'Daddy, Why Am I White?' - Because Louis XIV Was White And The Ensuing Folly Of Racial Identity

Dorothy Bingham came home from school one day and asked her father, “Daddy, why am I white?”.

Mr. Bingham, a careful, dutiful moderate in affairs social, political, and religious, was nonplussed.  “Because Louis XIV was white”, he answered.

Of course that remark, taken as flippancy by social justice cadres, but a proper, reasonable response by a man proud of his European heritage, was thrown back at him with a vengeance.  

In a school racial sensitivity class, little Dorothy had innocently repeated her father’s words; and immediately the teacher and a council of the school’s elders decided upon censure – not of the little girl, of course, who was only mouthing the hate speech of her father – but Hamilton Bingham himself.

The father was called in ‘to conference’ and was seated in the middle of a circle of youngish, mostly black, mostly female teachers and was questioned about his beliefs and his understanding of the virulent, systemic racism that was infecting the school, all schools, and America itself.  Lastly, he was asked if was willing here and now to acknowledge his offence, and to do penance for what was called, in the words of the history teacher, ‘retrograde white elitism’.

Before he had a chance to answer, he was harangued by teacher after teacher who questioned his allegiance to progressive values, improvement in the lives of black youth, and the importance of reparations.  He was asked again and again if would renounce the faux superiority of whiteness, give himself over to the forces of the new progressive Enlightenment, and reform his ways.

Florence Jackson, the principle of the school saved her intervention for last.  Only once she had satisfied herself that Mr. Bingham had been through the purging gantlet of her teachers, and that he had been dutifully chastised, warned, and censured, did she speak.  

She stood, rose to her imposing 6’ height, adjusted her hair, bosom, and dress, and let forth with a blistering sermon worthy of a Pentecostal preacher.  She invoked Booker T Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, and Che Guevara; she spoke of revolution, solidarity, and purpose.  She thundered on about God’s righteous anger at today’s Sodom and Gomorrah, the holy terror of his wrath, and the necessary, abject submission of sinners like Bingham, in all his petulant resistance, his racial defiance, and his outright ignorance of the nature of superiority, the worst of the lot.

She stood there, towering above the seated claque of inquisitors and the smallish Bingham seated in a kindergarten chair, arms folded, but head upright; waited a full minute, and then said, “So, Mr. Bingham, what do you have to say for yourself?”.

Bingham, about to be drawn and quartered, butchered, and burned at the stake like any Salem maiden, knew when and how to keep his own counsel.  To keep quiet, deferential, and contrite-looking in a strategic posture of retreat, only preparing his will and energy for the battle to follow.  “Thank you for your time and patience, Mrs. Jepson”, he said, smiling at the mispronunciation of her name and the hated honorific, Missus.

 

P.S. 42, formerly the Hiram S. Flanders School, had been named for a hero of the American Revolution who, upon investigation, was found to have been an investor in the New England Three-Cornered slave trade.  Despite his battlefield heroism, valiance, his seat beside Washington crossing the Delaware, and a place in the General’s provisional government, his name along with many other American and local giants, was purged, expunged, and forgotten to give way to the ‘value-neutral, anti-racist’ system of numbering.  

Neither the Principal nor the members of the Administrative Council were aware of Hamilton Bingham’s position and stature within the Washington K Street legal community, nor of his equally prominent place in the city’s most prestigious social organizations.  He had been a lifelong member of the Society of the Cincinnati and the New England Historical Society, both groups that invited for membership only those of the purest family pedigree and a genealogy dating back to America’s earliest years.

Hamilton Bingham represented a dual threat to P.S. 42, Principal Jackson, and the entire Administrative Council because of his unblemished reputation as a litigator and his prominence in the city’s most prestigious, influential private organizations.  Neither the Principal nor any council member had ever heard of Hamilton Bingham except as father to the lovely, pigtailed, little white girl, Dorothy.  Little did they know that he was about to bring down the opprobrium of Washington’s social elite and invoke every last scintilla of courtroom brilliance in his effort to erase this insignificant, irrelevant group of political shills.

Getting back to the casus belli, the Louis XIV quote, it was Bingham’s shorthand for civilizational preeminence.  He hated to use the word ‘superiority’ when it came to French, English, Greek, or Roman civilizations – or Persian, Mauryan, shogun, or mandarin for that matter – but his reticence was only in nodding deference to the tenor of the times; not a capitulation to Third World multicultural hegemony by any means, just a tactical evasion.

As he explained to his daughter, she was white because she was the last of a long lineage of white men and women – kings, queens, and courtiers of England, married to the royalty of France, Germany, and Poland, rulers of vast lands, caretakers of great wealth, patrons of the arts, science, and philosophy, and the architects of polity and the rule of law.  Not only was she never to question the legitimacy of her race, but to be perennial proud of it.

This pride in racial heritage had nothing to do with racism.   Believing in the rightness and greatness of one’s own historical culture had nothing to do with the values of any other.  There was no room for denigration or arrogant superiority.  Let others judge relative value, importance, and longevity.  Bingham had always been known as a fair, just, and respectful man – respect for which qualities had to be put on hold given his ferocity, insatiable ambition, and vicious pursuit of victory in the courtroom. 

His associates in the best social company of Washington were as determined, willful, and decisive in their desire to limit the ignorance of America’s cancel culture vultures; to stand proudly and firm for the principles of their storied past; and to defy the insidious movement to neuter it.

The law firm of Bingham, Potter, Light, & Means filed a law suit against Principal Jackson, the Administrative Council, and the Chairman of the DC School Board on Constitutional grounds.  They contended that the accused violated the principle of academic neutrality, ruled with political not pedagogical intent, and violated the laws of privacy and civil rights.  

They obtained documents from disgruntled school staff that chronicled the school’s misuse and distortion of educational principles. The Principal and Administrative Council, in collaboration with and support from the Women’s Progressive Alliance and National Socialists for Reform, developed a manifesto which unmistakably stated their undermining  objectives

Not only were they party to abject historical revisionism by adopting the contentious and false principles of The 1619 Project, and the most incendiary black-only premises of crypto-prudence marginal street fighters, but they took an overtly racist stance on ‘white inferiority’, ‘black superiority’, and most importantly to Hamilton Bingham, the need to ‘dismantle the crumbling pillars of European civilization’.

Money was no issue.  Not only was Bingham ready to take on the legal assault pro bono, but contributions from the scions of Washington’s privileged elite poured in – indirectly of course.  The lawsuit would be successful and Bingham, Potter, Light, & Means were willing to stay the course for as long as it took.

The legal action gained national prominence.  Finally, the conservative press claimed, there was action beyond words.  ‘A historic suit’, ‘A gut punch to the pusillanimous Left’, ‘The beginning of the end of political indecency’ were only some of the headlines.

Thanks to the successful lawsuit  the Principal and Council Members left after settlement (they got nothing but restored union membership), the school withdrew its contentious and deformed ‘Social Justice Curriculum’, and the Three R’s were restored.  Bingham was vindicated and victorious. ‘Diversity’ was respected at P.S. 42, but that meant teaching about Plato, Aristotle, Elizabeth I, the Hapsburgs, and the Holy Roman Empire.  A victory in and of itself.