White Club

Oakley, California, 2003

Club Day

It was club day at Freedom High School and 15-year-old freshman Lisa McClelland was searching the roster of school-approved social clubs for the one that would most welcome her membership. In theory, every club was open to every student, but the reality of social life at Freedom High was a good deal more restrictive. There was, after all, the matter of Lisa’s race.

Though the whims of her ancestors had bequeathed to Lisa a tangled genealogy that included Hispanic and American-Indian bloodlines among others, the person Lisa saw in the mirror every morning was white. No one at Freedom High imagined Lisa McClelland to be anything but white. The roster of school-approved social clubs included a Black Student Union for the comfort of black students and the ALOHA club for Asian students and Latinos Unidos to promote Latino solidarity; there was even a Gay/Straight Alliance for homosexuals and friends of the gay political agenda, but somehow Lisa was left feeling that none of these school-approved social havens was beckoning to her personally or to anyone like her.

Like every other public school in the San Francisco Bay area, Freedom High had long ago splashed cold water on whatever glowing embers remained beneath that once-idealized melting pot that was going to transform us all into just plain Americans. In the name of something they called “diversity,” school administrators fostered a fragmentation of their student populations into tribal groups that bonded socially around ethnic, gender and racial identities. So it was then, on club signup day at Freedom High, that 15-year-old Lisa McClelland, in all her youthful innocence, wondered to herself if she could create a Caucasian Club.

Getting Started

Lisa discussed her idea with her mother. “We were talking about how there are all these other racial clubs but there isn’t a Caucasian club and me and my mom talked about it and how there would be nothing wrong with trying to get it started,” Lisa recalled.

In late August, Lisa hand lettered the words “Caucasian/White Club” across the top of a sheet of binder paper and passed it around among her classmates. She soon had the endorsement of 20 students, not all of them Caucasians. After being told that the principal of Freedom High had quashed previous efforts to start a Caucasian Club, Lisa took the precaution of collecting more endorsements. Within three weeks she had collected more than 300 signatures from students and the townsfolk, not all of them white.

There were other matters to attend to. School protocols required that each student club have a faculty adviser, that it have a constitution and that it have the approval of the school’s club council members (presidents of all the other clubs), the school’s activities director and the Associated Student Body. The principal would have the final say on which clubs were allowed to exist at Freedom High.

Undaunted, young Lisa persisted. “I advised her to stick it out,” recalled Candise Kremin, whose son was the president of Freedom High’s Gay/Straight Alliance and a close friend of Lisa. Oakley resident Judy Pollock, whose kids had graduated from Freedom High, said her two children had considered starting a Caucasian Club but had dropped the idea. “The kids talked about it, but she’s the only one brave enough to do it and I think it’s wonderful,” Judy declared. “They should either not allow any ethnic clubs or allow them all.”

That sounds reasonable; if Freedom High is going to encourage racial tribalism what possible objection could there be to a social club with a focus on European heritage? More to the point, why would a fifteen-year-old freshman need to muster bravery before founding such a club?

After all, Lisa McClelland had only good intentions. She wanted the Caucasian Club to break down racial barriers while embracing European-American heritage; the club would be open to everyone. She wanted the club to be “a kind of comfortable place” that would welcome those who felt they didn’t fit in elsewhere. The emphasis would be on European history. She wanted to explore how her “whiteness” affected those who were not white. She envisioned fundraisers for field trips to museums and places of historical and cultural interest. “I think we’re doing something good that needed to be done a long time ago,” said the pioneering Lisa. “With everything going on now, I’m just one-hundred percent more motivated to keep it going.”

A Golden Opportunity

Innocent Lisa didn’t have long to wait before discovering how her whiteness affected others. When word leaked out of Oakley that a school might allow a Caucasian Club, the news was like catnip to the media. The chattering class descended on Oakley and began pestering the local folk for their opinions; it was like the whole town woke up one morning and took an I.Q. test – some people did better than others; some people jabbered like idiots; they heard the words Caucasian Club and blurted out whatever popped into their heads. There was no clear divide along racial lines. On the whole, the kids did better than their elders.

Shayna, 15, said “I really don’t think it should be that big a deal because there’s the BSU [Black Student Union] and all that stuff already.”

Angel, 16, chimed in “More power to her. We should have more white clubs around here.”

Melissa, 16, said “I don’t think it will cause any racial problems because there were no problems when the black club and the Asian club were being set up.”

Tyleisha Crook, a sophomore, also signed the petition. “It’d be tight because they can learn more about their history,” she said.

Elliot Perez, a sophomore, also signed the petition. “I think it’s fair for white people to have their own club, because every other race has their own club,” he explained.

Then there were students like junior Charne Mosley, a member of Freedom High’s Black Student Union, who declared, “There’s no need for a Caucasian Club because they’re not a minority.” I guess Charne didn’t get the memo that whites became a minority in California in the 2000 census; there was a massive migration of productive people out of California to escape the crushing burden of supporting foreigners and under-performing moochers.

A black student named Tarryn was blunt: “It’s dumb, real dumb. The girl says ‘we want to talk about our background,’ well their background is about putting black people as slaves.”

This is not an uncommon attitude among the uncurious and the miseducated. American public schools do a lousy job of teaching history and the textbooks foster the same tribalism as the school-approved race-based socials clubs.

As talk about a White Club increased, so did negative comments. “I’m not going to let it get to me,” said Lisa McClelland. “I’m excited. I’m all about the idea of learning about my heritage.” She saw this as an opportunity: an energized and informed White Club could educate everyone who happened to drop by about all the history her school was failing to teach.

Were I president of the White Club, I would invite Tarryn, the kid who thought a White Club was “real dumb” and who was convinced that European-American history was just “about putting black people as slaves.” That would be the moment Tarryn discovered how ridiculous he looked in his European-style clothing, using a European language to lecture European-Americans while using a strain of moral indignation that was invented by white Europeans and their white American cousins. That’s right, Tarryn, white people invented antiracism. More importantly, white people invented institutional anti-racism; they were the first people in the long history of humanity to organize a united offensive against what they believed to be an injustice being done to a far-away people of another race whom they had never met.

The Atlantic slave trade was born in an Amsterdam coffee house: someone presented the idea of sending a ship to Africa, where Arabs and Africans were offering slaves for sale, purchasing a boat-load of slaves for transportation to the West Indian plantations and then swapping the slaves for rum and molasses, which would be sold for a profit back in Europe. This three-legged route became known as The Triangular Trade.

Slavery was a universally accepted institution until European Christians re-imagined their relationship with God. The European Enlightenment, the invention of experimental science and technology, the institution of democratic forms of government and the burgeoning of capitalism all contributed to the birth of new concept: individual freedom. Prior to this European social revolution, virtually everyone on Earth was bound in some form of servitude, usually to the land as a serf, peasant, tenant farmer, etc. Once the Europeans had created individual freedom, the institution of slavery began to look creepy, repugnant and downright un-European.

In 1772, Lord Mansfield issued a landmark decision that abolished slavery in England. Henceforth, anyone holding another person in captivity was subject to arrest and punishment.

The fifty-year-long struggle to abolish slavery throughout the far-flung British Empire began on the late afternoon of May 22, 1787 when twelve men convened a meeting in a Quaker print shop at 2 George Yard, in London. The minutes of this meeting were recorded on a single piece of paper in the handwriting of the committee’s firebrand organizer, Thomas Clarkson. He notes, “At a Meeting held for the Purpose of taking the Slave Trade into consideration, it was resolved that the said Trade was both impolitick and unjust.” That was the beginning.

Though the slave traders were an entrenched and influential interest, the moral message of the abolitionists won immediate popular approval. Petitions flooded Parliament which the following year took the timid first step of regulating conditions on slave ships. Anti-slavery books, posters and pamphlets were suddenly everywhere; slavery became the hot topic in London debating societies. Stephen Fuller, the London agent for the Jamaican planters, wrote to his employers, “The stream of popularity runs against us.” In the span of seven years, Thomas Clarkson would ride 35,000 miles on horseback through England, Scotland and Wales, agitating and organizing local anti-slavery committees.

Based on moral sentiment alone, whites began to do things that defied their own economic interest. From Sheffield, 769 metalworkers petitioned Parliament against the slave trade, remarking that even though the slave-ship captains purchased Sheffield knives, razors and scissors to trade for slaves in Africa, the workers “consider the case of the nations of Africa as their own.” Stephen Fuller of the slave-owners lobby was amazed that the petitions flowing into Parliament were “stating no grievance or injury of any kind or sort, affecting the Petitioners themselves.” In fact, Fuller was witnessing the birth of a vision that human rights are universal.

In 1833, slavery was outlawed throughout the British Empire, largely due to the efforts of Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp and the tireless William Wilberforce. The antislavery spirit, energized by Western religious and political principles, soon spread to France, which abolished slavery in its territories in 1848. After that, the freedom fever spread to other European countries.

The eruption of high moral principle among white Europeans threw the potentates of black Africa into a state of consternation. The tribal leaders of Congo, Gambia, Dahomey and other African nations sent delegations to London and Paris to plead their case for the continuation of a robust commerce in black slaves. Slave trading was one of their time-honored traditions; its loss, they argued, would destabilize their societies. The rulers of Senegal demanded that Senegal be reclassified a “protectorate” rather than a colony so that they could continue their lucrative trade in African men, women and children.

No African opposed slavery in principle; they only opposed their own enslavement. An Englishman who led a campaign to suppress slavery in Sudan recalled, “It was in vain that I attempted to reason with them against the principles of slavery – they thought it wrong when they were themselves the sufferers, but were always ready to indulge in it when the preponderance of power lay upon their side.”

Eventually, British diplomatic and military efforts, many of them heroic, eradicated slavery in all areas under British influence. It was common for half the sailors sent on three-year antislavery cruises to Africa to die from tropical diseases; this did not dim their evangelical sense of mission. In far off East Africa, where British influence was weaker, the English paid bribes to tribal leaders to make them stop enslaving other Africans.

Unfortunately, it isn’t the true historical record that molds the minds of American school children. Instead of the truth, American students are presented with episodes of “Roots,” the 1977 television series based on Alex Haley’s largely fictional and partially plagiarized book of the same name, in which actor LeVar Burton scampers through the jungle pursued by white actors pretending to be slave catchers. All the true-to-life African and Arab slave sellers are kept out of sight to nurture the illusion that black Africans weren’t really the providers of black slaves.

Then the kids get to watch “Amistad,” Steven Spielberg’s fictionalized account of a slave mutiny aboard the ship La Amistad. There are killings aplenty before the ship lands on a Connecticut shore; the rebellious slaves are arrested and tried for mutiny; there are two trials and the slaves are acquitted twice and set free. The government pays their passage back to Africa.

This thing is passed off as history in American classrooms even though some of the characters are inventions of Mr. Spielberg and everyone is spouting orations fabricated by Hollywood scriptwriters. The film ends with the Africans and their leader Cinqué happily back in Africa. What Steven Spielberg and America’s public-school teachers never mention is that after his return to Africa, the real Cinqué set himself up in the business of enslaving other Africans.

The time-honored tradition of slavery has continued to this very day in Africa, Latin America and Asia, though it is more covert. It was not until 1962 that Saudi Arabia and Yemen got around to outlawing slavery – the Koran endorses the enslavement of others; the Prophet Mohammad himself was a slave master. Those parts of Africa where Islam has taken root are especially fertile soil for the nurturance of this grotesque practice.

Judging from some of the statements by Lisa McClelland’s fellow students, Freedom High was doing the same lousy job of teaching history that is now typical of government-run public schools. Here are some facts.

Slavery in the United States was a sectional, not a national issue, from almost the very beginning. Every state north of Maryland had abolished slavery by the year 1804; Congress outlawed the importation of slaves to the United States in 1808. Slavery was under moral and political siege from the first days of our republic; the principles that inspired the Declaration of Independence were a relentless indictment of slavery.

The issue came to a head with the election of Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the newly-formed anti-slavery Republican Party. The southern states seceded upon Lincoln’s election and war was declared. Between 1860 and 1865 the world watched in wonder as the largest armies ever amassed had at one another with modern arms in horrid displays of unimaginable carnage. Twenty-six thousand men fell at Antietam; 28,000 at Spotsylvania; 31,000 fell at Chancellorsville in 3 days; 34,000 at Chickamauga; 25,000 men were killed in the Battle of the Wilderness and 25,000 at Second Manassas; almost 24,000 soldiers were killed at Shiloh; 51,000 men fell at Gettysburg in two and a half days, and so on and on and on . . . By the time it was over six hundred thousand white men had been killed and many more maimed or wounded. The number of white men slaughtered in this titanic struggle exceeded the total number of slaves brought to America from Africa by fifty percent.

North America was the only destination where an African slave population flourished by normal means – by the formation of sustained kinship groups. The Latinos of South America imported mostly male slaves, whom they worked to death. By contrast, most slaves in America experienced a level of material well being that was superior to that of many northern white laborers and was much superior to that of most European laborers. The slaves of America were being fed while a million Irish starved to death. The average life expectancy of a slave in America was only a few months less than that of his master.

No where but in Europe and America did there arise a body of literature in defense of slavery because it was only among white people that the ancient practice of slavery needed defending; only white people were raising moral objections to slavery based on the European notion of universal human rights. So, when African-American students self-righteously lecture their white classmates about the depravity of slavery, they are merely mimicking arguments created long ago by white abolitionists, arguments that traditional Africans and Arabs found incomprehensible.

The fact remains that slaves in North America never rebelled; they were gifted their freedom at a horrible cost that was paid by people of another race, almost none of whom had ever owned a slave. It was a singular sacrifice that the non-white people of the world of 1865 could not understand and, for the most part, still doesn’t.

All of these enlightening historical facts could have been shared with anyone who chanced to drop by Lisa McClelland’s imaginary White Club. There might have been trips to museums – another European invention. Or they might have read topics of interest from newspapers or mass-produced books – two more European inventions. Even the public school, where all the clubs convene, is a white-boy invention. White people invented progress; white people invented the modern. These creations have been a mixed blessing, but most people seem reluctant to return to the mud hut, the bow & arrow, and a cosmology driven by elves and woodland spirits. For all the material blessings of the modern world we can thank those white-boy creations: experimental science, modern technology, capitalism and representative government. For our freedoms and dignity we can thank the white-boy concepts of individual freedom, the notion of universal human rights derived from God and the organization of a muscular antislavery offensive founded on the white-boy invention of institutionalized anti-racism.

Yup, the White Club could have been a beacon of enlightenment . . .

The bittersweet heritage of Africans swept into the maelstrom of European-American commerce and the surging counter-currents of an emerging European-American anti-racism crusade was captured by a former slave – Booker T. Washington:

“Think about it: we went into slavery pagans; we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains about our wrists; we came out with the American ballot in our hands . . . Not withstanding the cruelty and the moral wrong of slavery, we are in a stronger and more hopeful condition, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.”

To add a final touch of irony, contemporary black journalist Gregory Kane tells us of his friend who returned from Senegal with a tale of how she had been confronted by several Senegalese who insisted that black Americans owe a debt to black Africans because black Americans now live in a rich country while the Africans live in, well . . . Africa. In essence, the Africans were demanding reparations from black Americans because the slave-trading ancestors of the Africans had sold the ancestors of the Americans for far too little.

Liberal Cowards & Black Bigots

The novelty of white students petitioning their school for a social club similar to the ones long ago approved for students of other races attracted the attention on CNN, the BBC and Fox News. Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education white students were pleading to be treated as equals in a public school. A Caucasian Club? What were they thinking?

The timorous principal of the grotesquely misnamed Freedom High School, one Eric Volta, squeaked out this opinion: “A club by that name tends to make people nervous. Even school administrators as far as what its purpose is.”

Not to be outdone, Dr. Beverly Tatum, president of the historically black Spelman College, chimed in with, “But let’s be honest. People have a hard time separating ‘whiteness’ from ‘racism.’” Really? What people? Maybe the sort of bigots who anticipate the worst from whites at every moment.

Unable to resist the media spotlight in his neighborhood, Darnell Turner, the first vice-president of the local East County chapter of the NAACP, blurted to a reporter of the Contra Costa Times, quote: “When we use the word ‘white’ or ‘Caucasian’ or whatever, it has always been associated with racial bigotry. Using that term opens up old wounds, and we don’t need to go there.”

Really? Does Darnell believe that American slaves freed themselves? Does Darnell understand that no European could have purchased even one African slave if Africans were not eagerly advertising slaves for sale at their world-renowned African slave bazaars? Hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers were killed in a cataclysmic struggle to end slavery in America, but somehow Darnell clings to the belief that “white” has always been associated with racial bigotry.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle the East County chapter of the NAACP was “vehemently” opposed to the name of Lisa’s club. As Darnell Turner explained, “It’s not culturally sensitive to the community we’re addressing.”

Hmmmmmm . . . Would Darnell think it insensitive if some loudmouth from the National Association for the Advancement of Colorless People objected to the name of the Black Student Union because the word “black” has always been associated with drug dealing, pimping and dice games in the alley?

“If her intention is to bring harmony, as she alleges,” Darnell Turner warned, “this is not the way to go.” In other words, Lisa McClelland should shut up and sit down; only non-white people should have social clubs.

Without his understanding, Darnell Turner was continuing an ignominious tradition at the once-great NAACP, recently plagued by leaders inclined toward lechery, larceny and bigotry. There was Reverend Ben Chavis who stole NAACP funds to pay off a sexual-harassment victim and then there was Hazel Dukes who pilfered over $13,000 from a leukemia-stricken associate and then there was the ever-memorable Lee Alcorn, president of the Dallas NAACP, who went on the radio and blasted Al Gore’s choice of a Jew as his running mate: “If we get a Jew person, then what I’m wondering is, I mean, what is this movement for, you know?” . . . “So I think we need to be very suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with money and these kind of things.” He sounded like Reverend Sharpton calling the Jews “diamond merchants.”

The NAACP is a memorial; its battles have been won. There will not be another civil rights revolution. Nowadays, the underemployed leaders of the NAACP have nothing better to do with their time than to announce to the world how insensitive and threatening it is that a fifteen-year-old white girl wants to start a heritage club at her high school.

Turner began pouting to the newspapers about his worries that Lisa’s club might evolve into something hideous. “What’s going to happen when she graduates?” he fretted to the Washington Times. “What’s it going to turn into?”

By implication Darnell Turner was signaling to the world that white folks just couldn’t be trusted; he was cultivating racial suspicion. By throwing the prestige of the NAACP behind his personal paranoia, Darnell Turner legitimized a not-so-subtle hostility against 15-year-old Lisa McClelland.

Suddenly Lisa was the target of obscenity-laced insults; she was called a neo-Nazi and “KKK girl;” a gang of girls threatened to beat her up. Flyers appeared on campus urging students to boycott her club. In front of a full classroom a teacher declared that he’d rather see Lisa “drugged out and pregnant” than on the news talking about her white heritage club.

Lisa’s mother, Debi Neely, was infuriated by the torrent of threats thrown at her daughter; she put Freedom High’s administration on notice that there would be courtroom consequences if Lisa were harmed.

I sympathize with Lisa’s mom. Some years ago, when my son was a student at South Orange Middle School in South Orange, New Jersey, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Newark Star Ledger that was critical of the pageant of woe that swept into the school every February, which is Black History Month. I argued that all of this history should be taught in the full context of its time and not weeded out, incident by incident, and presented as an indictment of white America. The car-full of boys I drove to and from school every day would grumble about how shamed and guilty they were made to feel just for being white.

The Star Ledger didn’t print my letter. Instead, my son and I were interviewed by Paul Mulshine, the only conservative columnist at the Ledger. Paul wrote a fine column, but it was his take on my complaint about Black History Month; Paul was making his own argument, not mine.

The liberal administration at South Orange Middle School took Mulshine’s column as a slap in the face. To even the score, the principal of the school made an announcement over the school’s public address system in which he declared that Paul Mulshine had defamed the school; the principal also fingered my son by name while my son was sitting in class.

My boy had been ambushed by liberal adults; the principal of South Orange Middle School had painted a target on my son’s back. By implication, my son had been declared “an enemy of the people.”

The next morning I got a call from the school office to alert me that my son had taken refuge there. My son was the target of catcalls and racial hostility before he had reached the front door. My car was at the school within five minutes. I took my son into protective custody and kept him at home until the fevered liberals got their emotions under control.

One of my children had an African-American teacher who told me and my wife that his mission as a teacher was to “save black boys.” Every book my kid was assigned had a racial-grievance theme. It was this teacher and others at South Orange Middle School that convinced me that I was doing the right thing when I made the decision to withdraw my daughter from South Orange Middle School and to home school her.

How things have changed. Only five decades after blacks were battling to sit along side whites at deep-South lunch counters, blacks are clamoring for blacks-only student lounges and blacks-only student unions and blacks-only dormitories and blacks-only graduation ceremonies. In the name of “diversity” liberal school administrators encourage such isolation.

There was no way on Earth that the liberal wimps who control Freedom High would ever allow anyone to create a white heritage club. Their method is always the same: After making a heated fuss about how a white club might fuel racial tension, the liberals then point to the racial tension that they themselves have inflamed with all their fussing as an excuse to deny permission for a club for white kids.

In the case of the totally innocent and well-meaning youngster Lisa McClelland, this dirty tactic had the intended effect. Lisa was so intimidated by menacing liberals and their pugnacious offspring that she withdrew from Freedom High School. She continued in the safety of her home until transferring to La Paloma, a continuation school in nearby Brentwood. Because she was no longer a student at Freedom High, the club she had sought to create became a non-issue – the relieved principal, Eric Volta, tossed her request into the trash.

Please note, at no time did any liberal offer a single sane or reasonable argument for denying any student the opportunity of creating a European-American heritage club. Lisa McClelland was confronted with nothing but hostility, obscenity and rage. It was the fury of cowardly whites and bigoted blacks that drove Lisa McClelland away from Freedom High.

Their greater purpose was to silence every white child in the greater Bay Area; their message was this: don’t even think about exploring the true history of how whites were busy inventing organized anti-racism while Africans were busy defending slavery was one of their ancient and indispensable African traditions. Also, liberals use intimidation because it works.

Interviews with white Bay Area teenagers produced numerous stories of attempts to start white heritage clubs, but time after time the hostility of white liberals and non-white bigots was just too threatening. There was, for example, Justine Steele, 17, a senior at Independence High School in San Jose, a sprawling campus of over four thousand students, only 8% of whom are white. Lots of Indians, Vietnamese, Filipinos and Mexicans, but almost no one with Justine’s blue eyes and blond hair. Justine knows she’s in a precarious position – whites have been squeezed out of Santa Clara, Alameda and San Francisco counties for the last three decades – it’s a vision of the future.

Justine is now a stranger in her native country, lost in a rising tide of foreigners who fled the lousy prospects offered by their native cultures. Making matters worse, she is surrounded by pathetic white teenagers trying to avoid a beatdown by “acting black” or “acting Latino.”

There had been a club for white kids at Independence – briefly. During the 2000-2001 school year, the European Ancestry Club had nearly 50 members. The director of activities, Don Drew, was super careful to convince the students to call their club “European Ancestry” because calling it the “Caucasian Club” would be far “too controversial,” to use Don’s own words.

As for Justine, she has abandoned any thought of reviving the now dead European Ancestry Club. Her reason: “Look at what happened to that girl.”

“That girl” was Lisa McClelland.