The Long Retreat on Race
The capitulation of James Kilpatrick.
William P. Hustwit, James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation, The University of North Carolina Press, 2013, $34.95, 310 pp.
James Jackson Kilpatrick, Jr. (1920 – 2010) was a hugely popular conservative commentator of the latter part of the 20th century. Thanks to television, he became one of America’s first “celebrity journalists” and, with William Buckley, personified the Right. Before that, however, he was one of the country’s best known segregationists.
How did he make the switch? Did he change his views? Sacrifice his principles? A little—or a lot—of both? William Hustwit, who teaches history at the University of Mississippi, has written a biography of Kilpatrick that tries to answer these very questions. . . .
And maybe his views really did change; who is Prof. Hustwit to insist that they did not? But if he did simply bury his convictions, would he have done more good as a provincial race realist than as a national conservative? All people who hedge their opinions in the hope of a larger audience convince themselves that discretion is the price of influence—as they bank their honoraria and swan through the corridors of power. And, like Kilpatrick, they build oases far from the racial chaos they no longer combat with all their strength.
Truth, however, especially the truth about race, needs more than obscure champions. It needs men like Arthur Jensen and Sam Francis. It needs men who are respected and prominent and who, unlike James Watson or James Kilpatrick, refuse to back down. . . .
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