Legacy Americans

Legacy Americans

When I first heard the term "legacy Americans," I thought it was a reference to the last of the Mohicans. Jack de Selby jumped on my mistake, as he often does, telling me that legacy American is a name for blue-eyed American people of Northern European origin who alone have the right to govern. 

Legacy Americans, de Selby explained, consider themselves rightful heirs to the nation, indigenous hicks who deserve special privileges. Everyone else is an outsider. Legacy language should be the only language. Only legacy holidays should be celebrated. All politics should be identity politics. That is normal.

When immigrants appear, legacy Americans fear replacement. In the past in America when white males seemed about to be outvoted by minority groups, the solutions were simple. Legacy Americans turned to violence (the KKK) or they turned a minority group into honorary white males, which enlarged the legacy ranks.

The original genuine white males came from England, France and Northern Europe. They got to vote first. On the verge of being out-registered, American legacy voters turned white women into second class white males. White women got to vote. That was about a hundred years ago. 

As needed the Catholic Irish, Jews, Italians, Greeks, Turks, Arabs and so on became second class white males. Even so, legacy voters are about to be outnumbered again. 

De Selby predicts that soon Hispanics will become second-class whites. That's already happening. After Hispanics the next large group to make the grade will likely be Chinese-Americans or, maybe, people of mixed background like President Obama. (De Selby is guessing.) At the same time new minorities will be growing; some race will always be there to provide a feared opposition.