Jim Webb, Donald Trump, and the Tragedy of American Whiteness

What a joke. This Duke Law School professor reduced Jim Webb (and his fifty years of patriotic service to the country) and his Political candidacy in the Democratic Primary to "white Ethnic politics" and compares him to Trump. He completely fails to mention Jim Webb's strong and public opposition to the Iraq War in 2002-2003 (and continuing after the invasion, even while his son was fighting as a Marine Infantry Officer in Iraq). Jim Webb despises Gerorge W. Bush and Hillary Clinton for different reasons.

I think White Irish Scottish Americans have earned their share of respect and pride for serving in every war this country ever fought, for serving in probably greater numbers as police and firefighters than any other ethnic group in the US. It cannot be "OK" for Native Americans, Black Americans, or Hispanic/Mexican Americans or Asian Americans to express pride in their roots, but if you are a White Irish or Scottish or Italian American you are somehow a racist if you show some ethnic pride. I don't have a drop of Irish/Scottish blood in me, but the I have a lot of respect for people who know where they and their ancestors came from and take pride in their cultural inheritance and do their best not to let their parents and ancestors down.

We have lost some of the pride in this country about being German American and being Irish has come down to wearing green on St. Patrick's day and swilling green beer. It always meant more than that to Catholic Irish Americans who remember being the manual laborers and servants in the North East, where it was routine to see signs in establishments that said "no dogs or Irish allowed or hired." The German Immigrants faced similar discrimination here in the US due to their foreign language and German Accents (many of whom were also Catholics from Bavaria). I have read accounts of German fathers and grandfather's who banned German from being spoken in their homes because they did not want their kids to grow up in America with German Accents. My step-grandfather did the same thing to his children with Spanish, because he felt he had suffered so much in the 1930-40s because of having a Spanish Accent, despite being born here, to Spanish speaking parents (his father was from Chile, South America, and mother was a refugee from Mexico, who fled the Mexican Revolution in 1916, her father was hung by the victorious Zapatistas, for having ties to the pre-Zapatata Government).

I see all of this as another example of the "cultural elites" waging war on Americans and freedom of expression and thought and Political Correctness gone a muck. Jim Webb is the farthest thing from a "racist," or a "David Duke" or the KKK, or Donald Trump dog whistling to people like David Duke and white Supremacists. He is simply a another American who happens to be proud of his roots, and just happens to be white.