Just under two months after wading into the "culture wars" with his vote against a possible repeal of the military ban on openly gay soldiers, Senator Webb has once again demonstrated his penchant for "third way" triangulation, coming out against "unfair" government programs to help non-black people of color in today's contribution to the Wall Street Journal, "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege."
Racial politics is nothing new for the senator; he rode in on the 2006 anti-incumbent wave after his general election opponent, Senator George Allen, used a European ethnic slur against a young man of Indian descent, moments before launching into predictable conservative talking points on "the war on terror," pausing briefly to welcome the man to "America" and "the real world of Virginia," a curious preview of Sarah Palin's 2008 reference to "real America." The episode, much like Senator Bunning's 2004 reference to an Italian-American opponent as looking "like one of Saddam Hussein's sons," sparked yet another predictable debate about the South, race and even "white ethnics," as Senator Allen was revealed to be of partial Jewish descent during the "macaca" episode.
Today's tirade against "white privilege" as a concept was not the first time Senator Webb addressed issues of race, and it is unlikely to be the last time the senator speaks out about it. Recent Gallup polling from October of 2009 showed that there was little "Obama effect" on overall views about race relations, but there has been a slight uptick in the percentage of Americans who believe there is widespread racism against whites, and a slight downtick in the percentage of Americans who believe that there is widespread racism against blacks. Too early and too little to suggest a trend, but if the Tea Party phenomenon is any indication, the political right is eager to exploit one if it emerges, or create one if it does not. It would appear that Senator Webb has some interest in playing racial politics, although not the sort we are accustomed to.
Ironically, Webb appears to be attempting to revive "intraethnic" divisions among whites. Chastising policy makers for ignoring "disparities within America's white cultures" and treating "whites as a fungible monolith," Senator Webb calls for maintaining remedial affirmative action programs designed "to assist those African-Americans still in need," while calling for an end to "government-directed diversity programs" that benefit other nonwhites. Nowhere does Webb discuss racial profiling or systemic inequality in the criminal justice system, although as a proponent of criminal justice reform he is almost certainly aware of those figures. No, for Senator Webb the political calculation is clear: remedial measures to assist some African Americans and application of a principle of "nondiscrimination" in all other matters.
The ultimate irony, however, is that Senator Webb has embraced the suggestions made by radical critics of "whiteness" and America's racial disparities. Noel Ignatiev, the author of How the Irish Became White, and other "new abolitionists" have long called for "white Americans" to abandon that vague, ill-defined and dangerous cultural identity in favor of others, including national and ethnic identities. While this is surely not what they had in mind, this is almost certainly what they are going to get: an assertion of a cultural identity to advance a competing historical claim of discrimination and disadvantage. In Virginia, Senator Webb points to "white Baptists" and "Irish Protestants." In other locations, we will no doubt discover that the fictional "monolith" of "white America" has worked against the ethnic and cultural interests of various white cultures, and find politicians eager to exploit these newfound identities as "real America" recedes from a position of political hegemony and undergoes a process of balkanization that simultaneously acts to obscure the racial imbalances in the criminal justice system, in employment markets and in educational opportunities. For nature abhors a vacuum, and when one "myth" dies, several others will be waiting to take its place.