Born Fighting (34 page)

Family income in the NORC study varied by almost $5,000 dollars, from the Jewish high of $13,340 to the Baptist low of $8,693. By comparison, in the 1970 census the variance in family income between whites taken as a whole and blacks was only $3,600. In addition, white Baptists averaged only 10.7 years of education, which was almost four years less than American Jews and at the same level of black Americans in 1970. This meant that, even prior to the major affirmative action programs, there was a greater variation within “white America” than there was between white America and black America. And in terms of education and income, the whites at the bottom were in approximately the same situation as blacks.

The past thirty years of affirmative action and the more expansive concept of diversity quotas have not altered this reality; instead, they have exacerbated it. In the technological age, with the shrinking of the industrial base, the decrease in quality of public education, and the tendency of those who “have” to protect their own and utilize greater assets to prepare them for the future, the divergence in both expectation and reward among our citizens has grown rather than disappeared. In this context, the untold story of the programs designed to bring racial diversity into the American mainstream is that diversity among white cultures has been ignored, with the result that less-advantaged whites have often paid far beyond their percentage of the white population when quotas have been put into place for the benefit of minorities.

Recent data from the NORC’s General Social Survey on white American adults born after World War II indicates that the vast distinctions in educational attainment among whites has not abated. Social Survey data for the years 1980–2000 shows that white Baptists, who are heavily descended from the Scots-Irish culture, as well as “Irish Protestants,” who are almost exclusively from that culture, rank well below other white ethnic groups, and also well below the combined national average when all racial and ethnic groups are taken together. This data shows that only 18.4 percent of white Baptists born after World War II and 21.8 percent of Irish Protestants have obtained a college degree, compared to a national average 30.1 percent that includes all races, a Jewish average of 73.3 percent, and an average among those of Chinese and Indian descent of 61.9 percent.

Again, there is no regional variance to this lack of education; the percentage of college graduates among those who grew up in the South is little different from those whose families had migrated out of the South to other places. These figures indicate that, similar to the much-discussed experiences of black Americans, whites who migrated from the South with little capital, and after the generations of educational deprivation that followed the Civil War, often brought their cultural disadvantages with them. Whatever comment one might wish to make about this fact as a cultural feature, these members of our society can hardly be called advantaged in a way that justifies legal discrimination against them as interchangeable members of a supposedly monolithic white majority.

Does this lack of educational access matter? Ron K. Unz, a prominent California businessman and political activist, examined the ethnic makeup of Harvard College in the
Wall Street Journal
not long ago. As he wrote, “Asians comprise between 2% and 3% of the U.S. population, but nearly 20% of Harvard undergraduates. Then, too, between a quarter and a third of Harvard students identify themselves as Jewish.” Unz continues, “Thus it appears that Jews and Asians approximate half of Harvard’s student body, leaving the other half for the remaining 95% of America [and this is without taking into account the 15% minority quota]. . . . Furthermore, even among non-Jewish whites there is almost certainly a severe skew in representation, with Northeastern WASPs being far better represented than other demographic or religious groups such as Baptists or Southerners. . . . This entire ethnic dilemma is present to a greater or lesser degree at most of our other elite educational institutions. . . . And partly because these universities act as a natural springboard to elite careers in law, medicine, finance and technology, many of these commanding heights of American society seem to exhibit a similar skew in demographic composition.”
¹⁰

And so the answer is that it appears to matter a great deal. It is an odd reality that in cultural terms, the dividing line of race and ethnicity in America is steadily becoming blurred, a friendship and a marriage at a time, while in political terms race and ethnicity continue to define government entitlements and, inevitably, power. And in the age of globalization, when so many of America’s hands-on manufacturing jobs have been exported to cheaper labor pools in Third World countries, it matters even more, for our society is increasingly diverging along the lines suggested by Mr. Unz.

That those of Scots-Irish descent have failed to use such evidence in order to argue against diversity programs that do not distinguish among the widely varying white ethnic groups is as much a comment on their individuality as it is on their political naïveté. To argue about such disparities would require that they act collectively. And to act collectively would require that they alter their historic understanding of what it means to be an American. And thus the final question in this age of diversity and political correctness is whether they can learn to play the modern game of group politics. For if they do, they hold the future direction of America in their collective hands.

This culture has more power than it understands. It has shaped the emotional fabric of the nation, defined America’s unique form of populist democracy, created a distinctively American musical style, and through the power of its insistence on personal honor and adamant individualism has become the definition of “American” that others gravitate toward when they wish to drop their hyphens and join the cultural mainstream. It has produced great military and political leaders, memorable athletes, talented performers, and successful entrepreneurs. It also has the most powerful issue in American politics on its side: simple fairness. Indeed, the Scots-Irish notion of fairness has dominated the most insistent rhetoric about the American democratic system since the days of Andrew Jackson—that the life and access to the future of every human being has equal value, regardless of wealth or social status. And the Scots-Irish people brought this concept to reality through the frequently bloody, brutally confrontational process of refusing, over and over again, to be dominated from above for reasons that benefited only the ruling classes.

In the summer of 2003, a folklife festival on the Mall in Washington, DC, had as one of its features the arts, crafts, and music of the Appalachian Mountain region. During that festival, Phyllis Deal of Clintwood, Virginia, a maker of Appalachian foodstuffs, was more definitive than she probably even intended when asked by a
Washington Post
reporter if her products were being marketed through local food cooperatives. “No,” she answered. “There’s a traditional resistance to cooperatives in our area. We’re not very cooperative.”
¹¹

Dear Mrs. Deal: I admire your independent spirit. But it’s time to get more cooperative.

3

Rites of Passage:
The Legacy of Camel Six
                              

You can’t stomp us out and you can’t make us run

Cause we’re them old boys raised on shotguns.

We say grace, we say “ma’am,”

And if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn.

—
HANK WILLIAMS, JR.,
“A Country Boy Can Survive”

DUE LARGELY TO
the odd-couple marriage of rebellious political populism and strict religious Calvinism in the Scottish Kirk during the Protestant Reformation, the traditional Scots-Irish culture is a study in wild contrasts. These are an intensely religious people—indeed, they comprise the very heart of the Christian evangelical movement—and yet they are also unapologetically and even devilishly hedonistic. They are probably the most antiauthoritarian culture in America, conditioned from birth to resist any pressure from above, and yet they are known as the most intensely patriotic segment of the country as well. They are naturally rebellious, often impossible to control, and yet their strong military tradition produces generation after generation of perhaps the finest soldiers the world has ever seen. They are filled with wanderlust and are ethnically assimilative, but their love of their own heritage can move them to tears when the bagpipes play, and no matter how far they roam, their passion for family travels with them.

Underlying these seeming contradictions is an unwritten but historically consistent code of personal honor and individual accountability. For untold centuries this code has required males of the culture to prove through physical challenge that they possess the courage, judgment, loyalty, and survival skills necessary to take their place among the “Celtic kinship.” Modern sociologists may wish to demean this process and call it sexist or outmoded, but it nonetheless persists, through a series of formal and informal rites of passage. The specifics may vary, but as the generations move forward, the end result is strikingly familiar. Through a system of rewards and punishments, honor and shame, and ultimately acceptance or rejection, the Scots-Irish culture shapes its own version of manhood in accordance with the traditions that have sustained it. One is tempted to call this process the Redneck Bar Mitzvah.

Since the culture is assimilative and also emphasizes collateral kinship, the rites of passage do not always take place inside the family or even the extended family. Group activities such as hunting and athletics often play an important role, as does the proving ground of military service. I like to claim that my two closest lifelong friends are both Scots-Irish, even though one is of Filipino descent and the other is Russian. But the rituals and demands of military service imbued both with the same identifiable traits of courage, personal honor, and loyalty that one would find in the mountain communities of Virginia or Tennessee. While never losing their own ethnic identity, they have also met the test of mine.

These standards were passed down to me hard and early by my father, and I have done the same thing with my son. In both cases it was automatic, even more the role of a father than checking homework or making sure we went to church. In this culture, if one is to be recognized as a leader, he must know how to fight and be willing to do so, even in the face of certain defeat. He must be willing to compete in games of skill, whether they are something as traditional as organized athletics, as specialized as motorcycle or stock car racing, or as esoteric as billiards or video games. He must know how to use a weapon to defend himself, his family, and his friends. He should know how to hunt and fish and camp, and thus survive. And throughout his young life he should observe and learn from the strong men in his midst, so that he can take their lessons with him into adulthood and pass them on to the next generation. Perhaps, as some claim, the advance of civilization and the sophistication of our society have made many of these lessons irrelevant. But to me, the attitudes they ingrained have been the most consistent sustaining forces in my life.

I began hunting with my father as a very small boy, following him puppylike through dense woods and acting as his retriever when he shot rabbit and squirrel. He gave me my first rifle at the age of eight, as I did with my son. From age five he took me fishing, cutting a branch off a tree and tying fishing line onto it so that I could pull in sunfish while he went for bass. At about the same age he taught me how to both follow and lay a trail in the woods, and how to make an “Indian fire,” large enough to cook over but small enough not to be noticed at a distance. When I was ten he gave me my first bait-casting rod. To him, bait-casting was an art form. At his direction, I spent untold hours in the backyard casting a dummy lure into an old bicycle tire, putting a handkerchief between my elbow and my side to keep me from “throwing” the rod at my target, so that I would learn to snap a rod using only my wrist.

When I was six my father bought me my first pair of boxing gloves and taught me how to use them. In the military housing projects when I was growing up and in the public schools of Alabama and the Midwest where I lived, it was common for young boys to form a human ring and take turns inside it, facing off against one another in an endless set of sparring matches. At a very early age my father laid out the eternal ground rules for street-fighting: Never start a fight, but never run away, even if you know you are going to lose. If you run, you’ll still be running tomorrow. And if you fight, win or lose, a bully won’t come back. And whomever you fight, you must make them pay. You must always mark them, so that the next day they have to face the world with a black eye or a cut lip or a bruised cheek, and remember where they got it.

My most memorable childhood moments were the ones spent at the outer edges of what other cultures might call the tribal circle, listening to my father and his longtime friends swap tales. This ritual is at the heart of the Scots-Irish culture, still replayed in hunting lodges and fishing camps throughout America as the old and young gather ostensibly to hunt or fish but in reality to celebrate their bonds and pass on their way of life. In the cabins and around the campfires the lions sit at center stage, trading false insults and challenging each other, jesting with the emeritus elders who need no longer fight, telling tales of younger days or of those who have gone before. And on the outer edges, ever quiet, the young boys listen, awed and thankful to be in the presence of the drinking and the swearing, absorbing stories that tell them what it means to be a man, and longing for the day that they can finally sit as full members of the tribe.

I drank my first whiskey straight from the bottle on a cold Missouri night while on a raccoon hunt with my Uncle Dub and two other young cousins. We drove in a column of trucks down dirt roads into the far fields and the half dozen hunters let their dogs go, then gathered at the trucks as the coon dogs yapped along the nearby tree lines, waiting for the telltale baying that would signal they had treed the coon. As always they were fired with the unexplainable excitement of the hunt, telling grown men’s stories as if we were not there. Then in the cold, crisp night the hounds began to bay, and the hunters picked up their weapons and headed toward the dogs. As I grabbed mine, the whiskey unexpectedly came to me. “It’s cold, boy,” an older farmer grinned, nodding at the half-empty bottle. I pulled the burning liquid into my belly and knew that I had moved one step closer to the center of the ring.

I spent untold hours fishing with my father and my Uncle Bud, who was not blood-related but as my father’s best lifelong friend may as well have been. When I was young, Bud would simply ignore me, making a point never to rig my bait or help me unhook a caught fish. But as I became a full fishing partner, he took to me as if I were his own son. I learned more about my father and his brothers by listening to the two men talk than from lone conversations with my father himself. Bud Colwell and the Webb boys; those stories shaped me. How as a boy in Oklahoma, Bud had killed a rabbit by throwing a rock and hitting it in the head when it was on the run. And Bud running a labor gang in a Missouri gravel pit before the war, where one day he was suddenly attacked by a man he had not hired from the labor pool, and hitting the man so hard in the forehead that when the man woke up and blew his nose his eyeball popped out. And Bud, the toughest young man in Elwood, Kansas, a tiny river town that once had been Elwood, Missouri, until the spring floods receded and they saw they were now on the river’s westward side, holding court in front of the general store the day the Webb boys moved to town. Bud pointing to a puddle in the dirt road, claiming that no man within fifty miles could put him in it. And my Uncle Tommy, inches shorter and rarely given to boasting, walking forward without a word and nonchalantly throwing him into the puddle.

Even in his fifties, fear and an animal respect would stalk Bud’s eyes when he spoke of Tommy Lee Webb. How Tommy could throw a knockout punch that never moved more than about twelve inches. And how often that punch would be the only one thrown in a fight as Tommy, never given to arguing, would simply knock a man down within seconds after the first insult. How Tommy could fight three grown men at the same time and beat them all. How Tommy, thoroughly drunk, had driven through the main streets of nearby St. Joseph at fifty miles an hour with a cold focus that was unnerving to watch. How even a knife put straight into his chest in a fight over a woman had not slowed Tommy down once the wound had healed. How Tommy had learned to be a highly successful TV repairman not by going to some class but by buying a TV and taking it apart until he knew from his own intellect what every single tube did. And how Tommy had done the same thing with air conditioners, making a second successful business. Tommy was The Man.

Bud was The Man, too. He had spent almost all of World War II overseas, first in North Africa and then in Italy, serving so little time in this country that he did not even qualify for the American Campaign Medal. When he returned from the war, he began working for Otis Elevator, and a few years later both his retinas had hemorrhaged, destroying his central vision and leaving him legally blind. Taking a settlement from Otis and a small pension from the Veterans Administration, Bud moved to Florida, bought a dilapidated old house, and spent a year redoing it, learning how to use his hands without full vision. With the help of my father and two workers, he then built a silica sand plant from the bottom up, and when he was burned out by a competitor he found a new location and built another one, this time processing Fuller’s Earth. Bud then traveled extensively, his wife, Anna, driving and serving as his assistant, selling his product all over America. Few of his buyers even knew he was blind.

One by one, the great lions of my young life died, and finally there was only my father. My generation had made it to the center of the ring, the favored places around the campfire, the main table in the cabin at the fishing camp. For a couple weeks every summer my father and brother and I, along with our sons and other friends, would gather in one Minnesota fishing camp or another, spending mornings and evenings going for bass and northern pike, drinking far too much, cooking for each other, and rekindling our understanding of who we were and from whence we had come. It was now our sons and nephews who gathered at the outer edges, quietly listening to the tales of those who had gone before them, sneaking a cigar or a beer and wondering at the time when their day would come. And my father became the elder emeritus, to be both constantly ribbed and, ultimately, revered.

We ribbed him mercilessly because that was the inevitable, final act for the old lions. My father had not been an easy man to grow up with. He did not spare the lash. He was given to making taunts and impossible challenges. When I was very young he would ask me if I was tough, and then hold out his fist and have me hit it again and again, telling me I could stop if I admitted I wasn’t tough. My small fist would crumple against his and I would be unable to stop my tears, but I would never admit I wasn’t tough. And now as he advanced to the far side of seventy, I would sometimes greet him in the morning with a clenched fist and a remembering taunt. “Come on, old man. Hit my fist.” And we both knew without saying it that the mantle had passed, that his lesson had been learned, and that his methods, while frequently harsh, were never viewed as cruel.

We revered him because, while so many people on this earth had talked the talk, we knew that he had walked the walk. And hey, he was my pa. One summer we decided to name him Camel Six, Camel from a disgustingly funny joke my brother had told, and Six because it was the military designation for a unit commander. He deserved both; Camel because he could be disgustingly funny, drinking too much and talking too loud, never without an opinion; Six because he was indeed the Commander.

My father was The Main, Main Man.

In 1984, I was nominated and confirmed as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, responsible for the oversight of all the military’s National Guard and Reserve programs as well as the evaluator of their ability to mobilize if the nation went to war. As the date for the swearing-in ceremony approached, the White House called and suggested that I ask Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to administer the oath of office, reasoning that the gesture might cement my relations with my new boss. Over time I came to admire Cap Weinberger more than any person I ever worked for outside of the Marine Corps. But I had another idea.

I called the General Counsel’s office and asked if a military officer could legally administer the oath of office to a high-level civilian appointee. They said yes. Well, I asked, how about a retired military officer? They checked, and the next day said that this was indeed legal. And so I called old Camel Six and told him he needed to come up to Washington.

Hundreds of people were packed inside the Secretary of Defense’s conference room on the day of the ceremony, including a few dozen friends, family members, and Marines who had served with me in Vietnam, plus the service secretaries and most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Caspar Weinberger made a short speech that officially introduced me to the Pentagon’s hierarchy and outlined my professional experience. I made a few remarks about the challenges of the position and my sense of obligation to those who wore the military uniform. Then my mother stepped forward, holding a Bible, and my father administered the oath of office.