An Unfashionably Racist World View

Central and essential to the cognitive, mental, psychological, and social dispositions of the American ruling class is “Anglo-Saxonism.” To borrow from one scholar: “In the structure of American race thinking, Anglo-Saxonism – the belief that Americans and the British were one people united by uncommon qualities and common interests – occupied a central position.” It follows that “American Exceptionalism” is a largely racial idea, but particularly an Anglo-Saxon idea. Moreover, Anglo-Saxonism extends over all people of European origin. Anglo-Saxonism retained its distinctiveness even as other groups of European origin began coming to the United States during the second major wave of immigration. As the scholar wrote: 

“The arrival of large numbers of disturbingly foreign immigrants sharpened the sensitivity to racial differences even within the circle of European whites. The nativism of the antebellum period had revealed early on the determination of ethnic Anglos to preserve their cultural hegemony against alien newcomers, then chiefly Irish and Germans. The concerns felt during that era proved mild, however, compared to the anxiety provoked by an even greater influx of still more foreign peoples, from southern and eastern Europe, at the end of the century. From the racial comparisons then drawn by a defensive but culturally dominant Anglo elite, there emerged a clear and fixed pecking order even for whites…”

“Containment” is an extension of the Anglo-Saxon impulse towards maintaining Anglo-Saxon cultural hegemony over both European peoples and the Third World. But within the context of Soviet or Russian containment, the aim or goal of the Anglo-American establishment when it came to maintaining cultural hegemony over the Third World was to thwart Soviet or Russian expansion into the Third World. To borrow from the scholar yet again: “Development was the younger sibling of containment.” He added: “While containment focused on the immediate problems of holding the Soviets and their leftist allies at bay, development was intended to provide long-term immunity against the contagion of communism.” 

At best, independent scholars and thinkers have labeled and deemed the twin policies of containment and development as “condescending and paternalistic.” The policy of development was a way of “recasting the old racial hierarchy into cultural terms supplied by development theorists.” The blatant expression of a racial hierarchy which situated Anglo-Saxons at the top is now “broadcast” into expressions of “development” and modernity. As the scholar wrote: “No longer did leaders dare broadcast their views on barbarous or backward people, race traits, or skin color. It was instead now the attributes of modernity and tradition that fixed a people’s or nation’s place on the hierarchy.” 

But in essence, nothing changed. The whole point was to keep the Anglo-Americans at the top of the social world. Hence, the racial hierarchy persisted, despite the change in the manner by which the Anglo-American worldview had been conveyed and portrayed. As the scholar wrote: “Black Africa occupied the lowest rung, just as black ghettos represented the lower reaches of American society. Higher up stood Asians and Latins, still exotic and still difficult to classify with exactitude because of the unstable mixture of attractive and repulsive characteristics assigned to them.” In sum, and to conclude: “The change in vocabulary had not altered the hierarchy; it had simply made more plausible the denial of any links to an unfashionably racist world view.”