WHO HAS A CLAIM TO THE UNITED STATES?

by Alex Kurtagic

In a video recording of Jamie Kelso’s experience at CPAC, the argument was made that Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics have equal claim to the United States. Disappointingly (at least to me), this is what passes for White conservative opinion on this matter today.

Black activists today defend their equal claim arguing that the United States was built on the backs of Black slaves, implying that the United States would not have been possible without them. Hispanic activists go further, and assert that their claim is greater, arguing that they were in the continent first and that, in fact, Whites should not be in America at all.

Mr. Kelso’s position at the abovemented event was (1) that Whites have the right to a homeland and (2) that Whites in the United States have the right to call that country their homeland because it was built by Whites.

On the surface, the second argument seems a strong one, but in today’s context it is seriously undermined by the present day weakness of the first one.

That I consider the first argument weak nowadays may seem extraordinary to those who consider it irrefutable: after all, Whites did built the United States! Yet as an argument it is weak in the present day context because it not only depends on a false premise, but also relies on the implicit acceptance of a racial self-identification that is rejected by most White people today.

The argument "Whites have the right to a homeland" presupposes that rights have an existence independent of the consensus that is needed to make their enforcement possible.

That consensus does not exist today.

Only some Whites believe in the existence of such a right, and among them only some are willing to act in consequence. That is not a consensus in practical terms: that is a minority view.

The argument also presupposes that Whiteness is accepted as a valid category. Many White people today, however, do not accept that race exists, that the White race is a race, that they are members of a racial group, or that membership of that racial group has any value whatsoever. Many act as if they accept some or all those things, but only so long as there is no risk of being called a name by someone; in a debate, when called on the issue of the validity of their racial identification and interests as Whites, they reject them.

"Whites have the right to a homeland" is the type of argument that is used when preaching to the choir, when high-fiving among ourselves and patting each other on the back; not the type of argument that will sound convincing to a White person with conventional modern views on race.

Such a person does not accept "race", much less "White race" (pride of and identification with which they regard as evil), and therefore finds "White homeland" rather queer, if not outright immoral.

Therefore, in a time when none but a minority of Whites in the United States recognise their exclusive or primary right to the country, and / or when none but an even smaller minority is prepared actively to enforce that right, even where enforcement requires only expressing an opinion without apology or embarrassment, we can conclude that for all practical purposes Whites in the United States today do not have a right to claim the country as a White homeland.

The right may still exist in the abstract, in the minds of an unconventional minority of racially conscious White folk, but that does not make it exist in practice throughout the country today.

The right certainly existed in practice in the past, but that does not make it exist in practice today.

Evidence: tens of millions of Whites persist on voting into, and keeping in, office politicians who openly reject pro-White immigration laws. Even the existing immigration law is poorly or not enforced at all. When a supposedly conservative, politically active White youth is asked whether he cares about his racial heritage or the destruction of his race, he replies, "I don’t give a sh*t". When the question of to whom does the United States belong is posed to another such youth, he asserts in effect that to all peoples of all races, equally. These youths are not exceptional: they are the product of modern mainstream education and media and represent modern conventional opinion.

Of course, it does not have to be that way.

Nor does this mean that I accept the competing claims put forth by other groups.

To my mind, Whites in the United States are the only ones who could legitimately claim the country as their own.

I reject that Blacks have equal claim to the United States because Blacks made up but a small percentage of the historical American nation, and for whatever reasons, the economic output of Blacks on average has been vastly inferior to that of Whites. Indeed, in the contemporary United States Blacks cost more than they produce on the whole—particularly when we consider the cost of violent crime, affirmative action, and welfare recipience, where they are disproportionately represented. As Michael Levin argued in American Renaissance in 2002:

A propos whites’ supposed enjoyment of the un-or undercompensated fruits of black labor, reparationists frequently claim that “blacks built America.” This is patently untrue. At no time have blacks been a substantial part of the US population, and until the Second World War they lived largely in the rural South; they were a part of southern agriculture but played virtually no role in the development of the large cities, industrial complexes, universities and public projects that support American prosperity. In fact, it is precisely those parts of the country with the largest proportion of blacks that have traditionally been the poorest, which is the reverse of what we would expect if blacks were the source of American prosperity. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were English colonies that developed during the same period as the United States. If slavery was the basis of American prosperity, how did these countries achieve comparable levels of prosperity without it? Blacks did not contribute significantly to science, medicine or technology. America would have been different without blacks, but not poorer.

Indeed, it is conceivable that the United States would be even more powerful had there been enough of a consensus to return all of the emancipated Blacks back to Africa upon the abolition of slavery.

Blacks only have an equal (or greater) claim if Whites cease to assert theirs, as they did in Southern Africa.

I also reject that Hispanics (who are mostly mestizo or Amerindian) have a greater claim to the United States than do the Whites. There was no United States in the North American continent before the advent of the White man, and there would be no United States now had the White man not successfully colonised and organised the region in his own image. Had the White man remained oblivious of the existence of the continent we call America, no European-style nation states would exist there today; indeed, small parts of the continent would be controlled by mostly pre-historical tribes, isolated by large swathes of uninhabited space.

The famed Aztlan claim is particularly bogus, as Mexico lost the right to control that area by weakly settling it, by being defeated in war, and by selling that land to the United States.

They only have a greater claim if Whites cease to assert theirs, as did the White Spaniards in a different but more radical way when they interbred with the Amerindian and imported African population.

So much for competing claims.

The point of this article is that if debate-oriented activism is to be successful, it must among other things rely on arguments psychologically compelling to an audience with conventional modern views on race.

I say this not to devalue Mr. Kelso’s efforts, but rather to stress that if those efforts are to be more successful next time, we need to equip him and similar activists with better arguments and debating tactics. The fault is partly with the intellectual echelons of the Right, sections of which hang on to subcultural notions not applicable to the situation as we find it today. “Whites have the right to a homeland” is a archaism, a subcultural platitude, and in practical terms a fallacy where there is no consensus that makes exclusive White rights to anything—even in traditional White homelands—enjoy either moral sanction or the force of law.