The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Did You Know the Word ‘Miscegenation’ Was Invented by Democrats as a Smear?

Posted on | September 14, 2011 | 53 Comments

Nineteenth-century American newspapers were, in general, partisan in their politics, and the New York World was a Democrat paper. In 1863, two writers for the World, George Wakeman and David Goodman Croly, wrote a 72-page pamphlet that was published anonymously with the title, Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro.

The title term of the pamphlet was a new coinage, from the Latin words for “mix” and “race,” and the subject was decidedly inflammatory. During his 1858 debates with Democrats Stephen Douglass, Abraham Lincoln had been forced to stipulate that while he was opposed to slavery, he was not an advocate of “social equality” and certainly not in favor what that loaded phrase implied, “amalgamation” as it was then commonly termed. Republicans were very sensitive to such accusations, since even those whites who adamantly opposed slavery were in general horrifed by the thought of “amalgamation.” (Indeed, there was a strong element of white separatism in the “Free Soil” movement, and some Midwestern states had antebellum laws forbidding free blacks from settling there.)

Such was the context, then, within which the Miscegenation pamphlet was anonymously published. Though written by two Democrats, the argument was a sort of deadpan satire, written as a political hoax. The pamphlet argued in favor of interracial unions, asserting that mixed-race nations were actually superior to mono-racial nations, and put that argument into an explicitly political context:

It is idle to maintain that this present war is not a war for the negro … It is a war, if you please, of amalgamation … a war looking, as its final fruit, to the blending of the white and black… Let the war go on… until church, and state, and society recognize not only the propriety but the necessity of the fusion of the white and black—in short, until the great truth shall be declared in our public documents and announced in the messages of our Presidents, that it is desirable the white man should marry the black woman and the white woman the black man.

To further their hoax, Wakeman and  Croly sent their disingenuous pamphlet to leading abolitionists, requesting their endorsements, which some of them willingly supplied in letters. The pamphlet was also advertised in abolitionist journals, and then the authors — whose identities were not discovered until years later — sprang their trap.

They provided copies of Miscegenation and of the abolitionist letters praising the pamphlet to an Ohio Democratic congressman, who gave a February 1864 speech in Congress denouncing the pamphlet’s doctrine and its advocates, suggesting that it expressed the Republican Party’s secret radical policy goals. A month later, Horace Greeley of the Republican paper, the New York Tribune, replied to Cox’s speech in an editorial that conveyed a laissez-faire attitude toward interracial marriage. In response, the World — the Democrat paper for which the pamphlet’s anonymous authors worked — published its own editorial, declaring that “the leading Republican journal of the country is the unblushing advocate of ‘miscegenation,’ which it ranks with the highest questions of social and political philosophy.” Thus began a national controversy that continued for months.

The “Miscegenation Hoax” was a political dirty trick by Democrats from start to finish, and demonstrates how the party has always opportunistically exploited racial animosity for partisan advantage. Indeed, it is one of the marvels of world history that the Democrats, who spent the first 150 years of their existence winning elections by appealing to white racism, were able to become the party of “civil rights” without so much as a blush of shame. (“Civil rights” requiring scare-quotes to convey its actual meaning as a partisan slogan used by Democrats, exactly as “miscegenation” was originally coined for partisan purposes.)

This extended history lesson was necessary as a preamble to a most unusual (and ironic) partisan attack made by a liberal journalist:

Publishing sources familiar with the contents of author Joe McGinniss’ highly-anticipated book “The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin” have revealed shocking secrets that will impact her decision to enter the 2012 presidential race.
In the book, which will be published on September 20th, McGinniss claims Sarah had a steamy interracial hookup with basketball stud GLEN RICE less than a year before she eloped with her husband Todd.
Sarah hooked up with the NBA great, then a 6-foot-8 junior at the University of Michigan when he was playing in a college basketball tournament in Alaska in 1987, the book says. At the time, Sarah, just out of college, was working as a sports reporter for the Anchorage TV station KTUU.
A publishing source told The ENQUIRER that McGinniss claims Sarah had a “fetish” for black men at the time and he quotes a friend as saying Sarah had “hauled (Rice’s) ass down.”

What a pathetic travesty to see Joe McGinniss, who gained national fame for The Selling of the President, reduced to such a lurid and digusting excuse for “journalism.” What possible purpose could his claims serve, except as a vile personal smear on a Republican politician who is also a wife, mother and grandmother?

And where are all the liberal advocates of “civil rights” — or for that matter, where are the feminists? — who should be denouncing McGinniss for purposefully sensationalizing racial and sexual issues in this tawdry way for mere publicity and political partisanship?

They have no shame. They have no honor. They are Democrats, implacable enemies of everything good and true, and no decent or honest person could ever associate himself with that foul party.

UPDATE: Good Lord!

“The Rogue” suggests that Todd Palin and the young Sarah Heath took drugs. It also says that she lacked boyfriends and was a racist. And it includes this: “A friend says, ‘Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while.’ ” Mr. McGinniss did in 2011 make a phone call to the former N.B.A. basketball player Glen Rice, who is black, and prompted him to acknowledge having fond memories of Sarah Heath. While Mr. Rice avoids specifics and uses the words “respectful” and “a sweetheart,” Mr. McGinniss eggs him on with the kind of flagrantly leading question he seems to have habitually asked. In Mr. Rice’s case: “So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?”

Really? I mean, really? Never mind. There’s more serious recklessness by McGinniss.

Category: Books, Democrats, History, Racism, Sarah Palin

Comments

53 Responses to “Did You Know the Word ‘Miscegenation’ Was Invented by Democrats as a Smear?”

  1. alwaysfiredup
    September 16th, 2011 @ 5:44 am

    “Sarah Palin makes a big deal about her Christian values”

    Really?  Care to cite any evidence whatsoever?

  2. ThePaganTemple
    September 16th, 2011 @ 3:43 pm

    Don’t pay any attention to him, this is obviously a person who is upset that this stupid little ploy of McGinnis obviously isn’t going to work insofar as turning Palin’s supporters against her. He’s waded through every word of this post and every word in the comments to try to present arguments as to why we are wrong and why we should be outraged, outraged I say, and why we should turn against her. Well, I can’t speak for anybody else but he sure hasn’t convinced me yet. I think this is probably a pathetic little jerkwad at heart who feels inferior, deeply ashamed of his own pathetic passive aggressive racism, typical of a liberal, and inferior that conservatives are not so burdened by such low-brow inclinations. Note how near the end of his post, the last two or three paragraphs, he seems to go totally over the edge out of sheer frustration at his inability to slay the conservative dragon hiding in his closet.

  3. DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Did You Know the Word ‘Miscegenation’ Was Invented by Democrats as a Smear?
    September 17th, 2011 @ 11:48 am

    […] The Other McCain turns over a rock. Nineteenth-century American newspapers were, in general, partisan in their politics, and the New York World was a Democrat paper. In 1863, two writers for the World, George Wakeman and David Goodman Croly, wrote a 72-page pamphlet that was published anonymously with the title, Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro. […]