an American Catholic Bishop based on his ability to coordinate attacks against the healthcare act and same-sex unions. I know that we have debated whether liberals have won or are winning the culture wars, but what is one to make of situations in which Americans try to defend a liberal position as nothing less than patriotic and when the largest single religious denomination chooses to highlight opposition to healthcare and same-sex unions rather than peace, immigration, and poverty ?