Extra Credit: With the tea party, history repeats itself

Posted: Thursday, October 14, 2010


- George Santayana

That thought came to mind while reading a passage in Princeton professor Nell Irvin Painter's new book, "The History of White People," in which she looks at racism as a concept that has never just been about skin color.

The actual physical differences between the conqueror and the conquered, the master and slave, the enlightened and the barbarian, the haves and the have-nots, even between those considered white and black, were often practically invisible.

Painter replays ancient animosities among ethnic groups. Most interesting to a black man like me was her discussion of how British Anglo-Saxons denigrated their neighbors of Celtic heritage, most notably the Irish, who were treated as badly as Africans. Religion added fuel to the bias; the Protestant English against Irish Catholics.

Irish immigrants to the United States couldn't escape that prejudice. Painter takes us to the pre-Civil War birth of the Order of United Americans, a New York nativist group that spread to Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

A related group in Philadelphia, the American Republicans, in 1844 burned down St. Augustine's and St. Michael's Catholic churches and numerous Irish homes.

By the mid-1850s, the number of anti-Irish clubs had mushroomed to at least 16 states. Most of these groups required not only that their recruits be native-born but also their parents.

Sworn to silence, members of clubs such as the Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner became known as "Know Nothings" because "I know nothing" was their response when questioned about their activities.

The Know Nothings, with their anti-immigration emphasis, morphed into a political movement. Their candidates won elections for governor in seven states in the 1850s, including Massachusetts and New York. Philadelphia Mayor Robert Conrad, who ran as a Whig, was later outed as a Know Nothing.

The group became officially known as the American Party and claimed a million members, but its members also split their votes among Democratic and Republican candidates. If anything, the Know Nothings perhaps can take credit for aiding the demise of the Whig Party, which was battered by the national split over slavery.

Ironically, the same issue spelled doom for the Know Nothings, as many of the group's members focused less on fighting Irish immigrants and more on the plight of black people.

After Southern Know Nothings forced passage of a pro-slavery platform at a national convention in Philadelphia in 1855, many antislavery Know Nothings joined the Republican Party. By 1860, the Know Nothing movement was essentially dead.

Why bring up that history now? What lessons from the Know Nothings should be learned, so, as Santayana warns, they won't be repeated? The most obvious is to resist the temptation to adopt the Know Nothing view that this country doesn't need immigrants.

While today's anti-immigration movement doesn't include the violence vividly depicted in the 2002 Martin Scorsese film "Gangs of New York," we do have armed vigilantes patrolling the U.S.-Mexican border. We also have towns passing ordinances that essentially consider anyone who looks Mexican a criminal suspect.

And we have a political movement that hasn't made immigration a central issue - being more concerned about government taxing and spending - but seems to attract more than its share of people who spew anti-immigration rhetoric.

A tea party rally on the Mexican border last month featured Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was introduced as someone who "will not back down" to the federal government. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating charges that Arpaio ignores civil rights laws in sweeps to capture illegal immigrants.

Immigration aside, today's tea party movement can be compared with the Know Nothings in its ability to successfully inject itself into political races and move candidates to declare allegiance to it even as they run for office under a different label - largely Republican.

Like the Know Nothings, the tea partiers are energized, and their energy draws people. The question is whether that energy can be sustained. It's possible that tea party candidates will be so co-opted by the party they joined to make themselves more electable that they will lose the qualities that created the buzz that pushed their movement to prominence.

Already, the Rand Pauls and Christine O'Donnells have been dialing back their rhetoric to make themselves more appealing to a broader electorate. One wonders how far they will go before being identified as just another Republican. Meanwhile, the GOP gets to have its cake and eat it, too - welcoming the tea partiers who demand change, but barely changing the party.

If the tea partiers stand for that, like the Know Nothings, their movement will become just another lesson in America history. That's likely to happen anyway. The tea party movement is high on complaints and short on viable solutions. It may take a while, but people will eventually see that.

• Harold Jackson is editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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