Yale Prof Suggests American Democracy Was Founded on Racism
“racism was the guarantor of this fragile experiment in republican government or democracy”
Is anyone else exhausted with the left’s constant framing of America’s foundation as racist?
Campus Reform reports:
Yale prof claims American democracy was founded on racism
Yale University Professor Mathew Jacobson led an online conversation about racism in the United States, where the professor contended that American democracy was founded on racism.
Jacobson spoke on a variety of topics, but the one that took center stage was his view of the founding of the United States. He commented that “For the framers, race and their racism and the exclusions that their racism underwrote were what were going to make democracy possible.”
Professor Jacobson’s conversation was hosted by New York University to discuss America’s racism, in its past and present.
In regards to American history and law, he commented that “what it tells us is that racism is not merely a stain on democracy or a contradiction to democracy as we kind of naturally view it now. But for the framers, as they saw it, racism was the guarantor of this fragile experiment in republican government or democracy.”
“It was the exclusions based on race that gave this experiment a chance as far as they were concerned,” he added. “So racism and democracy have been mutually constitutive, in North America.”
When speaking on modern America, he pointed out that during the Obama administration there was a “level of opposition that speaks to the kind of politics of white displacement and grievance.” In describing Obama’s opponents, he commented that the Tea Party Movement was a reactionary force that saw Obama as an “occupying army” and constantly showed their “language of white displacement.”
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Comments
The whole argument starts from the fact that the first naturalization law allows “free white persons”. There was no discussion of it in the Congress, so he has nothing to draw conclusions from about what people thought, but he uses that very fact to draw lots of conclusions.
One of his conclusions is that the militia was only supposed to fight people of color. (This is nonsense since we had just finished a war against white people, and others like Spain were nearby in Florida and the Louisiana Territory. It was clear that we were concerned about Spain, because Jefferson used a trick, with France as intermediary, to get them to sell us the Louisiana Territory.)
And from that and the fact that we continued to favor white people for a while, he says “racism is what will allow us to succeed”.
That’s the whole logic. It’s clearly wrong. There’s no smoking gun moment where anyone says “without race preference we won’t succeed”. And he has scoured carefully, surely looking for that.
He even interprets congressional blockades of Obama as being white grievance. What then are the far worse congressional blockades and subversion of Trump? Essentially this guy is just trying to amplify the race propaganda in the press. American Studies was always seen as leftist, even compared to the norm at Yale. I had thought it might be a little more interesting at least, rather than just the same cant we’ve been hearing everywhere else.
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” (March 26, 1790).
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.
“Yale University Professor Mathew Jacobson …”
… draws a lucrative salary from a university that’s named after a slave trader.
Sure, it’s a tu quoque argument, but if he had any actual virtue to signal, he’d resign and get a job for which he is better qualified, such as waiting tables at Denny’s.
Obviously, ran out of good ideas, so they use the vile, racist one instead.
Name one sub-Saharan nation governed by natives that has a functional democracy.