he Center's mission is to examine white American culture in the context of the greater American culture. Usually we look at whiteness itself but we need to ask, What is this greater "American culture" that provides the context?

Today some people simply take American culture as a given. Being "Americans," they feel no need to see themselves as anything else. Still others see "American" as something they are not. In either case we’re talking about people whose families have been here for generations. It’s not hard to notice that many of the former group are white Americans and many of the latter group are Americans of color. "Why can’t we all just be Americans?" asks the former group. Characteristic of the reply is George Yancy, who said in a Philadelphia Tribune column, "My Americanness promises to deliver the American dream. But my Africaness explodes this dream, exposing its true lack of reality."

Historians sometimes say the "American" character was formed during the American Revolution and the years shortly after. There is a lot of truth to this assertion, though not as many of the historians would have it. The "American" character they describe really applies to a lesser group that kept other Americans in bondage. Long ago these same people began talking about the "Rights of Man" and fomenting a revolution. "What human rights?" scoffed the king across the sea. "You hold your fellow men as slaves."

"Fact is, we’re all part of the culture. Both those debased and those who did the debasing. We were split long ago, and that split IS the culture in many ways."

A parable to be sure, yet true. Prior to the Revolutionary War European Americans generally regarded African Africans as human beings. It was unfortunate they were enslaved. But men had always enslaved other men and women. It was their lot, miserable as it might be. In declaring the democratic principles of the American Revolution as universal rights (yes they really did call it the "Rights of Man") this same group ran headlong into the contradiction of slavery. Public discussion, among both black and white, openly debated the hypocrisy.

Nowadays we think European Americans must always have viewed African Americans as animals, inferior and inherently on a lower plane. But it was only after the Revolutionary War and only through force of contradiction between universal rights and slavery that white Americans came to see black Americans as less than human. For 250 years before the Revolutionary War (a period longer than the period since) people of all colors fought and befriended one another in America. Some were dominant and some were oppressed. But all realized they were dealing with fellow human beings. Prior to the war slavery was a mark of debasement, but free blacks suffered far less stigma. Following the war this changed. Blackness itself was debased.

The demotion of African Americans to subhuman status was part of the same process of forming the "American" character the historians describe. Indeed, it was necessary to the process itself. Unless black Americans were written out of the human race, "Americans" could not declare themselves custodians of the universal rights we treasure so dearly. Historians of black America have identified this same era as the moment when black American culture formed its first institutions, including especially the black church. Prior to that time, integrated congregations were common. So were the armed forces. Black Americans fought along side, shoulder to shoulder, with white Americans to create this nation. American Indians, too, served in the ranks.

Fact is, we’re all part of the culture. Both those debased (which in some views included everyone) and those who did the debasing. We were split long ago, and that split IS the culture in many ways. Rubbing shoulders for so many years, we can not help but have formed one another. James Baldwin said "each of us contains the other…white in black, black in white." Each is Indian as well, we might add, and Spanish, and Asian. New scholarship is now telling these stories in convincing detail.

In 1994 columnist Georgie Anne Geyer witnessed a citizenship ceremony on the 4th of July at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home, where the judge declared "today you are Americans--not hyphenated Americans." She then wrote in a critical way of a nearby multicultural festival held on the very same "sacred date of American unity." This festival was cynical in a politically correct way, she claimed, because America "has always been a multicultural nation."

Geyer is right. American culture is multicultural--always has been--and multiracial, too. From its earliest years at the outset of European expansion, it was red, white, brown, black, and in time yellow. It’s mulatto, mestize, and mustee. Yes, it did include those white ethnics Geyer mentioned knowing in her Chicago neighborhood as a child, and many other cultural groups she left unnamed. We’re only beginning to realize how multicultural and multiracial this country has been.

Multiculturalism may sometimes emphasize group rights over individual rights as Geyer complained. It’s a complaint to take seriously. As we mentioned above, long before Geyer’s time the rights of one group were elevated to universal status beyond the rights of individuals of another group and it didn’t work out very well in the long run. That first group created symbols for themselves and group names for everyone else. They took the name "American" as their own, though it belongs to all of us, and now they claim the right to decide with whom to share it.

It’s time to take it back.

Jeff Hitchcock can be contacted at jeffhitchcock@euroamerican.org.