Warren Throckmorton

Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, is a student of David Barton

As I write this, the House of Representatives just elected Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) to be Speaker of the House. There were many reasons not to support Johnson’s bid, but I learned one more today: he is a student of Christian nationalist activist David Barton.

Along with co-author Michael Coulter, I just completed a book titled Getting Jefferson Right: Fact-Checking Claims About Thomas Jefferson. In this book, we debunk faulty historical claims about Jefferson, many of which have been advanced by Barton. For the most part, the claims are designed to erode the separation of church and state and privilege Christianity. Rep. Johnson has been long-time fan of Barton. In 2021, Johnson praised Barton in a talk to a group of state legislators:

I just want to say at the outset I’m grateful to WallBuilders and David and Rick and everybody involved. And I was introduced to David and his ministry a quarter century ago, and it has had such a profound influence on me and my work and my life and everything I do. So I’m just so grateful you guys continue to sow into this work and help equip the soldiers on the frontlines. And so thanks to all of you for being willing to serve in this critical time for the country.

In 2012, Christian publisher Thomas Nelson pulled the first edition of David Barton’s book The Jefferson Lies from publication due to historical errors. It was an unprecedented move. We exposed many of those problems in the first edition of Getting Jefferson Right, published just a few months after The Jefferson Lies in 2012. This new second edition greatly expands on that work.

Having a book pulled from publication due to errors would end the career of most historians, but as is now obvious, it has not meaningfully hindered Barton’s influence. Nine years after Barton’s The Jefferson Lies was removed from publication, the future Speaker of the House said Barton’s work influences everything he does.

Many people ignore or minimize Barton. This is a mistake. He has radicalized many current Christian nationalist GOP politicians, including the new Speaker of the House. So, seriously, you should buy our book and see what the reality-based community is up against and how to respond.

You can pre-order the e-book on Amazon now. The print version comes out on November 1. Watch this space and gettingjeffersonright.com.

Here is a video of Rick Green at Wallbuilders saying Speaker Johnson is one of them.

Recently, right wing pundit Matt Walsh said the following on his Daily Wire show (click the link for a longer clip).

The preservation of the hummingbird community is more important than the preservation of the white race. You can’t even talk about the preservation of the white race, even saying that word, that phrase is tantamount to being in the klan.

In his monologue, Walsh lamented what he perceived to be a decline of white people. He first said it would be a terrible thing if a group of white people immigrated to a predominantly black country and became the majority (does he know any history?). Then he said many people demand preservation of all species of hummingbirds, but there is no generalized concern for the preservation of “the white race” (again, does he know any history?) And then the most correct thing he said came next. He said using the phrase “white race” is “tantamount to being in the klan.”

He may be correct about that since “white race” is a term used mostly by white supremacists. Take for example, this quote from Michigan neo-Nazi Jeff Schoep spoken at a April 29, 2017rally in Pikeville, Ky (NY Times, Aug. 19, 2017).

We are the front line of the fight for the white race. We are the shock troops for the white race.

Then there was a Mississippi group formed in 1963 to oppose the civil rights movement called Americans for the Preservation of the White Race. Their slogan was:

Americans for the Preservation of the White Race, Inc., is an organization dedicated to keeping the White Man White and the Black Man Black like GOD intended.

Maybe Matt could revive that group.

Although not the KKK, the League of the South is a contemporary white supremacist group which was one of the key groups involved in the violent Charlottesville Confederate statue protests. Michael Hill is their leader. He is also very worried about the preservation of the “white race.”

A stupid, unfounded belief in racial equality, fostered by the perfidious Jew, will be the death of the White race. Reject equality. Even a blind man in the dark can see it’s a Big Lie. Twitter, April 3, 2018

Matt’s worries aren’t new. Some white men have been worried for a long time. Back in the 1920’s, several of them drafted laws designed to keep black and white people apart. A fellow named Walter Plecker drafted laws for Virginia and Washington, D.C. The law’s purpose was “to preserve the integrity of the white race in the District of Columbia” and for “the protection of the white race.” Obviously Plecker cared more about white people than hummingbirds.

Perhaps Walsh could find literary inspiration from The Great Gatsby’s Tom Buchanan, who was famously worried about losing the white race. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald referred to eugenics promoter Henry Goddard by name in this Gatsby dialogue.

“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?”

“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”

“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we ——”

“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”

According to the American Psychological Association’s public apology for contributing to eugenics, Henry Goddard, a pioneer in psychological testing, served as “the psychology representative on the Committee to Study and Report on the Best Practical Means of Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the American Population.” The Committee was established by the American Breeders Association and “recommended segregation, and sterilization as the best methods of preserving ‘the blood of the American people.’” That’s another way of saying preserving the white race.

Just one more lament from a white man who feared the demise of “the white race.” Madison Grant wrote a book in 1923 called The Passing of the Great Race that influenced restrictions in immigration laws in the 1920s. In it, he sounded an alarm that sounds familiar if you listen to the Matt Walsh Show.

The resurgence of inferior races and classes throughout not merely Europe but the world, is evident in every despatch from Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Rumania, India and Mexico. It is called nationalism, patriotism, freedom and other high-sounding names, but it is everywhere the phenomenon of the long-suppressed, conquered servile classes rising against the master race. The late Peloponnesian War in the world at large, like the Civil War in America, has shattered the prestige of the white race and it will take several generations and perhaps wars to recover its former control, if it ever does regain it. The danger is from within and not from without. Neither the black, nor the brown, nor the yellow, nor the red will conquer the white in battle. But if the valuable elements in the Nordic race mix with inferior strains or die out through race suicide, then the citadel of civilization will fall for mere lack of defenders.

There is No White Race

I could go on, but let me close by saying that there is no white race. Or black race for that matter. Maybe if Walsh understood this, he wouldn’t be so worried. I have my doubts, but maybe.

Race is a socially constructed concept to make classification of people easier, often for sinister reasons. Certainly, that was true in the early days of this country when black Africans became the slave class.

Walsh’s invocation of “the white race” is ignorant. Which white race is he worried about? British? French? Germans? Italians? In Europe, historically, these groups were all considered separate. In America, whiteness has been constructed to include people lighter skinned people, even though the ancestry of those people may be quite different. Walsh seems worried for some reason that people with white skin with disappear. That is unlikely, but even if for some adaptive or natural reason that happened, it isn’t like humans will go extinct.

Let’s hear from a trio of psychologists who articulate the matter quite well. In their 2005 article “Intelligence, Race, and Genetics,” Robert Sternberg, Elena Grigorenko, and Kenneth Kidd say this about race and genes:

Less than 1% of human DNA varies globally, in the 3 billion nucleotide positions in the human genome; however, that 1% creates a large number of potential differences between any two people. Some regional differences are observable, and others less so. For example, one will see larger proportions of blond hair and blue eyes in people born in European countries than in those born in Asian ones. In addition, one will see shorter people, on average, among those born in Asia than among those born in Europe, and one will see wider noses in West Africa, on average, than in East Africa. In other words, within geographic groups, there is variation, and, as it turns out, tremendous variation.

Race as a Social Construction

Where does race fit into the genetic pattern? Actually, it fits nowhere. Race is a socially constructed concept, not a biological one. It derives from people’s desire to classify. People seem to be natural classifiers.

Sternberg and his co-authors note that skin color isn’t always the criterion for racial division.

People generally use skin color to distinguish races, but not always. During the genocide in Rwanda, the Hutus used other physical attributes, such as height, to distinguish Tutsis. Because there had been so much intermarriage between Hutus and Tutsis, the distinctions were generally weak, and many people were killed simply because they seemed closer to the imagined Tutsi prototype than the Hutu one, regardless of their origins. At the time this article was being written, massacres were going on in parts of Darfur, Sudan, motivated by similar socially constructed distinctions.

The history of the concept of race is inextricably intertwined with attempts by the winners to explain or justify why they perceive themselves to be winners. Consider, for example, the term Caucasian. It is an odd term, in some ways, because although it is used to refer to “Whites,” in Russia people from the Caucuses are considered dark relative to many other Russians. Especially because of difficulties in Chechnya and surrounding areas, these dark Caucasians today are viewed with suspicion and distrust in much of Russia. So the term that is accepted as “scientifically” identifying White people in the United States, often in preference to the term White to give more of a feeling of scientific classification, is used in a way that is largely opposite in contemporary Russia. Where did the term come from then? It was coined by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (as cited in Gould, 1994), who chose the name because he believed that the Georgians, from the Mount Caucasus region, are the most beautiful race of men (his words). The term stuck. So people in English-speaking countries with white skin have the honor of having a name they imagine to be the formal label for their race, representing what one naturalist in 1795 believed was the most attractive “race” and what today largely is believed to have rather dark as opposed to white skin, according to Russian standards. Thus, the term is scientifically unsupportable and part of an old racist typology. The term is just as racist as Negroid and Mongoloid, terms the politically sensitive American will not use.

I hope it is clear now that it really is better to worry about those hummingbirds than to worry about the extinction of something that doesn’t exist. Actually, it is still true that lighter skinned people have advantages in job interviews, housing applications, etc. In colorism research, applications that don’t mention race get more interviews reaction than those which tip off the reader that the applicant is black. There is evidence that white people get better real estate appraisals and better loan responses. So even though there is no white or black race, white people generally speaking need to figure some things out when it comes to treating people of color with justice and equality. That’s especially true since we are all a part of the same race. We really are in this together.

So feed the hummingbirds, follow the Golden Rule, don’t be so self-absorbed, and I think things will work out Matt.

As previously hinted, I decided to begin blogging at Substack with the address: warrenthrockmorton.substack.com. It costs nothing to subscribe since I have no levels of readership. That may change in the future but for now, all of the content will be available to all readers.

I have two posts there which are not here at the WordPress site. The first one is a satirical piece titled “How to Be an Un-Woke Church,” and the second just went up today titled “Update on a Flawed Study of Homosexuality and Child Abuse.” 

The second piece updates one of my most popular blog posts ever. It concerns the flawed study of homosexuality and abuse by Marie Tomeo and Donald Templer and published in Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2001. There is an important update on the study in the Archives and some background on the role of the blog post to bring some awareness to the problems in the study. I hope you will check it out and comment over there.