Letter from Bob Engel
Culture Wars – August 2006 – Colorado Central Magazine
Dear Editor:
I found Martha Quillen’s July critique [A Letter From The Editors] of Richard Lamm’s recent book, Two Wands, One Nation, incomprehensible. After rereading Lamm’s book her assessment seemed even more farfetched.
His short book is better described, as Lamm does, as an essay. It can be read in less than two hours, and I urge readers to read it for themselves. It’s a superb summary of citizenship and certain problems facing America.
At first I considered responding line-by-line to Martha’s critique. But Lamm’s essay eloquently speaks for itself.
Instead I’ll respond to the tone of Martha’s critique, which she begins by saying his “mean-spirited stereotypes are considerably scarier than [anything by Rush Limbaugh or Anne Coulter].” Later she says, “Lamm insists that he’s not a racist” but “it seems likely that Lamm is kidding himself.” Or in other words, he’s a racist.
Near the end of her article she indicates a desire to “move the current discourse to the left” and then caps it with some nonsense about how “today, the rallying cry is that many of us must go — back to Mexico, to jail, to the gas chamber, to the front.”
Now unlike Martha, I’ve never listened to Limbaugh or read Coulter. But there’s enough in her description of them to know these guys are bad, and so Lamm must be really nasty.
Regarding her accusation of racism, this seems a frequent disparagement when someone questions the appropriateness of the massive migration across our Southern border. Syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. played that card recently in a National Public Radio commentary, as did Denver Post columnist Cindy Rodriguze in her column.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called a symbolic amendment to the Senate’s immigration bill making English the “national” language racist (while ignoring the legally binding “official” language designation of Spanish in Mexico).
What Martha’s critique didn’t explain is what originally prompted Lamm’s essay. Published in the University of Denver’s in-house magazine, The Source, was a column “finding white Americans guilty of ‘prejudice, racism, and systemic racial oppression.'” Lamm, associated with DU since 1969 except during his three terms as governor, submitted a letter in response titled “Two Wands.” It was rejected by the administration as “too controversial.”
Here are the first two paragraphs of Lamm’s “too controversial” letter:
“Let me offer you, metaphorically, two magic wands that have sweeping powers to change society. With one wand you could wipe out all racism and discrimination from the hearts and minds of white America. The other wand you could wave across the ghettoes and barrios of America and infuse the inhabitants with Japanese or Jewish values, respect for learning, and ambition. But, alas, you can’t wave both wands. Only one.”
“Which would you choose? I understand that many of us would love to wave both wands; no one can easily refuse the chance to erase racism and discrimination. But I suggest that the best wand for society and for those who live in the ghettoes and barrios would be the second wand.”
Lamm’s message parallels an increasing number of black writers.
African American English professor Charles Johnson approvingly quotes columnist William Raspberry in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece (Oct. 14, 2005). “For the first time in black American history what we do is a greater determinate of our future than what is done to us. We need to teach that and preach that and shout that — to our young people and ourselves.”
Black authors, John McWhorter (Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America), Shelby Steel (White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era), and Thomas Sowell (Black Rednecks and White Liberals) have said the same thing.
BLACK NEW YORK TIMES columnist Bob Hebert wrote in a column called “Blow the whistle on gangsta culture”: “I keep wondering when leaders of eminence will step forward and declare, unambiguously, that enough is enough, as they did in the heyday of the civil rights movement, when the enemy was white racism.” The enemy he now refers to is the “profoundly self-destructive cultural influences that have spread like a cancer through much of the black community and beyond.”
And black Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts in “White flight misdirected” pulls almost a reverse Lamm, although Lamm would surely approve. Pitts reports on white parents pulling their kids out of elite public high schools in Northern California because the high percentage of Asians in the schools made math and science programs too rigorous.
Why do “Asian kids tend to lap the field?” Pitts asks. “To attain proficiency in any field, it helps to want that proficiency and to belong to a culture that rewards it.” “And I’ve got news for those white parents: They should be running in the opposite direction.”
Meanwhile, Lamm’s illiberal arts college says his writing is too controversial. When he publishes it himself the “move the current discourse to the left” folks call him racist.
But the eagerness to label messages like Lamm’s as racist is harmful for America. And the best supporting evidence for my claim is to see what’s happening in Europe.
Bruce Bawer’s recent book, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within, skillfully describes how Europe’s multicultural elite (academics, journalists and politicians) throws charges of racism and fascism at any challenge to establishment orthodoxy.
As an extreme example of the “psychopathology” prevailing in Europe Bawer quotes from a conversation he had with the Norwegian columnist Lars Hedegaard: “If, at some time in the not-too-distant future, fundamentalist Muslims began rounding up Jews, he said, ‘it would be racism to resist.'”
Moving the “discourse to the left” has gone full circle in Europe as Bawer’s powerful and thought-provoking book illustrates.
Although Lamm is talented and respected enough to circumvent DU’s censors by publishing his own book, charges of racism still send chilling messages to others: tow the line or risk your reputation.
The wider harm is to America’s spirit of honest inquiry and debate, possibly our most valuable cultural trait.
Bob Engel
Salida
Martha responds:
Bob,
Curiously enough, this all started because two months ago I insisted that it was not racist to support immigration laws.
But even though I don’t think that immigration laws are invariably racist, I do believe it’s wrong and racist to insist that American blacks and Hispanics have some kind of obligation to be “infused” with “Japanese or Jewish values.” In fact, I think it’s undue stereotyping to make sweeping accusations about the inadequacy of any race of people.
In my view, Lamm does exactly what he accuses his opponents of doing. Lamm criticises his opponents for presuming that whites are racist, but at the same time he presumes that blacks and Hispanics are lazy and lackadaisical about both work and education.
My point, however, was not to defend parents who object to higher educational standards, or to say that poor students shouldn’t study more and work harder; nor to say that American children shouldn’t learn English (or Spanish and French, for that matter).
But I think that Lamm’s insistence that whites, Asians and Japanese have superior values is distasteful. As I see it, it’s fine to lambaste a person for what he actually says or does. But it’s unjust to criticize someone for what you believe to be true about his race or ethnicity.
Ahhh, but some minorities agree that blacks and Hispanics have lousy values, you say.
Yes, of course they do, and some whites assume that white Americans are all racist bigots. But when I said I wanted to move the political discourse further left, I didn’t mean full circle. I would just like to get back to the center, where such stereotyping is recognized for what it is: disdainful and insulting.
I will admit, however, that I may be oversensitive, a little like Rubin Navarrette and Cindy Rodriguez. But I can’t help but think that’s the point. Why insult them? Why insult their ancestors? And why assume that there’s something wrong with their culture, when there’s so much wrong with the schools and communities that are failing — including crime, poverty, lack of public funds, vagrants sleeping in the bushes, inadequate housing, and inadequate schools.
I guess I just don’t see why it’s necessary to discuss the hypothetical deficiencies of different cultures in order to improve school standards. And yes, I know, both sides (left and right) bring it in. But Bob, do you really believe that cultural values are something that we can debate honestly and intellectually?
This, I think, may be our real point of contention. I just don’t think that the presumed inferiority of any racial or ethnic group is a subject that can lend itself to fair and objective political discussion.
Martha
