America –– The Unfinished ProjectThe United States of America has recently witnessed a deep social conflict between liberals and white nationalists. This was particularly obvious in the tragedy of Charlottesville during which a white supremacist ran his car into anti-racist protesters.
A quick overview of the U.S political society suggests that the conflict between the two major parties, Republican and Democratic, is no longer a political/economic/administrative one but a conflict about racist ideas from the far right such as those demonstrated in Virginia. Some of us, though, thought that such ideas had been wiped out from our society with the civil rights movement, beginning in the 1960s, and the development since of an America embracing diversity. Unfortunately, this is not so. |
liberals insist that Trumpism is connected almost biologically to the white race and doesn’t consider the socio-cultural changes in the world as a whole. |
Racist slogans are disseminated by extreme nationalist and white supremacists such as the KKK and Neo-Nazis whose aim, they say, is to create a U.S. identity that better represents them.
They believe that America no longer represents the essence of America but an untrue one, one that emerged from slavery and the ethnic immigrations of the 19th and 20th centuries, creating an abundance of either unpaid or cheap workers to the country. But this ideology assumes that America is the only child of white supremacy and that whites are the fittest to lead. And, of course, the rise of Trumpism has given white supremacists a great deal of media time, particularly in the streets. It’s troubling that white supremacy is a concept that rational thought has a difficult time refuting because of its irrational foundation. On the other hand, liberals insist that Trumpism is connected almost biologically to the white race and doesn’t consider the socio-cultural changes in the world as a whole. Taking Trumpist phenomenon out of its global context and out of what the West is facing now, such as cultural and terrorist threats from extreme Islamism, does not offer a reasonable explanation for the rise of white supremacist fanaticism, some of which derives from these global threats. Many Americans, regardless of race, now feel unsafe and even weak that they cannot do anything to defeat radical Islamists, who seem to become more powerful day by day. They, at least, need to talk about this threat publicly, and there is no better way to talk about it than through Trumpist speech. Trumpism, then, does not necessarily mean racism but may articulate the fear and worry that the world feels from the rise of extreme Islamism. After all, Trumpism is not limited to white people. Some nonwhite groups, for example, representing newly immigrated minorities, are sympathetic with the administration’s discourse, not because they are racist but because they are seeking protection to maintain their safety in American society. These people don’t want to risk their “identity” because many have already negotiated away their native identities and accepted a new position in society. A few of them, in fact, have become more “white” than traditional white Americans themselves. One irony arising from this is that a Californian representative from the 43rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives, Maxine Waters, described the African-American Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, as a “white supremacist.” For white nationalists, America is not a country they want to rule but a society that is facing a great threat from “others.” Not everyone who supports President Trump is necessarily racist, but his administration offers an outlet for some who are anxious that the true American national identity is slipping away and no one seems to care. No matter how fanciful and baseless this level of anxiety is, no one is able to prevent its cruel manifestations, such as a man striking a Nazi salute and wearing a cap of the American 82nd Airborne Division, which gave so many young lives at Normandy fighting Nazism, or a misguided young man ramming his vehicle into an innocent crowd. The absurdity of this liberal/white supremacists’ conflict is not in its representations in protests but in the imaginary ideas that both groups believe about America. Each one believes in nonexistent Americas which have been toppled over by the other. The white supremacist believes that America was born white and is, then, white. Like a king unto himself, he believes that all other citizens should be obedient regardless of what they really think of him. He says, “America was one day great; let’s make America great [read white] again.” |
The absurdity of this liberal/white supremacists’ conflict is not in its representations in protests but in the imaginary ideas that both groups believe about America. Each one believes in nonexistent Americas which have been toppled over by the other. |
On the other hand, liberals, leftists and anti-fascist groups believe that America’s skin has never been white; for them, America has always been multi-colored, which has collected oppressed immigrants from all over the world, and without those colored immigrants, America would never have been a king in the firs place.
These two beliefs are more fetishistic than well founded in facts. Both groups are taking their perspectives on America as if America had been born outside the efforts of all Americans together. They are viewing America as a fetish that is above and beyond normal processes. Insightful perspectives come about through considering human relations and human works in history, not above it. A king is not a king without his subjects. In fact, America is not a king in itself but as a product created by complicated social dynamics. America has never been white and never been colored but an ever-changing product that expresses itself in terms of color through the way individuals interact and perceive. There is no king outside this dynamic interaction of social relations. There is no king without his subjects’ acceptance. He lives inside this dialectic, not outside it. The rising phenomenon of radical white nationalism has, I would believe, nothing to do with race issues. It is, rather, a representation of a rising fear from a complicated global problem, a problem that sees that the current struggle is no longer a political or economic one any more but a cultural/religious one which Western societies have not been able to overcome. For radical white nationalists, the only way to overcome such a struggle is by resisting multiculturalism in America, which they believe has been so idealized as to create a sense of powerlessness in the wake of terrorism. They’re anti-multicultural because they believe that terrorism is somehow linked to multiculturalism. Even radical liberals are dragged into this trap when they believe that the struggle is actually over race and ethnicity in the U.S. society. They view the current conflict as a conflict of white people against other minorities, while it is a matter of fear from a rising global terrorist phenomenon that has created this conflict in the first place. America has never been a finished project. As with any other nation, America is an ongoing process of troubled social relations in which one idea dominates and another retreats continuously. We have never had one America but many. In fact, we have a different America every time the historical context and circumstances change. This is not because of internal reasons only but also because of what is happening throughout the world. America is, then, an unfinished project, as evidenced by what we are seeing today of the insane politics of race. And many thought that such politics had been eliminated from U.S. society the day an African-American president entered the White House. Back to the articles page |