Perhaps we should demand that HUD put in some Section-8 housing there for some trailer-trash from Arkansas (relatives of a certain Chappaqua resident).

The question is why black Americans should be allowed to publicly express a sense of ethnic belonging while it is considered to be outrageous for a white to do so.

(The same double standard exists in Australia. On our 50 dollar note there is a quote from an Aboriginal leader which begins “As a full-blooded member of my race ….”)

The underlying reason, I believe, is that for white intellectuals it is an allegiance to their own tribe which is most problematic.

White liberal intellectuals want to be self-created by their own will and reason. They don’t want to be defined by, or bear responsibility to, an ethnic identity that is theirs not by personal choice but by mere inheritance.

Therefore, it is a denial of the relationship to their own ethnicity that is critical. They are not bound, however, in any way by black ethnic consciousness, and so can accept it more comfortably.

As whites are easily the majority, it is also more important for liberals to deconstruct this form of ethnicity, as it is more likely to influence mainstream culture and public policy.

Mr. Richardson, your comment on white liberals’ need to be “self-created by their own will and reason” really cuts to the heart of the matter. It is imperative that they deny the ethnic identity that was given to them by the creator - the ultimate triumph of the self-will. (The clay asks the potter: Why did you make me so? I will re-make myself according to my own will - not yours.) They simply can’t afford to allow that there is anything transcendent of their own material worldview. Any such thought undermines the very foundation of the liberals’ core belief, which perhaps expains the ferocity of their denuciation of those who think otherwise. Non-white liberals don’t seem to fully grasp the idea. I’m left with the impression they are more interested in destroying the white Christian culture for their own ethnocentric reasons than anything else.

I think it’s right that the liberal need to abolish ethnicity goes very deep and applies most of all to one’s own ethnicity, especially when the latter is socially dominant and establishes the cultural horizons within which life is carried on. As an attempt to find freedom by going beyond the horizon liberalism in fact seems peculiarly Western.

I think another aspect of the matter is the old identification of finitude with guilt. To be classifiable as one thing or another—to be finite—is to be separated from the infinite Absolute and therefore to be fallen into sin. That view of things is often attributed to gnosticism, since the gnostics viewed the creation of the world of finite existences as a big mistake that shouldn’t have happened and ought to be undone.

The Christian answer to the problem, of course, is Incarnation—the decision of the Absolute to become present in the finite. So it’s not surprising that with the abandonment among intellectual elites of the Christian view as too mysterious and paradoxical the horror at distinctions that imprison should reappear.

Have you ever noticed that wealthy white liberals who squeal for “diversity” almost always live in the whitest section of town? They never live among those they claim to worship. I know plenty of people like this.

The phenomenon of white, pro-diversity liberals living in white enclaves exemplifies the insight that liberals—simply in order to live in this world—must make unprincipled exceptions from their own liberalism.

The difference is that they have no other refuge from being victims of the white power structure. They have no safety from racism, profiling and discrimination except in their own circles.