What Price Racialism? (1947)

From the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following instructive news item appeared in the Evening News (July 5th, 1947).

  "Mr. Winston Churchill has joined the 'rebels.' He is the first Englishman to be elected a member of the Society of the Cincinnati organisation of descendants of American Revolutionary Army Officers. He qualifies through his maternal great-great-grandfather."

Thus a direct descendant of the aristocratic and unimpeachable House of Marlborough has descended, on his mother’s side, from a family that fought strenuously against Britain, finally helping to cut the connection and establish a new and opposing “nation” which may one day be engaged in a life and death struggle with Britain. What other nation, totalitarian or democratic, has also absorbed blood into it from the same source we do not know, nor do we know the blood mixture that has joined the original stream from outside sources in the course of time. Further than that we do not know the derivation of the great-great-grandfather on the maternal side; the same, of course, applies to the great-grandfather and the grandfather; all is swathed in mystery.

Even in this one instance how complicated the question has become? Now apply the same reasoning to the whole of the English aristocracy who boast of their lineage, and who are noted for their generosity in bestowing titles upon wealthy wives of lowly origin, and it will be appreciated what nonsense racialism really is.

To cap this modern mixture of blood kindred let us reflect upon the effect of the idea contained in the well-known proverb, “It is a wise child that knows its own father,” as well as the influence of the progeny of the past favours of royalty, and we add complication to complication. The blood of what murky ancestry may roll full billowed through the veins of aristocracy? What applies to them applies to all of us; which shows how farcical is the basis of all claims to racial purity.

Gilmac