For some this was a genuine change of heart, but it also served conservative aims. The colorblind Constitution mandated the end of Jim Crow, already a foregone conclusion, but, it also forbade efforts to enforce integration through the federal government.
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This strategy allowed conservative intellectuals maintain ideological innocence. To convince themselves that neither they nor their supporters were bigots. Buckley called George Wallace a “maladroit bigot” who had become “indefensible to” serious “States Righters” like himself.
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And this (self-deceptive) moral innocence was genuinely held, I think, at least on Buckley's part. He told his sister that Carleton Putnam was “a racist,” who should never be published
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Nevertheless, racial assumptions underpinned the National Review editorial board’s dedication to constitutionalism and realist analysis of racial issues.
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Although increasingly unwilling to state so baldly, the editors and contributors considered the idea that people of African descent were, if not theologically and philosophically inferior, at least intellectually or culturally so.
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The tropes are familiar. Conservatives raised questions about black intelligence, emphasized “delinquency” in black communities, and questioned black intelligence and contributions to “civilization.”
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Heer mentions the Ernest van den Haag essay, part of it reads: “the cultural achievements of Negroes… compare unfavorably with those of Caucasians, Chinese, Near and Far Eastern groups, etc.” Of course, he demurred, this did not imply “moral inferiority.”
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Buckley happily published Kilpatrick’s work and called him an invaluable expert as he wrote “the Negro” “is still carrying the hod. He is still digging the ditch. He is down at the gin mill shooting craps. He is lying limp in the middle of the sidewalk, yelling he is equal.”
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Around the same time, Buckley told Jeffrey Hart, whom Heer mentions, that NR “have been extremely articulate, non-racist while not attempting a dogmatic racial egalitarianism either.” Buckley said this privately, and meant it
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but believed his views were so normal and so natural that anything short of explicit bigotry was not racist. And this is the self-fashioned myth that conservatives hold onto to this day. /Fin.
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Great thread. I learned a lot. One thing I'd say, though, is that NR's position on domestic civil rights can't be disentangled from foreign policy, it's fear that decolonization meant "Suicide of the West" & desire to shore up white supremacy in Africa & elsewhere.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
Yeah, my work is rather domestic focused and I have to keep remembering to connect it all to the Cold War.
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