“Beauty and strength, strength and beauty.” As one scholar wrote, these were what early American philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson considered as commonplace English or Anglo-Saxon characteristics. Freedom and liberty are also thought to be not just a value system for Anglo-Saxons, but an impulse or an instinct. But as the revisionist scholar wrote:
“The notion that Saxons were always free…is not true. When Emerson describes liberty and freedom as English or Saxon racial characteristics, he overlooks not only the slavery issue then roiling American politics but also recent history on both sides of the Atlantic. After all, American indentured servitude, one form of bondage, reached into his own lifetime, and English convicts were still being forced into exile overseas while Emerson studied at Harvard in the 1820s. Moreover, slavery remained the rule rather than the exception in British colonies when he began his ministry at Boston’s Second Church.”
But from the viewpoint or standpoint of the Anglo-Saxon, their race is defined by an “instinct for liberty” and in turn freedom and liberty are “crucial – and permanent – Saxon racial characteristics.” Freedom and liberty are made to be racial characteristics on the part of the Anglo-Saxon rather than just a value system. Freedom and liberty “made Anglo-Saxons both respecters of freedom within their brotherhood and natural rulers of other races.” Power “was assumed to be trait of the English race” given the notion that freedom and liberty were not just social values, but racial characteristics of Anglo-Saxon people.
The basic notion is that “the air of England conferred freedom.” The scholar added: “It followed that American air would confer freedom as well – never mind the problem of existing slavery and American agitation against it.” And as a result of its basic racial characteristics, Anglo-Saxons believed that they were better fit to survive while other races struggled. Hence, the theory of Darwinian evolution and “Social Darwinism.” Race is made central to everything through the lens by which the Anglo-Saxons view social reality, to say the least. Darwin became the most prominent philosopher of his epoch and era. The basic concepts he promoted, such as evolution and natural selection, carried racial connotations which in turn suggested that Anglo-Saxons had both the physical and mental characteristics and traits which would then situate Anglo-Saxons at the top of whatever social hierarchy existed.
The scope for who constitutes as “Caucasian” also differs based on different viewpoints. It can extend only to Western Europe, or it can extend as far as Afghanistan. In large part, the scope remains Eurocentric. But as we just mentioned, it differs based on the viewpoint being expressed. Nevertheless, white race theory became “a crucial current of thought” during the inception of America and remains so even to this day. This current of thought is highly exclusive in nature. As the scholar wrote: “The true English type inhabits only a narrowly circumscribed territory: fashionable London.” She added: “The American was the same as the Englishman, who was the same as the Saxon and the Norseman. Thus ‘Saxon’ supplied the key word exiling the Celtic Irish – white though may be – from American identity.”
In sum, and to conclude, what emerged from the early days of the American republic was “a white racial ideal that was both virile and handsome” which in turn gained a secure place in the cognition and thought process of the American ruling class and in turn became “hegemonic” in character and nature.
Adam A. Azim 