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Ms. Passmore
is an American student, studying for an MBA in International Business
at Schiller International University in Heidelberg, Germany. She completed
her undergraduate studies in Russian at the University of Florida |
As his race falls from majority to minority status, he often
fears losing his place in the world.
All around him, persons of other races raise the flags of their mother
nations, adorn themselves with traditional costumes, and celebrate ancient
and invented holidays as expressions of their ethnicity: generally, he
has no one flag to raise except the Stars and Stripes.
In the great melting pot, before the salad bowl conception,
his ancestors put aside their ethnic differences and intermarried: Irish
and Italian, English and French, Polish, Dutch, Swedish or German, all
mingled over the generations to produce the white American. He lost his
ethnicity, and retained only his race. During his father's generation,
that was enough: his father had a strong identity as an American.
His father had an American history, an American mythology, an American
set of values. He celebrated American holidays and ate American foods.
Above all, he knew what it was to be American: the American identity needed
no definition.
Now, in the salad bowl era, the American identity has no definition. America
has no one history, no one value system, and in the current conception
should not.
The American nationality has been reduced to mere citizenship, the common
fabric of American life unraveled to a single thread. And so the white
American drifts, his group identity reduced to nothing but a passport
and a color - a lack of color. Blanc, Blank.
On that blank white page of his withered identity, many
people write their stories.
The white American child learns he is the son of rapists and enslavers,
murderers and thieves, liars and hypocrites.
The accomplishments of his ancestors and brothers, he is
told, belong to the entire world: the guilt of any white criminal belongs
to him and him alone.
Among all the races, ethnicities, and other variously defined demographic
groups, the white American alone cannot feel pride in, defend, or even
define his racial identity without arousing suspicion and outright hatred.
He cannot form a Congressional White Caucus.
He cannot hang the works of white artists on a gallery wall and identify
them as such.
He has no month, no week, not even a day set aside to teach his children,
his neighbors, and his countrymen about the origins of the white race,
ancient and modern white history, the accomplishments of white individuals
and the issues facing modern white people.
Deprived of his true history and a healthy sense of himself, the white
American can turn to either of two extremes. He can fall in with his own
slanderers, giving himself over to self-flagellation, with guilt for his
tradition and a hairshirt for his ethnic costume; or, he can follow the
slanderers of others, substituting hatred of others for love of himself,
clad forever in battle gear, paranoid and joyless.
Neither path leads to a better future: the responsible white
American must blaze a new trail.
If we want to live, white Americans must begin today to
lay the foundations for our future and our children's future.
An individual without a strong group identity, a racial, ethnic, religious
or national identity, will be lost like a lone snowflake among glaciers
in the near future: we white Americans must rebuild our ruined sense of
self.
We must raise a fortress to defend ourselves against slanderous attacks:
we must create a school in which to teach our children, our neighbors
and our countrymen about ourselves. We must clear a festival ground on
which to celebrate our achievements: we must plant a quiet grove in which
to contemplate the errors of our past.
We must remember to leave a door and leave it open to mutually respectful
relations with all other people and peoples.
Perhaps most important of all, we must erect a freewheeling marketplace
where ideas and stories, histories and traditions from all the white world
come together, complex and wonderful, diverse and still unified, showing
that we are not the white of untinted paint but the white of sunlight,
formed by the perfect balance of a whole spectrum of vibrant colors.
Start today, fellow white Americans.
Look at the faces around you: find the faces like yours,
and see them as your brothers and sisters.
Find the fair-skinned babies, and see them as your children. Think about
your great-grandparents and love them as they were. Think about your history,
American history, European history, world history, from the weavers of
Xinjiang to the poets of Ireland, from the horsemen of the Caucasus to
the seafarers of Scandinavia - all of them your brothers!
And if the papers insult you today, if a stranger or your neighbor eyes
you with suspicion or hostility because of your whiteness, resist the
urge to respond in kind. Defend yourself--love yourself--but rise above
savage tribal struggle.
You are better than that.
Tonight, talk openly about being white with anyone. Do it again tomorrow,
and the next day, and the next. Form groups to discuss issues, trade ideas,
and educate one another; however, don't forget to have picnics, play games,
and enjoy yourself.
This is how we must begin: proceed with joy.
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