Steve Sailer, columnist for the white nationalist site VDARE and inspiration to conservative leaders including Pat Buchanan and Phyllis Schlafly, commemorates the anniversary of the March on Washington this week by suggesting that President Obama use the occasion to “declare victory in the long war on Jim Crow and white racism.”
But Sailer doesn’t do a great job backing up his point, as he launches straight into another suggestion for the president: eliminate the “racial divisiveness” of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday by moving it to August…unless it is “the current (unspoken) thinking that holding the MLK holiday in dead cold winter keeps blacks from making trouble.”
I’ve long offered two suggestions, one that Obama would never take up (although deep down, during his most depressed episodes, he might have to admit it makes sense), the other of which he might adopt. After all, my second proposal is at least more relevant to the current occasion than shortening law school is.
The first is:
Why not use that propitious occasion to declare victory in the long war on Jim Crow and white racism and announce you are bringing the federal troops home?
The second is to use the celebration over MLK’s famous speech on August 28, 1963 to call for permanently commemorating the event by moving the currently not very popular MLK holiday from the frigid middle of January to late August:
Fortunately, one simple change in the holiday could end this racial divisiveness and unite workers of all colors in demanding a paid holiday honoring King.
…
Or is the current (unspoken) thinking that holding the MLK holiday in dead cold winter keeps blacks from making trouble? Maybe. But my vague impression is that late spring or early summer is the rowdiest time of the year, while late summer is mellower, more lazy and hazy than crazy. Somebody should study the subject using data.
Sailer isn’t just some crank on the internet. Buchanan cited Sailer’s work in his book “Suicide of a Superpower” and has used his work in his syndicated column, and Schlafly’s Eagle Forum frequently quotes Sailer in its blog. Sailer has been arguing for years that the Republican Party should stop trying to expand its share of minority voters and focus exclusively on the white vote – an argument that has since been embraced by those working to stop immigration reform, including Buchanan, Schlafly and the leading anti-immigrant group Center for Immigration Studies.
