http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-wellington-ennis/white-mans-burden-a-histo_b_658034.htmlIn a tumultuous month of racial discourse -- the pro-slavery sentiments of the Tea Party Express leader, the smearing of Shirley Sherrod, the faux-troversy over "New Black Panthers," the ratcheting of anti-immigrant rancor -- a refrain of outrage has become the norm. That this outrage has consistently been coming from white conservatives seems indicative of a crest in a country that has lived under slavery as long as it hasn't.
This white backlash has been metastasizing over decades and has worn many mantles, argues Leonard Zeskind, author of the engrossing book, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. Zeskind has spent many years following the movements' leaders and attending gatherings, developing a unique insight into the membership, mindsets, and resources comprising a diaspora of Klansmen and Holocaust deniers, anti-immigration forces and militia men, executives in offices and everyday Americans.
Stressing a chasm of cultural difference between Middle America and the Coasts, Zeskind explained to me in this sit-down interview that many of the mainstream mouthpieces bemoaning the disenfranchised white man are hardly influential, but rather pandering to an existent culture ingrained with separatism.
Zeskind places the origin of this self-martyrdom at the repeal of the Jim Crow laws back under the Civil Rights Act in 1964. As alienation under loss of privilege set in, the defense of America's identity as a white nation became a unifying cause. In the years since, spurred by a preeminent entitlement to America, some form of white nationalism has continually emerged, often making headway into the mainstream.
(Click through to read more and see videos of Zeskind on Breitbart, the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and more.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-wellington-ennis/white-mans-burden-a-histo_b_658034.html