Whiter Than Gehazi’s Knees

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A friend has let know that he has heard a report that I have some sympathies for “separation of the races” and that I hold to the “inferiority of minorities.” I address this question in Black & Tan, which Canon is still selling on Kindle for 99 cents here. The report is a falsehood top to bottom, and front to back. If false reports were orange, pink, yellow, magenta, and lurid red, this one would be the most gorgeous sunset you ever saw.

Until you get your copy, here are couple of quotes from Black & Tan to tide you over.

“The white separatists are infuriated by us because we won’t echo their follies on racial intermarriage — because the standard they advance is found nowhere in Scripture. We don’t like the mosquitos that come from any kind of fever swamp” (Black & Tan, loc 1421).

“The Christian faith is the future of this world. The wonderful result will be a Trinitarian glory which will include lots of brown and tan, red and yellow, black and white. Any political or theological conservatism that does not accept this, press for it, pray for it, and yearn for it is a conservatism that must be born again” (Black & Tan, loc. 260).

So where might the idea come from then? I discuss this at length in the book as well, but I do believe in such a thing as cultural superiority and cultural inferiority. And not to keep you in suspense, I believe that superior cultures are shaped and formed as a result of gospel preaching, and I despise every form of cultural paganism. This has nothing to do with race, except in accidental, post hoc ways. This means, bottom line, that I would prefer a black Christian culture to a white pagan one. Water is thicker than blood. Wisdom is color blind. So is folly.

William F. Buckley once suggested a possible epitaph for Eleanor Roosevelt — “with all my heart and soul, I fought the syllogism.” Inability to think in a straight line between A and B is characteristic of all cultures that have themselves a bad case of the pagan gimmes. And our generation is getting to the point that whenever I cast an eye over a paragraph I have written, and I happen to see one or more valid hypothetical syllogisms, I feel like a race traitor.

Simplistic thinkers look at the pathologies of the American inner cities, which in our time largely come in black, and they leap to superficial conclusions. But this overlooks two things. The first is the fact that the regnant lunatics who created those conditions are all as white as Gehazi’s knees in February. And secondly, as anybody who has read Dalrymple’s Life At the Bottom could tell you, when you apply those same lunatic policies to whites in the UK, you get (surprise!) exactly the same kind of result. Wisdom manifests itself anywhere, and folly can rot out anything.

 

So it has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with unbelieving paganism. When you tie the anvil of paganism around a black neck and throw the guy in, he goes straight to the bottom. But my argument is not complicated. The same thing happens when you tie the anvil of paganism around a white neck and throw him in. A white epidermis doesn’t change the iron anvil into a cork anvil.

And as I look around, I see the re-paganization of our people proceeding apace. Not only that, I see Christians interacting with these trends (read, chasing after them, mouths agape) in trite and superficial ways. Whether we are talking about hair combed with an egg beater, or slatternly dress, or tattoos up past the elbow, triteness in response to this paganism reigns supreme. We can anticipate the same levels of triteness in cultural analysis with the next couple of hot trends (which will be chewing betel nut and wearing a bone through the nose). The question will be indignantly asked of me, “Where does the Bible say I can’t wear a bone through the nose?” Only because it is a pretty thick bone, the query will sound something like, “Wur duz thu Buybul sae I caunt wur a bun thru by doz? Wegalwhist.” Not having had this conversation yet, I can’t be absolutely certain, but I would be willing to bet dollars to donuts that my interlocutor will be under 25, male, and white. And probably from Portland.

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