America: Two Nations?(race relations)(Brief Article)

Benjamin Disraeli spoke of "two nations," meaning the rich and the poor of England. John Dos Passos in U.S.A. upped the ante, declaring, "All right, we are two nations." Those words have resonance in America today, not in terms of rich and poor, but of race.

The indices point to a congealing sense of separateness and resentment on the part of black Americans. This is by no means confined to the poor or underclass, but is pervasive, and given often ferocious articulation by black "leaders." Some are claiming that such as Colin Powell are Uncle Toms for cooperating with whitey. What we are seeing is a kind of black resegregation under racial and nationalist impulses. Of course, there was the 11-1 black vote against Bush. Louis Farrakhan, a hater of whites and vicious anti-Semite, speaks of a "nation" of (black) Islam. Reliable surveys indicate that his support is growing. The adoption of Arab names by many blacks, including intellectuals, is anti-Western, separatist, and alienated. The term "African-American" is not innocent, but separatist, and its widespread acceptance by the mainstream media is naive and sinister. American blacks have no African connections beyond the simply genealogical; the history of their families in America is longer than that of most whites'. The sole African institution to have had serious influence on American society is slavery. The term "Negro" was always a bit foreign. The replacement "blacks" had the merit of being symmetrical with "whites." "African-American" is separatist propaganda. Not surprisingly, it was coined, or at least popularized, by Jesse Jackson. The campaign of leading black spokesmen against George W. Bush was waged as if he were George Wallace, or even worse. The ...