21 Amazing Quotes from Booker T. Washington's 'Up From Slavery' (1901)

Wise words from one of America's greatest thinkers we'd all be wise to heed - black, white and everything in between.

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo___X

I don't care what color you are, there are three nonfiction books penned by black American writers everybody ought to read. We've already covered two of them - The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. Du Bois - and to kick off Black History Month 2017, I reckoned it was worth all of our respective times to take a nice, long gander at book no. 3 - Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery. 

Booker T. Washington, for those of you not in the know, is the guy who's pretty much responsible for the Tuskegee Institute existing. Probably his biggest claim to fame as his legendary 1909 "Atlanta Compromise" speech, where he said black success in America wouldn't come about through civil rights legislation, but through education and entrepreneurialism. This, naturally, made him public enemy no. 1 to Du Bois and the founders of the N.A.A.C.P., who instead sought to bring about racial parity through legal challenges and public policy reform.

After re-reading Up From Slavery last year, it suddenly dawned on me why schools don't talk about any black American academics or civil rights crusaders before 1963. Simply put, you could yank any of Washington's arguments posited in his classic 1901 autobiography outlining the root causes of black economic failure and without changing a damn word, make it applicable to plight of contemporary African-Americans. If kids today had to read Up From Slavery in class, they might walk away from it with this crazy-ass idea that Booker T. WAS right - that simply changing the laws all willy-nilly to integrate blacks into "mainstream" U.S. society may not have been the best approach to curb racism or put African-Americans in better financial positions to succeed, or at the very least, remain self-sustaining. Egads, some of them may even develop the verboten idea that the Civil Rights Movement actually did very little to stomp out bigotry or make lives for African-Americans better, and had we gone the Washingtonian route and focused on black economic nationalism and supporting family structures instead of building a gargantuan welfare state and telling white kids to feel ashamed of being white from the time they enter preschool, blacks in America might be much better off, financially AND civically.

It's doubly - maybe even triply - damning because, as the title hints, this Booker T. Washington fellow literally began life as a slave. Forget microaggressions and white feminism and not being able to get a cab, this dude was literally considered chattel up until he was a teenager. So here's a guy that experienced the ULTIMATE form of white oppression coming out and telling us that government forced integration won't do much of nothing 60 years before anybody knew who Martin Luther King, Jr., was - and to top it all off, his success as academic and statesman PROVES that investments in real education ( i.e., the kind where you actually learn worthwhile, marketable job skills and not 250,000 different ways to blame Whitey for everything) and economy building is the actual cure-all for African-American plight. Shit, if that approach helped an honest to goodness ex-slave become one of the wealthiest and most respected men in the country, what excuse do middle and working class African-American teens today - who haven't experienced one tenth of one percent of the racial persecution Washington faced when he was their age - possibly have to justify their own financial failures?

In that, I consider not only Up From Slavery to be one of the most important nonfiction works of the 20th century, it's one of the few books I'd consider mandatory reading for anybody who dares consider themselves "American." Since it's in the public domain (I think), it shouldn't be too hard to find a copy of the book somewhere on the Internets. Frankly, you need to read the whole thing if you haven't, but for those of you who need a little appetizer plate to grasp why it's so fucking crucial you read it, I've clipped out 21 quotes from Washington's tome that succinctly sum up why Washington's way of thinking was so profound ... and is so utterly terrifying to critical theory proponents to this very day.

Quote One

“One may get the idea, from what I have said, that there was bitter feeling toward the white people on the part of my race, because of the fact that most of the white population was away fighting in a war which would result in keeping the Negro in slavery if the South was successful. In the case of the slaves on our place this was not true, and it was not true of any large portion of the slave population in the South where the Negro was treated with anything like decency. During the Civil War one of my young masters was killed, and two were severely wounded. I recall the feeling of sorrow which existed among the slaves when they heard of the death of 'Mars' Billy." It was no sham sorrow, but real. Some of the slaves had nursed 'Mars' Billy; others had played with him when he was a child. 'Mars' Billy had begged for mercy in the case of others when the overseer or master was thrashing them. The sorrow in the slave quarter was only second to that in the 'big house.'”

Quote Two

“I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the Southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction, and, besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the General Government. Having once got its tentacles fastened on to the economic and social life of the Republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution. Then, when we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look facts in the face, we must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, the ten million Negroes inhabiting this country, who themselves or whose ancestors went through the school of American slavery, are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.”

Quote Three

“The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority. Hence labour was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape. The slave system on our place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people. My old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as I know, ever mastered a single trade or special line of productive industry."

Quote Four

“The very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if he fails in life, he will disgrace the whole family record, extending back through many generations, is of tremendous value in helping him to resist temptations. The fact that the individual has behind and surrounding him proud family history and connection serves as a stimulus to help him to overcome obstacles when striving for success.”

Quote Five

“In later years, I confess that I do not envy the white boy as I once did. I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. Looked at from this standpoint, I almost reached the conclusion that often the Negro boy's birth and connection with an unpopular race is an advantage, so far as real life is concerned. With few exceptions, the Negro youth must work harder and must perform his tasks even better than a white youth in order to secure recognition. But out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth by reason of birth and race.”

Quote Six

“I have referred to this unpleasant part of the history of the South simply for the purpose of calling attention to the great change that has taken place since the days of the 'Ku Klux.' To-day there are no such organizations in the South, and the fact that such ever existed is almost forgotten by both races. There are few places in the South now where public sentiment would permit such organizations to exist.”

Quote Seven

“I felt that the Reconstruction policy, so far as it related to my race, was in a large measure on a false foundation, was artificial and forced. In many cases it seemed to me that the ignorance of my race was being used as a tool with which to help white men into office, and that there was an element in the North which wanted to punish the Southern white men by forcing the Negro into positions over the heads of the Southern whites. I felt that the Negro would be the one to suffer for this in the end. Besides, the general political agitation drew the attention of our people away from the more fundamental matters of perfecting themselves in the industries at their doors and in securing property.”

Quote Eight

“More and more I am convinced that the final solution of the political end of our race problem will be for each state that finds it necessary to change the law bearing upon the franchise to make the law apply with absolute honesty, and without opportunity for double dealing or evasion, to both races alike. Any other course my daily observation in the South convinces me, will be unjust to the Negro, unjust to the white man, and unfair to the rest of the state in the Union, and will be, like slavery, a sin that at some time we shall have to pay for."

Quote Nine

“I saw other young men who received seventy-five or one hundred dollars per month from the Government, who were in debt at the end of every month. I saw men who but a few months previous were members of Congress, then without employment and in poverty. Among a large class there seemed to be a dependence upon the Government for every conceivable thing. The members of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the Federal officials to create one for them. How many times I wished then, and have often wished since, that by some power of magic I might remove the great bulk of these people into the county districts and plant them upon the soil, upon the solid and never deceptive foundation of Mother Nature, where all nations and races that have ever succeeded have gotten their start,—a start that at first may be slow and toilsome, but one that nevertheless is real."

Quote Ten

“My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own. This is illustrated in no better way than by observing the conduct of the old-school type of Southern gentleman when he is in contact with his former slaves or their descendants. An example of what I mean is shown in a story told of George Washington, who, meeting a coloured man in the road once, who politely lifted his hat, lifted his own in return. Some of his white friends who saw the incident criticised Washington for his action. In reply to their criticism George Washington said: "Do you suppose that I am going to permit a poor, ignorant, coloured man to be more polite than I am?”

Quote Eleven

“At night, during Christmas week, they usually had what they called a "frolic," in some cabin on the plantation. That meant a kind of rough dance, where there was likely to be a good deal of whiskey used, and where there might be some shooting or cutting with razors. While I was making this Christmas visit I met an old coloured man who was one of the numerous local preachers, who tried to convince me, from the experience Adam had in the Garden of Eden, that God had cursed all labour, and that, therefore, it was a sin for any man to work. For that reason this man sought to do as little work as possible. He seemed at that time to be supremely happy, because he was living, as he expressed it, through one week that was free from sin.”

Quote Twelve

“The making of these bricks taught me an important lesson in regard to the relations of the two races in the South. Many white people who had had no contact with the school, and perhaps no sympathy with it, came to us to buy bricks because they found out that ours were good bricks. They discovered that we were supplying a real want in the community. The making of these bricks caused many of the white residents of the neighbourhood to begin to feel that the education of the Negro was not making him worthless, but that in educating our students we were adding something to the wealth and comfort of the community. As the people of the neighbourhood came to us to buy bricks, we got acquainted with them; they traded with us and we with them. Our business interests became intermingled. We had something which they wanted; they had something which we wanted. This, in a large measure, helped to lay the foundation for the pleasant 'relations' that have continued to exist between us and the white people in that section, and which now extend throughout the South.

Wherever one of our brickmakers has gone in the South, we find that he has something to contribute to the well-being of the community into which he has gone; something that has made the community feel that, in a degree, it is indebted to him, and perhaps, to a certain extent, dependent upon him. In this way pleasant relations between the races have been simulated.

My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what colour of skin merit is found. I have found, too, that it is the visible, the tangible, that goes a long ways in softening prejudices. The actual sight of a first-class house that a Negro has built is ten times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build.”

Quote Thirteen

“The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of race. One man may go into a community prepared to supply the people there with an analysis of Greek sentences. The community may not at the time be prepared for, or feel the need of, Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and houses and wagons. If the man can supply the need for those, then, it will lead eventually to a demand for the first product, and with the demand will come the ability to appreciate it and to profit by it."

Quote Fourteen

“With God's help, I believe that I have completely rid myself of any ill feeling toward the Southern white man for any wrong that he may have inflicted upon my race. I am made to feel just as happy now when I am rendering service to Southern white men as when the service is rendered to a member of my own race. I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice.

The more I consider the subject, the more strongly I am convinced that the most harmful effect of the practice to which the people in certain sections of the South have felt themselves compelled to resort, in order to get rid of the force of the Negroes' ballot, is not wholly in the wrong done to the Negro, but in the permanent injury to the morals of the white man. The wrong to the Negro is temporary, but to the morals of the white man the injury is permanent. I have noted time and time again that when an individual perjures himself in order to break the force of the black man's ballot, he soon learns to practise dishonesty in other relations of life, not only where the Negro is concerned, but equally so where a white man is concerned. The white man who begins by cheating a Negro usually ends by cheating a white man. The white man who begins to break the law by lynching a Negro soon yields to the temptation to lynch a white man. All this, it seems to me, makes it important that the whole Nation lend a hand in trying to lift the burden of ignorance from the South.”

Quote Fifteen

“When I went into the smoking-room I was never more surprised in my life than when each man, nearly every one of them a citizen of Georgia, came up and introduced himself to me and thanked me earnestly for the work that I was trying to do for the whole South. This was not flattery, because each one of these individuals knew that he had nothing to gain by trying to flatter me.”

Quote Sixteen

“My experience in getting money for Tuskegee has taught me to have no patience with those people who are always condemning the rich because they are rich, and because they do not give more to objects of charity. In the first place, those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much suffering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises.”

Quote Seventeen

“The effort to secure help from the Slater and Peabody Funds brought me into contact with two rare men—men who have had much to do in shaping the policy for the education of the Negro. I refer to the Hon. J.L.M. Curry, of Washington, who is the general agent for these two funds, and Mr. Morris K. Jessup, of New York. Dr. Curry is a native of the South, an ex-Confederate soldier, yet I do not believe there is any man in the country who is more deeply interested in the highest welfare of the Negro than Dr. Curry, or one who is more free from race prejudice.”

Quote Eighteen

“And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the sub-substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.”

Quote Nineteen

“I am constantly trying to impress upon our students at Tuskegee—and on our people throughout the country, as far as I can reach them with my voice—that any man, regardless of colour, will be recognized and rewarded just in proportion as he learns to do something well—learns to do it better than someone else—however humble the thing may be. As I have said, I believe that my race will succeed in proportion as it learns to do a common thing in an uncommon manner; learns to do a thing so thoroughly that no one can improve upon what it has done; learns to make its services of indispensable value.”

Quote Twenty

“In this library I found a life of Frederick Douglass, which I began reading. I became especially interested in Mr. Douglass's description of the way he was treated on shipboard during his first or second visit to England. In this description he told how he was not permitted to enter the cabin, but had to confine himself to the deck of the ship. A few minutes after I had finished reading this description I was waited on by a committee of ladies and gentlemen with the request that I deliver an address at a concert which was to begin the following evening. And yet there are people who are bold enough to say that race feeling in America is not growing less intense!"

Quote Twenty-One

“Time and time again he said to me, during this visit, that it was not only the duty of the country to assist in elevating the Negro of the South, but the poor white man as well. At the end of his visit I resolved anew to devote myself more earnestly than ever to the cause which was so near his heart. I said that if a man in his condition was willing to think, work, and act, I should not be wanting in furthering in every possible way the wish of his heart.”

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Book Review: 'The New Thought Police' by Tammy Bruce (2002)

It's just another meandering, hyper-conservative screed against the so-called "liberal agenda" ... written by a gun-toting lesbian who was once the head of one of the largest chapters of the largest feminist organization in the U.S.? Hmm ... maybe we ought to pay attention to this one. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

Perhaps the most remarkable cultural upheaval I've witnessed in my lifetime has been the slow transvaluation of the American free speech dilemma. Up until very, very recently, the First Amendment discussion in the United States has almost exclusively revolved around instances of liberal progressives fighting against the nation's super-traditional arch-conservative tastemakers. We can cite the landmark Supreme Court rulings by heart now: Tinker v. Des Moines, New York Times Co. v. United States, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, Texas v. Johnson - all narratives in which "the man" and his outmoded, prejudicial ways were steamrolled by the wave of the future, the more forward thinking, secular-progressive of the species. Granted, the "good guys" don't always win - see Miller v. California - and periodically, there have been a few First Amendment challenges from those to the right of Attila the Hun - see Brandenburg v. Ohio - but by and large, the greater cultural narrative shines through the high court dockets like a highlighted object in The Sims. Slowly, but surely, the collective psyche has drifted away from the old-school, patriotic, Protestant-work ethic mentality and embraced its ideological opposite - that being, the new-school, anti-theist, pro-multiculturalism Tao. 

Now, that isn't to say that this takeover is inherently a bad thing. Indeed, having to live in a theocratic, super-prudish society that equates any dissatisfaction with governmental actions with communist sentiment sucks just as bad as living in one where a bunch of hyper-offended, leftist nut-bags accuse everything and everyone of being sexist and racist. The frank reality, however is that - not unlike the nerds who killed off all the jocks in Massacre at Central High and slowly found themselves establishing their own hierarchical constructs of oppression - really, all we are seeing is the exchanging of the whips so the other side can take turns flogging the despised political other. Instead of a bunch of empowered, bigoted dudes who watch John Wayne movies persecuting diempowered hippies who smoke dope and give each other tie-dyed hand jobs at Grateful Dead concerts, for the forseeable future, it's going to be empowered transgender flag-burners and virulently anti-racist Yale Law School grads who think anyone who uses the term "illegal immigrant" should be sentenced to death beating the living - and legal - shit out of all the disempowered people who think homosexuality is a sin and that they ought to be able to pray in schools and hold up signs at Tea Parties stating that, yes, they do indeed dislike them some Muslim peoples. 

As much as some want to ignore it, today, the freedom fighters on the front line for the First Amendment aren't your liberal super-heroes like Lenny Bruce or George Carlin or Eugene Debs. Instead, the people really making a stand for free expression - and telling the government to fuck off for trying to tell us what to think and feel - are those guys who hold up signs saying "God Hates Fags" at dead soldiers' funerals or protest abortion clinics by holding up giant posters of disemboweled fetuses (which, from my observations, always kind of look like either gummy bears or half-eaten spaghetti dinners.)

Of course, the big problem with the free expression debate in modern day America is that - while there is at least the illusion that there are barriers in place to prevent the feds from silencing you - there is absolutely no legal safeguard in place to prevent the masses from ripping those with unpopular opinions to shreds. Since they can't technically imprison you for going against the herd consensus, the great contemporary leftist brain trust has instead developed a neo-McCarthyist approach that seeks to not only exile those with antithetical opinions from participating in the public sphere, but to prevent them from earning a paycheck to support themselves and their families. As influential as the racist, xenophobic, hive-minded John Birch Society types of the 1950s may have been, they would have been in awe of just how deeply their 2010s counter-parts in the liberal think-o-sphere have embedded themselves in the national conscience. Even if you strongly disagree with the pillars of modern liberalism - diversity is great and has absolutely no scientifically-verified negative repercussions whatsoever, America's borders should be open because it adds to the prosperity and richness of our culture, embracing LGBT identitarians and reshaping national policies to give them unparalleled civil protections from criticism is absolutely necessary, etc. - odds are, you are too afraid to ever admit it in public or on social media. While it is perfectly fine and dandy for your colleagues to spout off about how great gay marriage and transgender bathrooms and affirmative action is, you know that if you ever said something that criticized or questioned their belief systems, it would fuck you over hard. Your coworkers and peers would brand you as a racist or a sexist or a homophobe - the 21st century scarlet letter - and you might even lose your job. Shit, I've talked to more than one person who supports Donald Trump 100 percent, but they won't tell anybody because they are afraid that will automatically get them labeled as prejudiced. Try as the may, the commie-hunting queer-haters of the Eisenhower never had as tight a stranglehold on the American consciousness as today's reactionary leftists, whose dogma is probably about four or five years from becoming the cultural mainstream.  

To the uninitiated, this whole "social justice warrior" stuff is a relatively recent phenomenon. Of course, the real roots of SJW-dom stretch back to at least the mid-1970s, with the proliferation of this little thing called "political correctness" (fun fact: the modern use of the term was coined by democratic socialists as a derogatory way to describe the official Stalin-era communist party line, if you ever wondered.) Although it lay dormant for most of the later half of the decade, one could feel the movement slowly sinking its way into the bedrock of the social conscience, even during that uber-Patriotic, kitsch-as-kitsch can epoch in American history called "The Post 9/11, Pre-Obama World." 

What makes The New Thought Police such an interesting little tome - besides its author's unique blend of conservative idealism and quasi-progressive identity politicking - is that it was released right in the middle of the modern day SJW movement. Published  in 2002, the book came out in that weird interphase where everyone knew what affirmative action was but things like "intersectionality" and "cisgenderism" were still a good decade away from becoming conceptualizations bolted into our youth's minds like rainbow-hued rivets. As such, the gloriously anti-P.C. screed at times almost feels like an ominous warning from way back when that we should have listened to but didn't because we were all too busy with American Idol and the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie. 

Following a foreword from Dr. Laura (boy, THAT doesn't make the tome feel archaic or nothing), Tammy Bruce introduces herself as "an openly gay, pro-choice, gun-owning, pro-death penalty, liberal, voted for Reagan feminist," which is probably the first time any of us have heard at least four or five of those identity qualifiers uttered in the same sentence. Oh, and did you know that Ms. Bruce - now a Washington Times columnist and periodic Fox News talking head - served as the president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women from 1990 to 1996? Well, she did. 

Tammy makes her hypothesis pretty clear early on in the book, alleging the contemporary left is guilty of using "perpetual victimization" narratives and "P.C. codes" to maintain political and cultural power. She then chides the lefties for being perpetually offended about EVERYTHING, stating "opinions, in and of themselves are not harmful, regardless of the subject or conclusion." 

From there, she wastes no time at all before harping on organizations that claim to "represent aggrieved minorities"  like NOW, GLAAD and the NAACP, stating that their "protection" of particular interest groups is really just a ploy to take down any contrarians who disagree with their authority. This in turn creates a dreadful "spiral of silence" that fool special interest groups into believing they have more social clout than they really do - the trick, Bruce postulates, is for advocacy organizations to make it look like they are making some progress with their agendas, but never enough, naturally, to make them obsolete as activist organizations.

As a result, Bruce suggests that many Americans now find themselves gripped in the paralyzing fear of offending "protected groups" - consciously or unconsciously. Liberals today, she continues, have completely abandoned the Lockean classical liberalism for a dogma utterly obsessed with identity politics, sustaining "victim" status and fostering an "us vs. them mentality." Instead of rallying behind "equality of opportunity," they now campaign for "equality of outcome," and rather than promote personal rights, they are now infatuated with the sanctity of group rights. 

She takes a brief detour to dissect some of the more popular 20th century liberal-progressive icons. She refers to Betty Friedan as a communist and trudges up the trifecta of "anti-capitalist" MLK advisers (Hunter Pitts O'Dell, Stanley Levison and Bayard Rustin, for those of you out of the loop.) She brings up the fact that Rosa Parks was already an NAACP officer before her famous protest, and how the organization didn't rush o the aid of two African-American women - Claudette Calvin and Mary Louise Smith - who made earlier stands against Montgomery's bus policies. Focusing the discussion on slightly more modern figures, she chides the secular progressives for tearing apart Cruz Bustamenta for accidentally saying "nigger" at a Coalition of Black Trade Unionists speech and John Rocker for his string of somewhat insensitive comments to Sports Illustrated in 1999. "It's not really the use of a term, it's what you're thinking when you use it," Bruce says of the omni-offended - and bordering on impossibly metaphysical - liberal M.O.

In a chapter on the ills of groupthink, Bruce explores the discrepancies in how the media covered the murders of Matthew Shepherd and Daphne Sulk, reminds us that just 17 hate crime homicides were recorded in 1999, that the cable news complex royally fucked up in their coverage of the Columbine Massacre and gives us a quick primer on the work of Irving Janis and a few case examples from a peer-reviewed periodical called the Cultic Studies Journal (which I really need to subscribe to, it seems.)

This segues nicely into a lengthy passage on homosexual lobbyist hypocrisy, which is prefaced with a rather spiffy quote from Animal Farm - "once in power, the oppressed will become the oppressor." Our author describes in great detail how GLAAD has taken Lord Acton's maxim about "absolute power corrupting absolutely" to heart, eschewing the character-building exercises of yore for nonstop character assassination attempts today. She discusses the organization's role in the harassment of Dr. Laura - including how she ironically received death threats for "not being tolerant enough" - and wonders why they don't go after non-Christian-conservative homophobes like Eminem. "The left doesn't want you tolerating anything they won't tolerate," Bruce sums it up. 

If you think that's a knee-slapper, just wait until you get to the chapter titled "Misery Merchants," which gives the NAACP the old what-fer. Bruce recounts the Tawana Brawley debacle from 1987 and that one time Alton Maddox accused Robert Adams of masturbating to photographs from the (totally fabricated) crime scene. She accuses black interests organizations of promoting what she deems "a victim industry" which propagates racial division and hopelessness with the endgame of "holding onto the money, power and prestige that comes from leading the supposedly downtrodden." She then elaborates on Dick Armey's assertion that the organization practiced "racial McCarthyism," drones on for a bit about Jesse Jackson's union collections and proclaims that by making people uncomfortable discussing race and constantly ripping open the wounds of the sins of the past, we are guaranteed to never get past the painful legacies of historical racism. She cites a few studies with some surprising findings (for example, she mentions one RAND report that determined 51 percent of those arrested in the 1992 L.A. riots weren't black, but Hispanic, and a 1997 JCPES national survey that indicates two-thirds of blacks in America have "moderate to conservative" political leanings) and brings up the words of Walter E. Williams, who once declared that African-Americans' political leanings were more alike Jerry Falwell than Al Sharpton and that Jesse Jackson's platform more closely resonated with old white hippies than poor, inner-city blacks. Then there's some stuff about "aversive racism" and the 1990 eight circuit case U.S. v. Weaver and the holding "facts are not to be ignored simply because they are unpleasant," but eh, it didn't make that much of an impression on me, frankly.

As you would expect from the former head of the largest NOW chapter in the nation, Bruce clearly holds some grudges against the late second wave/early third wave feminist ideologues. After chiding the Steinem types for their less-than-secretive ties to socialist organizations, Bruce goes on a long tirade about how so many feminist groups gave confirmed spouse abuser and unconvicted double murderer O.J. Simpson a free pass because he was black and raises some questions about why exactly federal "tobacco control" grants were given to NOW during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Go ahead, make your own cigar-in-the-vadge joke now, you low-fruit-grabbing motherfuckers. From there, Bruce tackles the touchy topic of multiculturalism, describing it as a code word for "moral relativism" and an ideological structure that encourages Balkanization and shields minorities from accepting self-responsibility for their own actions. Rather than create a more "inclusive society," she makes a very solid argument that multiculturalism actually has the OPPOSITE affect, instead rewarding ethnic enclaves for self-segregating and promoting the abstract conceptualization of a collective culture over their own individual values and aspirations (and by golly, wouldn't you know it, independent research from the guy who wrote Bowling Alone verifies pretty much every negative thing about "mandated diversity" Bruce posits here.) Don't ask me how, but this section somehow ends with some commentary on the Kennewick Man and why it's bullshit that "ebonics" is categorized as an official ESL subject in certain school districts out on the Left Coast. 

The sections on the media and academia are pretty much what you would expect - lots of pissing and moaning about Dan Rather sticking up for Gary Condit during his 2001 missing-intern scandal and that one time a bunch of black kids stole 14,000 copies of The Daily Pennsylvanian because they didn't like what one of the articles had to say. There's also a great section where Bruce talks about just how much power advocacy groups have over the media, and how in many situations, special interest organizations pretty much put words in the mouths of newspapers and news sites by feeding them pre-packaged "stories" expressing some sort of manufactured outrage or grievance. As someone who has worked in media\public relations his entire career, I can firmly attest to just how common an occurrence this is - to the point I have seen entire press releases published as factual news stories with a reporter's byline on it, even though every word was penned by someone on the activist organization's payroll. 

Whether in the classroom or in the entertainment biz, Bruce says the liberal war machine modus operandi is the same - silence differing opinions, squelch public debate and punish all those who foster dissent against the supreme, totalitarian ideology. After talking about something called "Cuntfest" (fun for the whole family, I presume!), she describes how the leftist machinery pushes a peculiar racial narrative to children as young as elementary schoolers. "It can never be too early to teach white kids the importance of self-censorship when it comes to issues of race, and to infuse black and Hispanic kids with a victim mentality that they may never be able to shake," she writes. 

So far, so good, right? Well, at the very tail end of the book, Bruce just has to up and derail the entire thesis by concluding her tome with a chapter about the necessity for activism. Yes, after spending 200-plus pages describing how collective identitarianism is destroying civility, she opts to wrap up The New Thought Police with a section describing the "success" of her protests against book stores selling copies of American Psycho (uh, what was she saying about freedom of expression earlier?) and how great it felt to that one time she got Dan Ohmeyer's interview with O.J cancelled. As insightful and entertaining as the book is, alike a lightning fast stallion that trips up 200 feet from the finish line, you can't help but be disappointed by Bruce's premise-defeating finale, I am afraid. The book concludes proper following a suggested reading list that includes the likes of Andrea Dworkin and Hannah Arendt and a preview for her 2003 treatise The Death of Right And Wrong - which, yeah, appears to be pretty much the exact same material as this book, only slightly reworded so as to contractually fulfill the author's three-book deal or whatever sort of arrangement she had back then. 

So, 14 years since The New Thought Police was released, what sort of intrinsic value does it retain? Well, a lot of the material is supremely outdated, but it is nonetheless pretty hard to not comb through it and feel a sense of spooky prescience. Back in the heyday of Pepsi Blue and Eight Legged Freaks, who'd ever thunk that Bruce's then-hilarious-paranoid-sounding musings would eventually come to represent our shared societal norms? Well, this gun-toting, Reagan-voting lesbian feminist was way ahead of the curve, and in much the same way you can't help but be awestruck by the uncanny soothsaying of something like Camp of the Saints, this vaticination of this one will really give you the heebie-jeebies.

Now, is Bruce's book a revelatory, ideological masterwork on par with, say, Ideas Have Consequences or The Closing of the American Mind? Well, no, but unlike a lot of books with political agendas from the early 2000s, it still seems fairly relevant and contemporary. It may not be something that will change your life or your way of thinking - indeed, it pretty much espouses stuff we've heard a million billion times before, albeit a good decade and a half before it became the beckoning call of the reactionary post-W right - but if you can pick up a copy at a used bookstore at a reasonable price, it's probably worth the investment. 

Considering how astoundingly well Bruce predicted the modern Generation Y diversity-at-all-costs mentality at least 10 years out, I suppose just one question remains - will The New Thought Police seem so remarkably oracular another 15 years from now, too?

Call it progress (or regression, if you are on the other side of the aisle), but something tells me Tammy's tome is going to sound stunningly sibylline for a LONG time to come, unfortunately. 

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What If They Threw A Race War and Nobody Showed Up?

I went to a neoconfederate rally expecting a whites-against-blacks donnybrook. Instead, I walked away with conclusive proof that in the Deep South, globalization has indeed triumphed over regionalism. 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo__X

Although I've spent my entire life in the metro Atlanta area, I didn't visit Stone Mountain, Georgia, until a few days ago.

Stone Mountain is exactly what the name implies - a gigantic rock, encircled by a sprawling state park that's one part Yellowstone (hiking trails, lakes, plenty of sightseeing spots) and one part Six Flags (rickety rides, overpriced tchotchkes and an overabundance of kitsch.) Alas, a lot of folks aren't too happy that the park -- long purported to be the birthplace of the modern incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan -- still displays some confederate imagery, most notably in the form of three "iconic" C.S.A. leaders chiseled on the side of the eponymous Stone Mountain itself. 

Following the horrific Charleston, South Carolina church shooting last summer, a proposal floated up to erect a monument to Atlantan Martin Luther King, Jr., at the top of the formation - you know, to balance out the equation and all. This proposal really didn't sit well with some neoconfederate types, who were so miffed over the idea of an MLK tribute crowning the park that they decided to protest on Nov. 14. 

An earlier demonstration against removing the Confederate flag from the park drew a pretty big crowd last summer. The Southern Poverty Law Center quickly sent out a press release stating that members of the KKK planned on meeting at the park in mid-November and representatives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said they were going to show up en masse to counter protest, pending the Klan decided to rear their sheet-covered heads.

So when the date rolled around, of course I showed up. Angry white folks, angry black folks, and arguably the most contentious topic in all of American politics, coming to a boil atop a 800-foot-tall granite slab? How could I not be around to Periscope that?

Unfortunately, even though I paid my $15 entry fee for Civil Slam 2015, nothing too tumultuous transpired. In fact, despite looking high and low for ANY signs of KKK members or Neo-Nazis or Black Panthers, the best I could muster was ONE unoccupied pick-up truck with two "rebel flags" hanging off the back of it. Oh, and a Toyota with mini "Stars and Bars" on both rear side mirrors circled the lot once, and left. 

Granted, there was a protest that evening - a gaggle of Confederate flag fans actually marched up the mountain and posed for a few photos, but nothing really happened (this, even though the demonstrators were escorted by a gaggle of assault rifle-toting militia members.) The Klan never showed up as advertised, and neither did the counter-protesters. 

In hindsight, the symbolism is so blunt, it's almost farcical. In a sea of happy, cheery visitors - of all walks of life, of every race, color and creed you can think of - I was direly in search of the last vestiges of white nationalism. Despite looking under every rock, checking in every trashcan and poking the bushes just to make sure, the ghastly, unrepentant, racist "rednecks" never emerged. 

If there was ever an indication that modernity had conquered southern regionalism, the fact that one can learn about Reconstruction in Japanese is probably it.

So for two hours, I just milled about the Stone Mountain hinterlands, pacing back and forth between the seasonal Santa's village (complete with the tackiest garland displays you've ever seen and literally TONS of artificial snow melting in the nigh 70-degree weather) and the gift shop, which was connected to one of those cable car sky trolleys that looks about as safe as a suspension bridge made out of popsicle sticks and bubblegum. 

Now, the term "multicultural" gets tossed around a lot these days, but this place was multicultural. There were African-Americans and Asians and those of Middle Eastern descent. There were Hispanics and people speaking in Slavic tongues. The only English-speaking white people I saw were suburban types - your bicyclists and your hippie-dippy naturists - who looked more at home at Whole Foods than a Klan rally. I can't imagine that many of the park visitors that afternoon even knew a neoconfederate protest was going on at all; and even if they were, they were just too busy standing in queues and jabbing their credit cards into pay terminals and trying to hush up their kids, endlessly clamoring for overpriced souvenirs and six dollar bottles of Coca Cola, to care.

I didn't see any rebel flags once I got inside the park. In fact, I didn't really see a whole lot of references to the Civil War or the Confederate States of America at all. Sure, there is a golf course on the premises dedicated to Stonewall Jackson, but even when directly touching upon Southern history, the park does so through this modernist, careful-not-to-offend lens. It's obvious that, if they could, the operators of the park would just get rid of all of the historical hullaballoo altogether and turn it into Dollywood Lite, with log flumes and teenagers ambling around in furry mascot costumes. 

I struggled to find any real historical information inside the park. Sure, there were a few plaques here and there, but if you wanted info on who the dudes engraved on the side of the mountain actually were, you were out of luck. There is indeed something onsite called "The Confederate Hall Historical & Environmental Education Center," but most of the floor space is dedicated to the geology of Stone Mountain and not its role in the Civil War. There was an audio kiosk next to the museum, though, and wouldn't you know it, it came equipped with no less than five different language options. If there was ever an indication that modernity had conquered southern regionalism, the fact that one can learn about Reconstruction in Japanese is probably it.

It's a strong term, to be sure, but I think it is hard to deny that the operators of the park haven't whitewashed Confederate history from the grounds. Granted, it's hard to cover up that gigantic engraving of Jefferson Davis (which some folks do indeed want sandblasted off the quartz monzonite dome), but the park is clearly going out of its way to distance itself from the bad old days of Dixie ... and with it, a good chunk of contemporary rural culture.

The South gets a bad rap for its contentious race relations, but the fact of the matter is that the South is - and has been for the better part of 100 years - the only part of the country where blacks and whites ACTUALLY co-exist as equals. Yeah, yeah, we all recall Selma and the Montgomery boycotts and Emmett Till (most notable to today's generation, I reckon, because of a Lil' Wayne song), but frankly, it's not like race relations were that much better in the liberal, industrialized north (in fact, Malcolm X himself said the blacks in the South during the civil rights era had it much better off than those living above and beside the Mason-Dixon line.) The South has far and away the highest rates of interracial marriage in the nation and southern metropolises like Atlanta and Memphis are pretty much the only major cities in the nation with an all-black political power structure. The eleven states with the highest per capita black populations are all in former Confederate territory (whereas the absolute whitest states are all in the hyper-progressive New England region.) Even going back to late 1800s, blacks in the south had risen to middle-class - and some might even say elitist - socioeconomic status. Contrary to popular belief, Martin Luther King, Jr. came from a family that, even by today's standards, would have to be considered fairly affluent, if not outright "privileged," in terms of sheer financial qualifiers. Nor does anyone even MULL the possibility that all that racial tension in the south from Reconstruction on has less to do with whites just being racist, heartless devils then it does northern interlopers taking over the decimated countryside and foisting industrialization upon an agrarian culture and forcing white and black labor to compete against each other for jobs and housing. Nothing can justify the Klan and their horrid terroristic activity, but at the the same time, it's downright irresponsible to simply gloss over the federal government's hand in promoting racial tensions in the region, be it in the form of subsidies that benefited former slaves but not the Caucasian refugees of the Civil War to the wide-scale social engineering programs of the F.D.R. years that literally jambanja'd poor subsistence farmers from their property to make way for urbanization initiatives. (So TL;DR - racism in the south is a lot more complex than what you've been told and it's certainly no worse a problem than it is anywhere else in the country.) 

If this doesn't offend you, it's 100 percent proven by science that you are a racist. 

Stone Mountain may technically be a tribute to the Confederacy, but really, it's a monument to the South's former cultural isolation. It was, until recently, considered something of a sacred, unsullied ground for the blue-collar, beer-sipping, CAT-hat set - the calloused factory worker and mechanic that viewed the morally lawless Burt Reynolds as something of a redneck John Galt. (And before you write off his oeuvre as a catalog of white power odes, you might actually want to go back and watch stuff like Gator and White Lightning, in which the great 'stached one fights corrupt - and by golly, racist - police officers in Confederate flag country.) The appeal of Stone Mountain - for years and years, home to an Independence Day laser show that's basically the Deep South equivalent of Rockettes performance in the Big Apple - is that it gives the pre-globalized Southern soul a taste of what life was like before the region became a pell-mell consumerism uber alles corporate fiefdom like everywhere else in the America. 

In a lot of ways, I think the neoconfederate/Southern nationalist movement is nothing more than an anti-globalism offshoot with a harder to understand accent. I am sure there are plenty of members of the Confederate flag fan club who are unrepentant bigots and race-baiters, but to say that these lower-to-working-class schlubs have any sort of legitimate social power anymore is absurd. Strangely similar to the Black Lives Matter crowd, they represent an aggrieved social order (which is ultimately tied more to location-based socioeconomic similarities than a common skin color) which feels marginalized, misunderstood and perpetually maligned. Having lost their jobs to NAFTA and the WTO and their regional identity thanks to an influx of neo-carpetbaggers (who have made Georgia the "best" state in the nation to do business, despite posting the nation's highest percentage of unemployed workers), these people literally do not have a future. This is not hyperbole: the lower-class, non-college-educated Caucasian American workforce is LITERALLY in the process of going extinct, as confirmed by a goddamn Nobel Prize-winning economist.

The reality here? Despite having a shitty past, Blacks, Hispanics and especially Asians have a bright future ahead of them in these United States. Meanwhile, for MOST regional white folks, the future is indelibly going to be a potpourri of misery and woe. Facing an economic cataclysm that more or less amounts to financial genocide, all these people have to hold on to is their past - their own distinct culture, their own distinct rituals, their own distinct language. And now, the entire planet is ganging up on them, telling them that their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers were all pathetic racists and despicable hate crime perpetrators, and they ought to be ashamed of anything that happened in their native lands prior to 1998. 

A symbol can mean anything, but in the eyes of MOST Confederate flag flyers, I'd surmise that the emblem actually does represent not hate, but love. It's a love of their own patois, their own folk tales, their own fusion of Celtic-Anglican tradition, tempered with quite a bit of French, Mexican and Native American influences. It's a love of growing their own gardens and hunting in the woods and listening to Hank Williams, Jr. and watching NASCAR and hugging granny on Christmas and going to pro 'rasslin shows and being at church every Sunday morning even though you spent the Saturday night before chugging moonshine - absolutely none of which revolve around burning crosses or blowing up Black Protestant houses of worship. But more than anything, it's a pseudo-jihadist love of their OWN culture, unmolested by the far-reaching hands of both federal government and international business. 

There may have been a couple of guys with scraggly bears and half-rotten molars waving Confederate flags and lugging AR-15s up Stone Mountain, but so what? All you have to do is journey five minutes outside of Stone Mountain and you'll run smack dab into Buford Highway, a long stretch of commercial real estate where one can literally drive for miles without seeing a single sign in English. From the clogged roadways of Gwinnett County, Stone Mountain is but just a pebble on the horizon. You might be able to make it out on a clear day, while you are patronizing the Global Mall (yes, that's actually what it's called) and buying up Halel meat, overpriced Indian rugs, greasy Vietnamese cuisine and consulting an abogado immigracion. Even hurdling down Interstate 85 just outside of the park, one is bombarded not by regional iconography - mom and pop shops and independent BBQ chains and the like - but towering skyscrapers for multinationals and billboards hawking everything from apple-flavored Budweiser to German luxury town-cars that were actually assembled in Mexico.

That's the new Southland, my friends. Criticize the ghosts of the past all you want, the old regional cotton belt way of life isn't just on life support, it may already be in the early stages of rigor mortis. There's a handful of reactionaries causing a stir, but whatever actions they take is akin to tossing a brick into the ocean. 

Globalization and multiculturalism won, Southern identitarianism and monoculturalism lost. 

And now? The only thing left to do is spend the rest of our lives arguing whether that's the best - or worst - thing that's ever happened to Dixie. 

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