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“After Lincoln became president he campaigned for colonization, and even in the midst of war with the Confederacy found time to work on the project, appointing Rev. James Mitchell as Commissioner of Emigration, in charge of finding a place to which blacks could be sent. On August 14th, 1862, he invited a group of black leaders to the White House to try to persuade them to leave the country, telling them that “there is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us.” He urged them to lead their people to a colonization site in Central America. Lincoln was therefore the first president to invite a delegation of blacks to the White House—and did so to ask them to leave the country. Later that year, in a message to Congress, he argued not just for voluntary colonization but for the forcible removal of free blacks. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, shared these anti-black sentiments: “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.” Like Jefferson, he thought whites had a clear destiny: “This whole vast continent is destined to fall under the control of the Anglo-Saxon race—the governing and self-governing race.” Before he became president, James Garfield wrote, “[I have] a strong feeling of repugnance when I think of the negro being made our political equal and I would be glad if they could be colonized, sent to heaven, or got rid of in any decent way . . . .” Theodore Roosevelt blamed Southerners for bringing blacks to America. In 1901 he wrote: “I have not been able to think out any solution to the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this continent . . . .” As for Indians, he once said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t inquire too closely into the health of the tenth.” William Howard Taft once told a group of black college students, “Your race is adapted to be a race of farmers, first, last, and for all times.” Woodrow Wilson was a confirmed segregationist, and as president of Princeton he refused to admit blacks. He enforced segregation in government offices and was supported in this by Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, who argued that “civilized white men” could not be expected to work with “barbarous black men.” During the presidential campaign of 1912, Wilson took a strong position in favor of excluding Asians: “I stand for the national policy of exclusion. . . . We cannot make a homogeneous population of a people who do not blend with the Caucasian race. . . . Oriental coolieism will give us another race problem to solve and surely we have had our lesson.” Warren Harding also wanted the races kept separate: “Men of both races [black and white] may well stand uncompromisingly against every suggestion of social equality. This is not a question of social equality, but a question of recognizing a fundamental, eternal, inescapable difference. Racial amalgamation there cannot be.”

Quote by Jared Taylor

Work

White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century

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Jared Taylor
Jared Taylor

Jared Taylor, born on September 15, 1951, is an American journalist known for his views on racism and immigration issues. He was the editor of 'American Renaissance' magazine and has contributed articles to various publications, including 'The American Conservative' and 'The New American'. more

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“The immigration laws that were in force until 1965 were a continuation of earlier laws written to maintain a white majority. However, after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and accommodation, a racially restrictive immigration policy was an embarrassment. The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965—also known as the Hart-Celler Act—abolished national origins quotas and opened immigration to all parts of the world. Its backers, however, emphasized that they did not expect it to have much impact. “Under the proposed bill,” explained Senator Edward Kennedy, “the present level of immigration remains substantially the same. Secondly, the ethnic mix will not be upset. Contrary to charges in some quarters, it will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area.” The senator suggested that at most 62,000 people a year might immigrate. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill into law, he also downplayed its impact: “This bill that we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives . . . .” The backers were wrong. In 1996, for example, there were a record 1,300,000 naturalizations 70 and perhaps 90 percent of the new citizens were non-white. Large parts of the country are being transformed by immigration. But the larger point is that “diversity” of the kind that immigration is now said to provide was never proposed as one of the law’s benefits. No one dreamed that in just 20 years ten percent of the entire population of El Salvador would have moved to the United States or that millions of mostly Hispanic and Asian immigrants would reduce whites to a racial minority in California in little more than 20 years. In 1965—before diversity had been decreed a strength—Americans would have been shocked by the prospect of demographic shifts of this kind. Whites were close to 90 percent of the American population, and immigration reform would have failed if its backers had accurately predicted its demographic consequences.”

“The US government sponsors a publication called Managing Diversity, which is supposed to help federal employees work better in an increasingly mixed-race workplace. One of its 1997 issues published a front-page story called “What are the Values of White People?” The author, Harris Sussman, explained that merely to speak of whites is “to invoke [a] history and experience of injustice and cruelty. When we say ‘white people,’ we mean the people of greed who value things over people, who value money over people.” Noel Ignatiev, formerly of Harvard, endorsed such sentiments in a publication called Race Traitor, which promoted the slogan, “Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.” The lead article of the first issue of Race Traitor was called “Abolish the White Race—by any Means Necessary.” By this Prof. Ignatiev did not mean that whites should be physically eliminated, only that they should “dissolve the club” of white privilege whose alleged purpose is to exploit non-whites. Christine Sleeter, President of the National Association for Multicultural Education, explains what whiteness means: “ravenous materialism, competitive individualism, and a way of living characterized by putting acquisition of possessions above humanity.” In 2000, there were bomb threats and anti-black e-mail at the University of Iowa that turned out to be a fake hate crime staged by a black woman. Ann Rhodes, a white woman who was vice president for university relations was surprised: “I figured it was going to be a white guy between 25 and 55 because they’re the root of most evil.”

“Science writers Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman have found that ethnic pride is an important element of self-esteem for other races but they draw the line at whites: “It’s horrifying to imagine kids being ‘proud to be white’. ” Many intellectuals believe whites are collectively guilty. As James Traub of The New Yorker wrote, when it comes to any discussion about race, whites must acknowledge that they are the offending party: “One’s hand is stayed by the knowledge of innumerable past hurts and misdeeds. The recognition of those wrongs, along with the acceptance of the sense of collective responsibility—guilt—that comes with recognition is a precondition to entering the discussion [about race].” Joe Klein, in New York Magazine, wrote that any conversation about race must begin with a confession: “It’s our fault; we’re racists.” “Black anger and white surrender have become a staple of contemporary racial discourse,” writes another commentator. Most blacks endorse this view. James Baldwin wrote that any real dialogue between the races requires a confession from whites that is nothing less than “a cry for help and healing.” Popular culture casually denigrates whites. Jay Blumenfield, an executive producer for the Showtime cable network, was working in 2004 on a reality program tentatively titled “Make Me Cool,” in which a group of blacks were to give “hipness makeovers” to a series of “desperately dweebie” whites. Why whites? Mr. Blumenfield explained that the purpose of the program was to correct “uncoolness,” and that “the easiest way to express that is they’ll be white.” Gary Bassell, head of an advertising agency that specializes in reaching Hispanics explained that “we’ve been shaped by an American pop culture today that increasingly proves that color is cool and white is washed out.” Miss Gallagher noted above that there are “few things more degrading than being proud to be white.” The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) agrees. In 2005, it refused to grant a trademark on the phrase “White Pride Country Wide.” It explained that “the ‘white pride’ element of the proposed mark is considered offensive and therefore scandalous.” The USPTO has nevertheless trademarked “Black Power” and “Black Supremacy,” and apparently finds nothing scandalous in “African Pride,” “Native Pride!” “Asian Pride,” “Black Pride,” “Orgullo Hispano” (Hispanic Pride), “Mexican Pride,” and “African Man Pride,” all of which have been trademarked.”

“It would be logical for any group whose only sense of identity is the negative one of wickedness and oppression to dilute its wickedness by mixing with more virtuous groups. This is, upon reflection, exactly what celebrating diversity implies. James Carignan, a city councilor in Lewiston, Maine, encouraged the city to welcome refugees from the West African country of Togo, writing, “We are too homogeneous at present. We desperately need diversity.” He said the Togolese—of whom it was not known whether they were literate, spoke English, or were employable—“will bring us the diversity that is essential to our quest for excellence.” Likewise in Maine, long-serving state’s attorney James Tierney wrote of racial diversity in the state: “This is not a burden. This is essential.” An overly white population is a handicap. Gwynne Dyer, a London-based Canadian journalist, also believes whites must be leavened with non-whites in a process he calls “ethnic diversification.” He noted, however, that when Canada and Australia opened their borders to non-white immigration, they had to “do good by stealth” and not explain openly that the process would reduce whites to a minority: “Let the magic do its work, but don’t talk about it in front of the children. They’ll just get cross and spoil it all.” Mr. Dyer looked forward to the day when politicians could be more open about their intentions of thinning out whites. President Bill Clinton was open about it. In his 2000 State of the Union speech, he welcomed predictions that whites would become a minority by mid-century, saying, “this diversity can be our greatest strength.” In 2009, before a gathering of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, he again brought up forecasts that whites will become a minority, adding that “this is a very positive thing.” [...] Harvard University professor Robert Putnam says immigrants should not assimilate. “What we shouldn’t do is to say that they should be more like us,” he says. “We should construct a new us.” When Marty Markowitz became the new Brooklyn borough president in 2002, he took down the portrait of George Washington that had hung in the president’s office for many years. He said he would hang a picture of a black or a woman because Washington was an “old white man.” [...] In 2000, John Sharp, a former Texas comptroller and senator told the state Democratic Hispanic Caucus that whites must step aside and let Hispanics govern, “and if that means that some of us gringos are going to have to give up some life-long dreams, then we’ve got to do that.” When Robert Dornan of California was still in Congress, he welcomed the changing demographics of his Orange County district. “I want to see America stay a nation of immigrants,” he said. “And if we lose our Northern European stock—your coloring and mine, blue eyes and fair hair—tough!” Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times, appears happy to become a minority. He wrote this about Sonya Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearings: “[T]his particular wise Latina, with the richness of her experiences, would far more often than not reach a better [judicial] conclusion than the individual white males she faced in that Senate hearing room. Even those viewers who watched the Sotomayor show for only a few minutes could see that her America is our future and theirs is the rapidly receding past.” It is impossible to imagine people of any other race speaking of themselves this way.”

“In 2000, interior minister [of France] Jean-Pierre Chevenement said Europe should become a place of race-mixing (métissage) and that governments should make efforts to persuade Europeans to accept this. In 2007, both candidates in the French presidential election took the same view. Socialist Ségolène Royale, said that “miscegenation is an opportunity for France,” adding that she would encourage immigration and would be “president of a France that is mixed-race and proud of it.” Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative candidate who won the election, said he was proud of “a France that understands that creation comes from mixing, from openness, and from coming together—I’m not afraid of the word—from miscegenation.” It is common to project contemporary views upon the past. George Washington University professor Amitai Etzioni has written that people who marry across racial lines are “accepting the core American value of openness and living up to its tenets.” Andrew Sullivan, former editor of The New Republic has written that “miscegenation has always been the ultimate solution to America’s racial divisions.” These two got it wrong. For most of American history, miscegenation was the ultimate nightmare for whites. That whites should now see it as the ultimate solution to racial conflict is a sign not only of how radically our thinking has changed but also of how stubborn racial conflict turned out to be. Civil rights laws were supposed to usher in a new era of racial harmony. To propose now that the only solution to racial enmity is to eliminate race itself through intermarriage is to admit that different races cannot live together in peace. Of course, widespread miscegenation would not eliminate race; it would eliminate whites. Whites are no more than 17 percent of the world’s population and are having perhaps seven percent of the world’s children. No one is proposing large-scale intermarriage for Africa or Asia. Nor would mixing eliminate discrimination. Blacks, South Americans, and Asians discriminate among themselves on the basis of skin tone even when they are the same race. Thomas Jefferson looked forward to the day when whites would people the Americas from north to south. Today such a view would be universally scorned because it would mean the displacement of other populations, but the revolution in thinking among today’s whites leaves no grounds to argue against their own displacement through immigration or disappearance through intermarriage. Whites may have a sentimental attachment to the notion of a white America, but if races are interchangeable that attachment is irrational. If the only legitimate group sentiment for whites is guilt, perhaps it is only right that they should retreat gracefully before the advances of peoples they have wronged. There could hardly be more striking proof not only of how the thinking of whites has changed but how different it is from that of every other racial group. All non-whites celebrate their growing numbers and influence—just as whites once did. Whites—not only in America but around the world—cheerfully contemplate their disappearance as a distinct people.”

“I abhor the human stupidity and vanity that takes pride in forcing tigers, lions, and leopards to sit nicely side by side. It reminds me of the government choreography that displays brightly garbed minorities in a parade, minorities granted a crumb of political autonomy in exchange for providing an optical simulation of cultural diversity in their country of residence. But wild animals (as opposed to humans) form groups according to species to enjoy specific benefits.”

“[L]et us imagine a mirror image of what is happening today. What if millions of white Americans were pouring across the border into Mexico, taking over parts of cities, speaking English rather than Spanish, celebrating the Fourth of July rather than Cinco de Mayo, sleeping 20 to a house, demanding bilingual instruction and welfare for immigrants, opposing border control, and demanding ballots in English? What if, besides this, they had high rates of crime, poverty, and illegitimacy? Can we imagine the Mexicans rejoicing in their newfound diversity? And yet, that is what Americans are asked to do. For whites to celebrate diversity is to celebrate their own declining numbers and influence, and the transformation of their society. For every other group, to celebrate diversity is to celebrate increasing numbers and influence. Which is a real celebration and which is self-deception? Whites—but only whites—must never take pride in their own people. Only whites must pretend they do not prefer to associate with people like themselves. Only whites must pretend to be happy to give up their neighborhoods, their institutions, and their country to people unlike themselves. Only whites must always act as individuals and never as members of a group that promotes shared interests. Racial identity comes naturally to all non-white groups. It comes naturally because it is good, normal, and healthy to feel kinship for people like oneself. Despite the fashionable view that race is a socially created illusion, race is a biological reality. All people of the same race are more closely related genetically than they are to anyone of a different race, and this helps explain racial solidarity. Families are close for the same reason. Parents love their children, not because they are the smartest, best-looking, most talented children on earth. They love them because they are genetically close to them. They love them because they are a family. Most people have similar feelings about race. Their race is the largest extended family to which they feel an instinctive kinship. Like members of a family, members of a race do not need objective reasons to prefer their own group; they prefer it because it is theirs (though they may well imagine themselves as having many fine, partly imaginary qualities). These mystic preferences need not imply hostility towards others. Parents may have great affection for the children of others, but their own children come first. Likewise, affection often crosses racial lines, but the deeper loyalties of most people are to their own group—their extended family.”

“People of all races generally prefer the company of people like themselves. Racial diversity is a source of conflict, not strength. Non-whites, especially blacks and Hispanics, nurture a strong sense of racial pride and solidarity. Whites have little sense of racial solidarity, and most whites strongly condemn any signs of it. Immigration from non-European countries is changing the United States in profound ways, many of which whites find disagreeable. To the extent that these statements are true, they have serious implications both for the country as a whole and for whites as a group.”

“Many laws passed by Congress have grandiose names and are hailed by their sponsors as far more important than they really are. In one case, however, legislators promised little of consequence for a law that reshaped the country. The Hart-Celler Act of 1965, also known as the Immigration and Nationality Act, abolished the national-origins immigration quotas set up in 1924 to preserve the European character of the American population. As we saw in the previous chapter, the promoters of the act insisted it would have little effect on the ethnic mix of the country, which was then nearly 90 percent white. By 2008, however, whites had already fallen to 65 percent of the population, and the Census Bureau was predicting they would become a minority in 2042—just 77 years after enactment. This would be a more dramatic long-term effect than perhaps that of any other legislation passed in the 20th century. Post-Hart-Celler immigration has also enormously increased the population of the United States, which is the only industrial nation that is growing like a developing country. In 2010, the population was expanding by about 7,500 people every day—nearly three million a year—and immigrants and their children accounted for 75 percent of the 27.3 million increase from 2000 to 2010. Growth at this rate requires enormous amounts of new infrastructure, including about 8,000 new schools every ten years. In 2008, the Census Bureau projected that the population would expand from 302 million to 439 million by 2050, assuming immigration continues at current rates. If immigration stopped after 2009, there would be much more moderate growth, with the population reaching 345 million rather than 439 million.”