Doug Wilson: Black and Tan

In our last post, we dealt with Doug Wilson’s 1996 work, Southern Slavery As It Was. Today we turn to his 2005 book, Black and Tan, in which Wilson restated and defended the argument his earlier argument. Wilson wrote Black and Tan after being forced to pull Southern Slavery As It Was from publication because of serious plagiarism issues (which should tell you something about him as a scholar). I’ve seen people suggest that Black and Tan was simply a slightly revised republishing of Southern Slavery As It Was, but this is misleading. The book deals with the same themes, but it is also longer and deals less with the everyday aspects of slave life.

Black and Tan is not a retreat from Southern Slavery As It Was. Throughout Black and Tan Wilson speaks of his critics misunderstanding his “words, actions, and intentions” in Southern Slavery As It Was. He speaks of “unsympathetic” critics who go around “snatching at words and highlighting inflammatory quotations.” He does not apologize for or take back anything he wrote in Southern Slavery As It Was. Indeed, in several respects Wilson goes farther than he went in Southern Slavery As It Was, making comments and assertions that are blatantly racist.

First let me offer you a quick overview of the points to be covered:

And now let’s get started!

People Misread Southern Slavery As It Was

In other words, a paleo-Confederate is someone who believes the South had the right of things and wants to continue that battle in the present, but acknowledges that the terrain has changed and the fight will look different. Note that Wilson insists that it is all about the Constitution and states’ rights. He elsewhere has written that he’s not talking about restoring slavery or anything like that when he calls himself a paleo-Confederate. But the truth is, the entire point of the Confederacy was to preserve slavery. The Confederacy gave states less rights than they’d had under the Union, and maintained more federal control. It wasn’t about states’ rights at all, it was about slavery. Wilson is flat wrong.

And besides, if what he’s really about is states’ rights and a decrease of federal power, can’t he use a label that means that without using the term “Confederate”? Can’t he see that that label is and always will be a problem, no matter what he prefaces it with?

The argument that blacks are racist too and that they need to repent and beg forgiveness for their hatred of whites is endemic to Wilson’s writing. In Southern Slavery As It Was Wilson wrote that slavery had created a “slave mentality” in African Americans that continues to this day, and he will hit on this theme again later, and here he argues in fact that African Americans are just as guilty of racial hatred as white people. The picture he paints is not a pretty one.

There’s also this quote later in the book:

None of us is clean in himself. So do whites need to seek and receive forgiveness for their treatment of the black man? Absolutely. But blacks also need the cleansing blood of Christ—some of it for treatment of fellow blacks, some for responding to white hatred with hatred, some of it for taking mistreatment of a great-grandfather as a license for crime, and so on. We are, all of us, sinners. And it is not fitting for a sinner to look sideways at someone else and say, ‘Well, I’m less of a sinner than you’ (pp. 29-30).

The focus, as you can see, is on the sins of African Americans, which include racial hatred and using slavery to excuse crime. Here again is this idea that racial reconciliation is about both sides admitting that they did wrong, and not about white Americans repenting of centuries of racial hatred and prejudice. This is not some sort of equal opportunity offender thing, but Wilson thinks it is.

In addition, Wilson is missing something many southern apologists miss. It’s not as though injustice against African Americans ended with the end of slavery. The Civil War was followed by a century of Jim Crow. During Jim Crow, African Americans lived in a system of pervasive discrimination and fear. And it wasn’t just the things we typically think of, either. At mid-century, national housing policy was set up in such a way as to severely disadvantage African Americans. And it’s not like racism or structural disadvantages are a think of the past, either, as anyone keeping their ears open for the last few years knows quite well. The War on Drugs has done endless harm to black communities, and the prison industrial complex borders on the creation of a new slavery. African Americans today are not spuriously angry over past wrongs done to a distant ancestor (not that such anger would be spurious anyway), they are angry over present wrongs done to their communities in the here and now.

And no, these wrongs do not go both ways.

Pagan African Was Worse Than Southern Slavery

And as for those first slaves: their descendants, while still sometimes held down by their own sins and residual paganism, not to mention the sins of others against them, have been blessed by being part of this culture. This is why a secular approach to racial reconciliation will always be doomed.  Throughout our history, God has brought many blessings to the blacks as well, at the center of which was access to the gospel. The tragedy of pagan Africa was more significant than the tragedy of southern slavery. (p. ix)

Yes, that’s right, Wilson wrote that pagan Africa was worse for black than southern slavery. He also writes that African Americans today have been “blessed by being part of this culture,” a blessing that came from slavery and was orchestrated by God.

The State of Antebellum Slavery Was Not Evil

If we want to understand the culture wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we must come to grips with the culture wars of the nineteenth century. In order to do this, it is necessary to get clear on the nature of American slavery, which was not what its abolitionist opponents claimed for it. If it had been, it is hard to see how the biblical instructions could have been applicable—for example, I would not cite 1 Timothy 6:1–4 to a person trying to escape from a Nazi death camp. “Obey the existing authorities!” But if antebellum slavery was the normal kind of sinful situation that Christians have had to deal with regularly down through history (e.g., one comparable to what Paul, Philemon, and Onesimus had to address), then the instructions in 1Timothy 6 make perfect sense.We need to learn that the antebellum situation was one of Normal Sin, not one of Apocalyptic Evil. (p. 4)

This is, once again, in line with what Wilson wrote in Southern Slavery As It Was. He admits that there was sin there—cases where antebellum slave owners did not obey Biblical prescriptions to treat their slaves kindly, and of course the fact that antebellum slave codes were not in line with Old Testament laws regarding slavery. But of course he must reiterate that abuses were rare, abolitionists were lying liars who lied, and the situation was one of “Normal Sin” and not “Apocalyptic Evil.” And because it wasn’t evil, Wilson would have urged antebellum slaves to obey their masters rather than to escape.

The Civil War Led to All Manner of Evils

Both Northerners and Southerners were misled by the obvious inferiority of black culture at that time, which had nothing to do with whether blacks bore the image of God in man, and everything to do with whether the gospel had yet had an opportunity to do its work within black culture. (p. 17)

Oh boy. See, this is yet one more point where Wilson goes further than he went in Southern Slavery As It Was. Now, Wilson claims that he is not being racist here. No, not at all!

Not that many centuries ago, my ancestors were engaged in idolatry, human sacrifice, and mindless superstitions, and I have heard about some berserkers who would strip naked, paint themselves blue, and run into battle. Just a few centuries later, taking the long view, their descendants would be building cathedrals and writing symphonies. The gospel is the issue—grace, not race. (p. 17)

Wilson says that because his ancestors used to be superstitious primitives too, saying that black culture was inferior during slavery is totes not racist. Okay but wait. Southerners and others involved in the slave trade justified slavery at the time by arguing that black society and culture was primitive, backwards, and pagan, and that blacks were better off in slavery with a white master to care for them and access to the gospel. Saying that another culture is inferior is racist, and it leads to abuses and atrocities.

But there’s another problem here too.

All men exhibit the image of God equally, but all cultures are not equal. As we look at all the tribes of men, we see some that have landed a man on the moon, and some that have not yet worked out the concept of the wheel. We have some with one whole row in the supermarket dedicated to shampoo, while in another tribe hair is washed with cow urine. (p. 33)

Did you know that the Romans washed their clothes in urine? Yes, really. That means the early Christians (including Paul) washed their clothes in urine. Believe it or not, there is nothing in the Bible that says washing your hair with shampoo from a supermarket row is better than washing your hair with urine. There is also nothing in the Bible that says the concept of the wheel (or landing men on the moon) is at all related to the gospel.

What Wilson is doing here is severely racist. It is this racism that led to European colonization, in which Britain took over and exploited societies it considered inferior. The British sometimes claimed to be helping these societies, but in reality their motives and methods were completely self serving. Wilson may think that going to the moon is obvious evidence that Western culture is superior to more “primitive” cultures, but what measure is he using? He’s using a measure that he has created himself, as a member of Western society. I’m fairly certain people in other cultures might use different measures—in some cases, measures that judge the U.S. quite harshly.

There’s also the problem of conflating Christianity with Western culture. This was a serious problem for centuries of Protestant missionaries, who sought to both convert those around the world and get them to wear Western clothes, live in Western houses, and adopt Western culture. The reality, however, is that the gospel didn’t come attached to a specific culture, and it certainly didn’t come attached to modern Western culture. But Wilson thinks it did. For Wilson, it was the gospel that led to that aisle of shampoos in your local grocery store.

The South Was Christian (and Less Racist Than the North)

When the Confederate States of America surrendered at Appomattox, the last nation of the older order fell. So, because historians like to have set dates on which to hang their hats, we may say the first Christendom died there, in 1865. The American South was the last nation of the first Christendom.

Wilson writes that the South was “the last nation of the first Christendom”—the last truly Christian society. This 2009 quote helps clarify what Wilson means by this:

Although he believes that “the South was right on all the essential constitutional and cultural issues surrounding the war,” Wilson has repeatedly declared that he is no neo-Confederate. He prefers the label paleo-Confederate.

“You’re not going to scare me away from the word Confederate like you just said ‘Boo!’ ” Wilson says. “I would define a neo-Confederate as someone who thinks we are still fighting that war. Instead, I would say we’re fighting in a long war, and that [the Civil War] was one battle that we lost.”

In other words, Wilson sees the Civil War as a battle in the longer Christian war against evil and ungodliness—and it was a war, he says, that the Christian side (i.e. the South) lost. It’s almost like Wilson is trying to both square with Bible passages that support slavery and defend the South, which he had already determined was the last truly great, truly Christian society. Remember that he cowrote Southern Slavery As It Was with one of the founders of the League of the South, a white supremacist group that makes similar arguments with regards to the Christian nature of the antebellum South.

Conclusion

So, where does this leave us? Wilson argues that black people have been just as motivated by racial hatred as white people, and traces this animosity to the Civil War, which he paints as the source of all things evil. Wilson says that slavery was better for blacks than “pagan” Africa had been, and that blacks were safer under slavery than they are today, because abortion has rendered the black womb a dangerous place for a child. Southern slavery was not evil, he says, and he once again calls abolitionists liars and argues that slavery was relatively benign. Wilson further says that black culture was inferior to the culture of the antebellum South and that the South was less racist than the North, and so Christian that it can be termed the “last nation of the first Christendom.”

Rather than taking back anything he said in Southern Slavery As It Was, Wilson instead adds to it, arguing that blacks are just as guilty of racism as whites, that black culture was inferior, and that blacks were better off in slavery than they were in pagan Africa. You can read a further summary of Wilson’s argument in Black and Tan here. You can also read more quotes from Black and Tan here and read an excerpt here. In our next post we will torn to Wilson’s 2013 exchange with Thabiti Anyabwile.