Thoughts personal, political, and social on America’s ongoing dilemma
Editor’s Note: This essay is an expanded version of an essay that appears in the November issue of National Review.
On June 20, Major League Baseball staged a game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala.: a “tribute game.” Rickwood was the home of the Birmingham Black Barons, a team in the Negro Leagues. The Barons played from 1920 to 1960. The game in June was a tribute to the Negro Leagues.
MLB greats were gathered, to watch the game and comment on the past. One of them was Reggie Jackson, who played in Birmingham at the beginning of his career: for the Double-A team of the Kansas City A’s (later the Oakland A’s). Life was hard, at home and on the road. Jackson did no sugarcoating.
“I walked into restaurants and they would point at me and say, ‘The n***** can’t eat here.’ I would go to a hotel and they would say, ‘The n***** can’t stay here.’”
Hearing him, I gulped. Not because I was naïve. I knew what Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and other pioneers had faced. But Reggie Jackson? He was of “my time” — not those times. Jackson’s career stretched from 1967 to 1987. When he started out, I was in preschool, and when he finished, I was in grad school. Feel free to laugh, but Jim Crow and the civil-rights struggle seemed distant to me. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, the assassination of Martin Luther King — all those things seemed distant to me when I was in, say, high school.
Here is another laugh: The Vietnam War seemed distant. Something “historical,” like the Korean War or the world wars. I entered college in 1982. Saigon had fallen seven years before.
One more laugh, just for the fun of it: Watergate seemed like “history”! Might as well have been Teapot Dome!
Time is such a tricky phenomenon, don’t you agree? Things that seemed distant when you were young can seem near when you are not.
In 1984, I was in Washington, D.C., enrolled in a program on government and politics. This was like a domestic semester abroad. I was smitten with government and politics. (Today, the smiting is of a different sort.) One day, I had a question for my grandmother, a lifelong Washingtonian: “Gram, when did the fancy country clubs — Burning Tree, Columbia, Congressional, and the rest — start admitting Jews?” She looked at me slyly and said, “Have they?”
Yes, they had — but only very, very recently.
When I was quite young, I was scandalized by the idea of Jewish country clubs. It offended my notion of pluralism and integration and Americanism. “Clannish,” said critics (and “critics” is a mild word). At some point, I learned that Jewish clubs were founded because their members had been denied admission to other clubs.
“My daughter is only half Jewish,” said Groucho Marx. “Can she go into the pool up to her knees?” “My son is only half Jewish. Can he play nine holes?”
I had a lesson in identity: Sometimes, identity is forced on a person. You may not want to feel tribal, but such a feeling may be forced on you by the broader world.
Stefan Zweig was born in 1881, nine years before Groucho. He grew up in Vienna, the great cosmopolitan capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From a secular family, he never felt Jewish. That changed in about 1933. In 1942, the day before he killed himself, he finished writing The World of Yesterday, soon to become a classic. Its subtitle: “Memoirs of a European.”
“A European”! You may think of yourself as one — but do your “fellow” Europeans?
‘Pivot” is a word familiar in our politics. Let me now pivot to those politics. Kamala Harris is frequently called a “DEI hire.” “DEI” stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” People used to say “affirmative-action hire.” Our terms evolve.
It’s true that Joe Biden wanted to choose a black woman as his running mate in 2020. I have opposed this kind of thing my entire life — choosing by race, evaluating by race. But Biden’s choice was not mere “social justice” (troublesome term). It was electoral calculation (which is not unknown in politics, and not even wrong).
In 1984, Walter Mondale wanted a female running mate — the first ever. Some accounts say that he really wanted Dianne Feinstein, the mayor of San Francisco. But would the country accept the first Jew and the first woman on a ticket in the same person? In any case, Mondale went with Geraldine Ferraro, a congresswoman from New York.
In 2008, Barack Obama passed over Hillary Clinton, his chief rival from the primaries. He went with Joe Biden. Sensing an opportunity, John McCain went with a woman: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. In her first speech, upon being selected, Palin said,
I think today of two other women who came before me in national elections. I can’t begin this great effort without honoring the achievements of Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and, of course, Senator Hillary Clinton, who showed such determination and grace in her presidential campaign.
Clinton had received 18 million votes in the primaries. The Democrats, nominating Obama, had just held their convention in Denver. Said Palin,
It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.
Was this bad? All this “I am woman, hear me roar” stuff? I don’t know. It was politics.
If I had my way, politics would be about ideas, without regard to skin color, sex, and other “immutable characteristics,” to use a phrase I grew up with. But I don’t get my way — on that and a host of other issues. This is annoying, in life.
My upbringing was fairly unusual, I came to learn. (Probably, everyone’s upbringing seems normal to him, when it is occurring.) I was the son of racially liberal parents, growing up in a racially liberal town. Religion was central in my life, then as now: “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons.” “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female.”
And how I loved our Founding, and its ideals! “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” I loved our national motto, or one of them: E pluribus unum. (Our official motto is “In God We Trust,” which I also loved.) I loved the concept of the melting pot. Quaint, right?
Over the years, people tried to replace “melting pot” with “gorgeous mosaic” (a phrase associated with David Dinkins, who was mayor of New York). There was also Jesse Jackson’s “patchwork quilt.” Fair enough. I like quilts, and mosaics. But I was, and am, a holdout for the melting pot.
I loved the spirituals — “Negro spirituals,” we used to call them (“Negro Leagues”) — which I learned from Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, Leontyne Price, Barbara Hendricks, and many others. I felt they belonged to me. They were part of my American heritage, and human heritage, come to that. White singers sang them too, including George London and Marilyn Horne.
Do white singers sing them today? Very, very seldom. “Cultural appropriation,” you know. (I have written about that elsewhere, indignantly.)
As I am a holdout for the melting pot, I am a holdout for colorblindness. Colorblindness! Talk about quaint. People like to equate colorblindness with naivete about race and racism. They also like to equate it with malice. With lingering resentment, I recall what Al Gore said to the NAACP during the 2000 presidential cycle:
I’ve heard the critics of affirmative action. They talk about a colorblind society. Give me a break! Hel-lo? They use their “colorblind” the way duck hunters use their duck blind: They hide behind it and hope the ducks won’t figure out what they’re up to.
Rightly understood, colorblindness is a principle and an ideal (both): We do not judge by race or ethnicity in this country. We have had more than enough of that, over the generations. We take people as people: our fellow Americans, children of God, what have you.
“Living in a bubble” is a popular phrase these days. People like to accuse others of “living in a bubble.” They themselves live in the great, broad world, while you live in a bubble. I don’t think I lived in a bubble. I acknowledge, however, that my environment — Ann Arbor, Mich. — was unusual. I almost never heard a racist remark. I’ll relate an anecdote at which you can laugh.
When I was in my early twenties, I was working in an athletic facility of the University of Michigan. Some event was being held in the facility. One of the volunteers was an elderly gent, who told me that he had moved from Ann Arbor out to Chelsea, a small town, some 15 miles west of Ann Arbor. “It’s great,” he said. “So clean and quiet.” Then he put his hand to the side of his mouth and said, “No blacks.”
Here is where you can laugh at me (again): I was shocked. I almost never heard people talk like that.
When I became a journalist, I wrote a lot about race, because I thought it was important. Race was in every nook and cranny of American life. And it didn’t belong there, in my judgment. The country was drowning in race, I thought.
In the mid 1990s, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was advertising a series called “Classically Black.” Programs of music by black composers? Not really. If the orchestra was performing the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, and one of the singers in the quartet for the last movement was black, that concert would be put in “Classically Black.” See how it worked?
I went to town, in a piece on the subject. Today, the music business is all the more race-conscious: in casting, programming, and everything else. Not long ago, a famous singer — who is also famously liberal — said to me, “I hate this shit.”
Many hold this view, usually privately — indeed, almost always so.
My views are not private, by and large. I air them regularly, almost daily. Because I am a conservative, I have frequently been called a racist — anti-racist though I am. I am an anti-fascist, too (a classical liberal, an American conservative), but have frequently been called a fascist as well.
I could tell stories, but I have already told a number, and will tell more, in due course.
In 2010, I wrote an essay on race — and racism and anti-racism — which included this paragraph:
If you’re a conservative with any public role, you get used to being called a racist — but not really. And why should one become entirely inured to it? The charge of “racist” is about the worst that can be leveled in America. If we must merely shrug it off or ignore it, we’ve reached a sorry pass.
You know one of the worst things about false charges of racism? They take the sting out of true charges — valid ones. “Oh, they always say that,” people think. Well, sometimes “they” are right.
Race-consciousness altogether is a curse, in my opinion. A bane of human existence. “The only race is the human race,” goes an old line. It is glib — but laudable, I think. And yet . . .
Recall Leon Trotsky: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” You may not choose race-consciousness, but race-consciousness may choose you. For all I know, Reggie Jackson would like to be a plain old American, unhyphenated and unqualified. But call him “n*****” enough times . . . (That word is like a knife-stab.)
Earlier, I “pivoted” to vice-presidential nominees, and now I will pivot again — to Supreme Court nominees. Begin in 1980. Running for president, Ronald Reagan pledged to nominate a woman. He was elected, and in June of his first year, a seat came open: Potter Stewart was retiring.
Reagan had not pledged that his first nominee would be a woman. He had a free hand — or free-ish? He did not know whether he would get another pick — his predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had served four years with no pick at all — and he wanted to keep his pledge, no matter what. He nominated Sandra Day O’Connor.
Was that wrong? That he aimed for a woman, rather than “the best person”? You could argue it was. I might agree with you. But the Supreme Court had been in business for almost 200 years. Maybe it did no harm that there was now a woman on the Court?
In 1991, Thurgood Marshall was retiring. He was the first black American on the Court, and there had not yet been another one. President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to succeed him. He swore up and down that Thomas’s race had nothing to do with it. Skeptically, a reporter asked, “Was race a factor whatsoever, sir, in the selection?” The president answered, “I don’t see it at all.”
Lord knows I admire Bush, and Thomas — but come on. I did not just fall off the turnip truck. (I learned that expression, as it happens, from President Bush himself. I can’t say I’ve heard it since, except from me.)
Question: Should there ever be a time when the Supreme Court has no black member on it? My answer: In theory, why should it matter? If all nine members of the Court are Chinese-American women, fine with me (as long as their legal understanding is sound). If all nine members are lefthanded Rastafarian men, fine with me (as long as their . . .). But life is not lived in theory. There are prickly all-too-human considerations.
I hated it — hated it — when President Clinton said he wanted “a cabinet that looks like America.” Who cares what they look like! What matters is what they think like, act like, are! Yes, but . . .
In 2022, President Biden decided to put a black woman on the Court. There had never been one. He nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson — who in most respects was an utterly conventional Supreme Court nominee. She went to Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Clerked for a Supreme Court justice (Stephen Breyer). Was a judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals. She was from Central Casting, Judge Jackson was. And a black woman.
The selection of justices by race and/or sex is bothersome to me. I also think it is discordant with American ideals. Nevertheless, this thought occurs to me: The Court had been in operation for 233 years. When was it time to have a black woman on it? In 2067 or so? Maybe wait until the 22nd century, just to be sure?
Jump back to 2001. President Bush (the Younger) nominated Miguel Estrada for the D.C. Court of Appeals. A lot of us were thrilled with Estrada — he was an embodiment of the American Dream. He came to this country from Honduras when he was 17, speaking no English. And then: Columbia College, Harvard Law School, Harvard Law Review . . .
But the Democrats in the Senate killed his nomination, probably because he might have gone on to be the first Supreme Court justice of Latin American origin — and he was a conservative.
My blood boiled for a long time after that one. So did President Bush’s. (I know this personally.)
In 2009, Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama nominee, became the first Hispanic justice.
Speaking of Obama, there was something I very much appreciated about him. Now and then, an interviewer would ask him, “Do people vote against you because of your race?” He would say some version of the following: “Sure. But there are people who vote for me because of my race, too.”
Representation is important to people — representation of the “wrong” sort, or unfortunate sort, as I see it. When I was young, I rebelled against the idea that black children had to have black teachers or coaches in order to have “role models.” I would argue — I was quite the arguer — “Are you also saying that black teachers and coaches can’t be role models to white children? Do white children have to have whiteys? Does a teacher or coach have to be the same color as his charges in order to be a role model?”
I was right. But I was also . . . maybe not so right. You have to walk in other people’s moccasins, if you can — even if the walk does not ultimately change your views.
In 2009, a family named Philadelphia visited Obama in the Oval Office. Five-year-old Jacob Philadelphia said to the president, “I want to know if your hair is like mine.” Obama replied, “Why don’t you touch it and see for yourself?” He bent down his 6’2” frame so the boy could touch his head. A photographer snapped a picture, resulting in an “iconic” shot.
Should it have mattered to little Jacob whether the president’s hair was like his own? (It was.) Well, it did.
Though I am white, I have never thought of myself as white. A luxury, you might say. If you were tall in a society full of tall people — as tall as Obama — would you think of yourself as tall? Short people, though, would be height-conscious.
You know what makes white people race-conscious? When they marry someone of another race. Or adopt a child of another race. They are more attuned to racism. They start to see things with different eyes and hear things with different ears.
Another thing that makes people feel race-conscious? When they are denied a job, or a place, on account of their race. There must be redress, people say — redress in America, for hundreds of years of discrimination, and worse. Okay. But lives are lived individually, aren’t they? Shall the sins of the fathers be visited upon the children, and unto how many generations?
A quick personal story: Thirty-plus years ago, I was interested in a job — a low-level job — at the Los Angeles Times. An editor there did me the favor of being candid: “You may not think very much of affirmative action, Jay, but it is rigorously practiced here.” He meant: no chance.
But I will quote Bush the Elder again — will quote him quoting a song: “Don’t cry for me, Argentina.” I have done okay (according to some). Others, though — of whatever hue or sex — struggle and struggle to gain a foothold.
I could go on with my stories, talking your ear off. These stories would illustrate different points, and contradictory ones. Maybe I will tell just one more.
When I was in high school, I had a friend who was a pianist. A black girl (which is relevant). One day, I asked her, “Who’s your favorite pianist?” She said André Watts. “Why?” I asked. Sheepishly, she said, “Because he’s black.” Then she kind of giggled. “Oh, Emily!” I said. “What does that have to do with anything? How can race be a criterion in music? On top of that, his mother is Hungarian! That’s the whole reason he’s in music in the first place!”
I was correct. I was also an ass. In my defense, I was 16. I have learned more about the world in the years since, I hope. I will never give up on my ideals. But maybe I am more . . . I don’t know. I think of the phrase “sadder but wiser.”
When I discussed these questions in an online column, I got a note from a longtime reader — a bright and thoughtful guy — who said,
We should give up on trying to eliminate racism, sexism, etc., and admit that forming groups, judging appearances, and practicing conformity are inherent human behaviors. I shouldn’t treat a good-looking woman better than an ugly one, and I shouldn’t be more upset that a deer got run over than that a rat got run over, and I shouldn’t want Brandon Nakashima to win his next tennis match because he is a Japanese American like me, but I do.
I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.
If my above scribbles have been messy, it’s because the issues are messy, I think. They are not black and white. (Take that however you wish.) There is a famous title, “An American Dilemma.” (The subtitle of that book — written by Gunnar Myrdal and published in 1944 — is “The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.”) “Dilemma” comes from Greek, meaning “two premises” or “two assumptions.”
I understand that people are group-minded — tribal, if you like — whether from biology or in reaction to the world as they find it. This has to be accommodated, or at least allowed for, in politics and other human affairs.
But, again, I’ll take my stand (to echo another famous American book title). I will never give up on my beliefs. Will never give up on man as man. “God is no respecter of persons.” “There is neither Jew nor Greek . . .” “We hold these truths . . .” All that jazz — good jazz, universal and eternal.