This was written by Hannah Arendt in 1957 and published in 1958 (hat tip to Kathy Shaidle). I will excerpt and comment.
First, some background from Wikipedia: “The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.”
Hannah Arendt: “It is unfortunate and even unjust (though hardly unjustified) that the events at Little Rock should have such an enormous echo in public opinion throughout the world and have become a major stumbling block to American foreign policy.”
One impetus for American racial integration was to distinguish the country from Nazi Germany (which modeled its racial policies on America’s, Hitler admired America’s ruthless expansion) and another impetus was to better compete with communism in the Third World.
Hannah: “…the country’s attitude to its negro population is rooted in American tradition and nothing else.”
This is nonsense. All countries with America’s racial demographics have had similar problems and blessings. There’s nothing unique in America’s racial challenges.
Hannah: “The color question was created by the one great crime in America’s history and is soluble only within the political and historical framework of the Republic.”
If you want to take a moral approach to analyzing America’s history, there were many crimes, not just slavery. America’s ruthless expansion will be viewed as a crime by all those sympathetic to the crushed. Also, America’s color question is not soluble by the currently acceptable means. No nation has solved such matters except by slaughter and eviction.
Hannah: “…the color problem in world politics grew out of the colonialism and imperialism of European nations — that is, the one great crime in which America was never involved.”
I don’t find it useful to look at history primarily in terms of a particular moral lens. Stronger nations inevitably subjugate weaker ones. America grew as big and powerful as its circumstances allowed, just like Germany and Britain and Japan and other great powers. No great nation has ever stopped itself from growing more powerful and dominant for moral reasons. That’s not how the world works.
Hannah: “The tragedy is the unsolved color problem within the United States may cost her the advantages she otherwise would rightly enjoy as a world power.”
World power depends upon one’s ability to project offensive force. It has nothing to do with a nation’s morality or its civil rights. The advantages that come with world power have nothing to do with a nation’s internal morality. Such power does not come from moral claims, it comes from the point of a missile.
Hannah: “The principle of its political structure is, and always has been, independent of a homogeneous population and of a common past.”
Nonsense. The United States was founded and built by those who were genetically Englishmen (85% of the country at the time of its founding was Anglo). As Samuel Francis noted: “The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people, nor is there any reason to believe that the civilization can be successfully transmitted to a different people.”
Since early colonial times, and until just a few decades ago, virtually all Whites believed race was a fundamental aspect of individual and group identity. They believed people of different races had different temperaments and abilities, and built markedly different societies. They believed that only people of European stock could maintain a society in which they would wish to live, and they strongly opposed miscegenation. For more than 300 years, therefore, American policy reflected a consensus on race that was the very opposite of what prevails today.
Those who would impute egalitarianism to the Founders should recall that in 1776, the year of the Declaration, race slavery was already more than 150 years old in North America and was practiced throughout the New World, from Canada to Chile.[2] In 1770, 40 percent of White households in Manhattan owned Black slaves, and there were more slaves in the colony of New York than in Georgia.[3] It was true that many of the Founders considered slavery a terrible injustice and hoped to abolish it, but they meant to expel the freed slaves from the United States, not to live with them in equality.
Thomas Jefferson’s views were typical of his generation. Despite what he wrote in the Declaration, he did not think Blacks were equal to Whites, noting that “in general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection.”[4] He hoped slavery would be abolished some day, but “when freed, he [the Negro] is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.”[5] Jefferson also expected whites eventually to displace all of the Indians of the New World. The United States, he wrote, was to be “the nest from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled,”[6] and the hemisphere was to be entirely European: “… nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface.”
It is understandable that Jews such as Hannah Arendt are more comfortable thinking of the United States as a proposition nation, but it was on ties of gentile blood and gentile soil that the country was built.
After a ludicrous beginning, Arendt’s essay turns serious and honest.
Hannah: “This is somewhat less true of the South whose population is more homogeneous and more rooted in the past than that of any other part of the country.”
“…the Negroes’ visibility is unalterable and permanent.”
“But the principle of equality, even in its American form, is not omnipotent; it cannot equalize natural, physical characteristics.”
When it comes to the Humanities and the Social Sciences, race must be the starting point for understanding humanity. Different races, on average, have different gifts.
“Since the Supreme Court decision to enforce desegregation in public schools, the general situation in the South has deteriorated.”
“…without discrimination of some sort, society would cease to exist.”
“…social conformism tends to become an absolute and a substitute for national homogeneity. In any event, discrimination is as indispensable a social right as equality is a political right. The question is not how to abolish discrimination, but how to keep confined within the social sphere, where it is legitimate…”
“If as a Jew I wish to spend my vacations only in the company of Jews, I cannot see how any one can reasonably prevent my doing so; just as I see no reason why other resorts should not cater to a clientele that wishes not see Jews while on holiday.”
“The churches are indeed the only communal and public place where appearances do not count, and if discrimination creeps into the houses of worship, this is an infallible sign of their religious failing.”
Nonsense. Most Americans choose to go to churches that are heavily segregated by race. That’s how people work — they prefer their own kind. Most people choose to live, work, socialize and worship with people of their race.
“Children are first of all part of family and home, and this means that they are, or should be, brought up in that atmosphere of idiosyncratic exclusiveness which alone makes a home a home, strong and secure enough to shield its young…”
“To force parents to send their children to an integrated school against their will means to deprive them of their rights which clearly belong to them in all free societies — the private right over their children and the social right to free association. As for the children, forced integration means a very serious conflict between home and school, between their private and their social life… The result can only be a rise of mob and gang rule…”
