Noel Ignatiev
Encyclopedia
Noel Ignatiev is an American history professor at the Massachusetts College of Art
best known for his call to "abolish" the white race, which he defines as "white privilege and race identity." Ignatiev is the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Race Traitor and the New Abolitionist Society. He also has written a book on antebellum northern racism against Irish immigrants
, How the Irish Became White. His publisher bills him as one of America's "most controversial" historians.
but dropped out after three years. He worked in a steel mill in Chicago
and in factories manufacturing farm equipment and electrical parts for two decades. Ignatiev was a Marxist activist and helped organize strikes and protests by the predominantly black work force at the steel mill. He was laid off from the steel mill in 1984, a year after he was arrested on charges of throwing a paint bomb at a strike-breaker's car.
Under the name Noel Ignatin, he joined the Communist Party USA
in January 1958, but in August left (along with Theodore W. Allen and Harry Haywood
) to help form the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (POC). He was expelled from the POC in 1966.
Later he became involved in the Students for a Democratic Society
. When that organization split, Ignatiev became part of the Third-worldist and Maoist New Communist Movement
, forming the group Sojourner Truth Organization
in 1970. Unlike other groups in the New Communist Movement, the STO and Ignatiev were also heavily influenced by the ideas of C.L.R. James.
Ignatiev was a graduate student at Harvard University
where he earned his Ph.D. in 1995. He taught courses there before moving to the Massachusetts College of Art, where he currently teaches. His academic work is linked to his call to "abolish" the white race, a controversial slogan whose meaning is not always agreed upon by those who debate his work. His dissertation, published by Routledge
as the book How the Irish Became White, was advised by prominent social historian of American race and ethnicity Stephan Thernstrom
. Ignatiev is the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Race Traitor and the New Abolitionist Society.
and shows how that triumph marked the incorporation of the Irish into the dominant group of American society. Ignatiev asserts that the Irish were not initially accepted by native-born Americans of Anglo-Saxon
descent as white. He claims that only through their own violence against free blacks and support of slavery did the Irish gain acceptance as white. Ignatiev defines whiteness
as the access to white privilege, which according to Ignatiev gains people perceived to have "white" skin admission to certain neighborhoods, schools, and jobs. In the 19th century it was strongly associated with political power, especially suffrage
.
Ignatiev states that attempts to give race a biological foundation have only led to absurdities, as in the common example that a white woman could give birth to a black child, but a black woman could never give birth to a white child. Ignatiev asserts that the only logical explanation for this notion is that people are members of different racial categories because society assigns people to these categories.
at Harvard University. In early 1992, Ignatiev objected to the University's purchase of a toaster oven for the Dunster House dining hall that would be designated for kosher use only. He insisted that cooking utensils with restricted use should be paid for by private funds. In a letter to the Harvard student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson
, Ignatiev wrote that "I regard anti-Semitism, like all forms of religious, ethnic and racial bigotry, as a crime against humanity and whoever calls me an anti-Semite will face a libel suit."
Dunster House subsequently declined to renew Ignatiev's contract, saying that his conduct during the dispute was "unbecoming of a Harvard tutor." Dunster co-master Hetty Liem said it was the job of a tutor "to foster a sense of community and tolerance and to serve as a role model for the students," and that Ignatiev had not done so.
objected to an encyclopedia article on Zionism that Ignatiev wrote for The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. In the article, Ignatiev described Israel
as a "racial state, where rights are assigned on the basis of ascribed descent or the approval of the superior race" and likened it to Nazi Germany
and the Southern United States
before the civil rights movement.
The American Jewish Committee cited numerous "factual and historical inaccuracies" in Ignatiev's article. The American Jewish Committee also questioned why the encyclopedia included an entry about Zionism, stating that it was the only nationalist movement with an article in the encyclopedia. Gideon Shimoni, Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, criticized the article as a "litany of errors and distortions of fact."
On Dec. 17, the publisher respond to "concerns from several organizations" over "the accuracy of, and support for, certain statements in the Zionism article" by announcing the appointment of an independent committee to investigate "the factual accuracy, scholarly basis, coverage, scope, and balance of every article." In a further response to the Ignatiev article, Gale published a 10-part composite article, "Nationalism and Ethnicity," which includes evaluations of cultural nationalism in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America and the Middle East, and Pan Arabism in addition to having a new article on Zionism available free of cost to all purchasers of the encyclopedia.
Massachusetts College of Art
Massachusetts College of Art and Design is a publicly-funded college of visual and applied art, founded in 1873. It is one of the oldest art schools, the only publicly-funded free-standing art school in the United States, and was the first art college in the United States to grant an artistic degree...
best known for his call to "abolish" the white race, which he defines as "white privilege and race identity." Ignatiev is the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Race Traitor and the New Abolitionist Society. He also has written a book on antebellum northern racism against Irish immigrants
Immigration to the United States
Immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, economic benefits, jobs for non-immigrants,...
, How the Irish Became White. His publisher bills him as one of America's "most controversial" historians.
Early life
Ignatiev was raised in Philadelphia, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. He attended the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
but dropped out after three years. He worked in a steel mill in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and in factories manufacturing farm equipment and electrical parts for two decades. Ignatiev was a Marxist activist and helped organize strikes and protests by the predominantly black work force at the steel mill. He was laid off from the steel mill in 1984, a year after he was arrested on charges of throwing a paint bomb at a strike-breaker's car.
Career
Ignatiev set up Marxist discussion groups in the early 1980s. In 1985, Mr. Ignatiev was accepted to the Harvard Graduate School of Education without an undergraduate degree. After earning his master's, he joined the Harvard faculty as a lecturer and worked toward a doctorate in U.S. history.Under the name Noel Ignatin, he joined the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
in January 1958, but in August left (along with Theodore W. Allen and Harry Haywood
Harry Haywood
Harry Haywood was a leading figure in both the Communist Party of the United States and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . He contributed major theory to Marxist thinking on the national question of African Americans in the United States...
) to help form the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (POC). He was expelled from the POC in 1966.
Later he became involved in the Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society
Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
. When that organization split, Ignatiev became part of the Third-worldist and Maoist New Communist Movement
New Communist Movement
The New Communist Movement ' was a Marxist-Leninist political movement of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. The term refers to a specific trend in the U.S. New Left which sought inspiration in the experience of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Chinese Revolution, and the Cuban...
, forming the group Sojourner Truth Organization
Sojourner Truth Organization
Sojourner Truth Organization was a new communist organization, which came into existence in the winter of 1969-70. Throughout its fifteen year existence , it existed mainly in the Midwest and oriented towards organization in the workplace...
in 1970. Unlike other groups in the New Communist Movement, the STO and Ignatiev were also heavily influenced by the ideas of C.L.R. James.
Ignatiev was a graduate student at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
where he earned his Ph.D. in 1995. He taught courses there before moving to the Massachusetts College of Art, where he currently teaches. His academic work is linked to his call to "abolish" the white race, a controversial slogan whose meaning is not always agreed upon by those who debate his work. His dissertation, published by Routledge
Routledge
Routledge is a British publishing house which has operated under a succession of company names and latterly as an academic imprint. Its origins may be traced back to the 19th-century London bookseller George Routledge...
as the book How the Irish Became White, was advised by prominent social historian of American race and ethnicity Stephan Thernstrom
Stephan Thernstrom
Stephan Thernstrom is the Winthrop Research Professor of History at Harvard University. and was the editor of the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups ....
. Ignatiev is the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Race Traitor and the New Abolitionist Society.
Views of race
Ignatiev is part of a group of social scientists and geneticists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries who view race distinctions and race itself as a social construct, not a scientific reality. In his study of Irish immigrants in the 19th-century United States, Ignatiev recounts the Irish triumph over nativismNativism (politics)
Nativism favors the interests of certain established inhabitants of an area or nation as compared to claims of newcomers or immigrants. It may also include the re-establishment or perpetuation of such individuals or their culture....
and shows how that triumph marked the incorporation of the Irish into the dominant group of American society. Ignatiev asserts that the Irish were not initially accepted by native-born Americans of Anglo-Saxon
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
descent as white. He claims that only through their own violence against free blacks and support of slavery did the Irish gain acceptance as white. Ignatiev defines whiteness
Whiteness studies
Whiteness studies is an interdisciplinary arena of academic inquiry focused on the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of whiteness as an ideology tied to social status...
as the access to white privilege, which according to Ignatiev gains people perceived to have "white" skin admission to certain neighborhoods, schools, and jobs. In the 19th century it was strongly associated with political power, especially suffrage
Suffrage
Suffrage, political franchise, or simply the franchise, distinct from mere voting rights, is the civil right to vote gained through the democratic process...
.
Ignatiev states that attempts to give race a biological foundation have only led to absurdities, as in the common example that a white woman could give birth to a black child, but a black woman could never give birth to a white child. Ignatiev asserts that the only logical explanation for this notion is that people are members of different racial categories because society assigns people to these categories.
"New Abolition" and the "White Race"
Ignatiev's web site and publication Race Traitor display the motto "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity". In response to a letter to the site which understood the motto as meaning that the authors "hated" white people because of their "white skin," Ignatiev and the other editors responded:Harvard tutorship
From 1986 until 1992, Ignatiev served as a tutor (academic advisor) for Dunster HouseDunster House
Dunster House, built in 1930, is one of the first two Harvard University dormitories constructed under President Abbott Lawrence Lowell's House Plan, and one of the seven Houses given to Harvard by Edward Harkness. In the early days, room rents varied based on the floor and the size of the room...
at Harvard University. In early 1992, Ignatiev objected to the University's purchase of a toaster oven for the Dunster House dining hall that would be designated for kosher use only. He insisted that cooking utensils with restricted use should be paid for by private funds. In a letter to the Harvard student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson
Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson are the athletic teams of Harvard University. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2006, there were 41 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at any other NCAA Division I college in the country...
, Ignatiev wrote that "I regard anti-Semitism, like all forms of religious, ethnic and racial bigotry, as a crime against humanity and whoever calls me an anti-Semite will face a libel suit."
Dunster House subsequently declined to renew Ignatiev's contract, saying that his conduct during the dispute was "unbecoming of a Harvard tutor." Dunster co-master Hetty Liem said it was the job of a tutor "to foster a sense of community and tolerance and to serve as a role model for the students," and that Ignatiev had not done so.
Encyclopedia of Race and Racism
In 2008, the American Jewish CommitteeAmerican Jewish Committee
The American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...
objected to an encyclopedia article on Zionism that Ignatiev wrote for The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism. In the article, Ignatiev described Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
as a "racial state, where rights are assigned on the basis of ascribed descent or the approval of the superior race" and likened it to Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
and the Southern United States
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
before the civil rights movement.
The American Jewish Committee cited numerous "factual and historical inaccuracies" in Ignatiev's article. The American Jewish Committee also questioned why the encyclopedia included an entry about Zionism, stating that it was the only nationalist movement with an article in the encyclopedia. Gideon Shimoni, Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, criticized the article as a "litany of errors and distortions of fact."
On Dec. 17, the publisher respond to "concerns from several organizations" over "the accuracy of, and support for, certain statements in the Zionism article" by announcing the appointment of an independent committee to investigate "the factual accuracy, scholarly basis, coverage, scope, and balance of every article." In a further response to the Ignatiev article, Gale published a 10-part composite article, "Nationalism and Ethnicity," which includes evaluations of cultural nationalism in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America and the Middle East, and Pan Arabism in addition to having a new article on Zionism available free of cost to all purchasers of the encyclopedia.
Works
- "'The American Blindspot': Reconstruction According to Eric FonerEric FonerEric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...
and W. E. B. Du Bois," Labour/Le Travail, 31 (1993): 243–51. - "The Revolution as an African-American Exuberance," Eighteenth-Century Studies 27, no. 4 (Summer 1994): 605–13.
- How the Irish Became White (1995) ISBN 0-415-91384-5
- Race Traitor (anthology of articles from the journal by the same name edited with John Garvey) (1996) ISBN 0-415-91392-6
- "Zionism, Antisemitism, and the People of Palestine," Race Traitor (May 2004).
See also
- Whiteness studiesWhiteness studiesWhiteness studies is an interdisciplinary arena of academic inquiry focused on the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of whiteness as an ideology tied to social status...
- Race traitorRace traitorRace traitor is a pejorative reference to a person who is perceived as supporting attitudes or positions thought to be against the interests or well-being of their own race...
- Frederick Douglass and the White NegroFrederick Douglass and the White NegroFrederick Douglass and the White Negro is a documentary film originally released in 2008 .- Synopsis :...
Noel Ignatiev is a major contributor
Further reading
- Harvard Hates the White Race?, by Paul Craig Roberts, VDARE.com, September 4, 2002.
- Questions For: Noel Ignatiev, The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, February 16, 1997. - An interview with Noel Ignatiev, by Danny Postel, Z Magazine, March 1997.
- The Point Is Not To Interpret Whiteness But To Abolish It, by Noel Ignatiev, "The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness" Conference, at University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, April 1997. - Noel Ignatiev on the role of westward expansion and African Americans for the PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
program Africans in America (1998).