White Linen Tablecloths, Crystal, And Fine China - The Racism Of Elegance

Parker Anthony grew up on Beacon Hill, the latest in the line of a New England family descended from English royalty (the Duke of Northumberland), American patriots (Paul Revere, Lexington and Concord), and early Twentieth Century captains of industry. 

Parker had prepped at St. Paul's, was schooled at Yale, and at only 30 became a partner in Burr and Longstreet, Wall Street's premier investment firm.  He lived in Groton Long Point on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, in a house built by a great grandson of Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington, Palladian architect who had carried on the tradition of classical English architecture in America; and landscaped by Frederick Law Olmstead. 

 

Aristocrat, financier, legatee of storied British history, and patriotic American, Anthony was the best of both worlds - proud of the New World and even more proud of the tradition of English royalty which had presided over the greatest empire the world had known and given its colonies learning, jurisprudence, civil society, and wealth.  

His family had never stirred from their noble, conservative traditions - it had been the dukes, earls, and viscounts who had presided over the civilizing culture of Britain and their legatees in America were the caretakers of tradition, as Christian as St. George, as English as Shakespeare's Henrys, and as politically conservative as the Lords of the first Parliament. 

The Anthonys were not just heirs to a tradition, they were living examples of it.  Their home was appointed in the finest American and British furniture, Revere and Townsend, and the best Empire cabinetwork. Whistler peacock furnishings, elegant Persian carpets, and the very finest silverware of Abercrombie and Sanders.  At the same time, their home was welcoming - the ethos of fine taste and culture was universal, and for those who appreciated it, evenings spent there was far more than entertainment.  It was an experience. 

Parker Anthony's home was a cultural island, a unique redoubt of the best of England and America.  It was there, no different from the Surrey estate of his great ancestor, Algernon Percy, Fourth Duke of Northumberland, that the finest minds and talents of both continents assembled.  The guest list was one of honor, dignity, and brilliance.  

 

It was an island, of course, because early Twenty-first century America was as far from the sophistication, taste, and cultural armory of the Anthonys.  In fact in recent years America had grown into a 'culture of appeasement', a term coined by a colleague to refer to the abject servitude to Africanism - the core of the new 'Year Zero' thinking of the the new Left.

Year Zero, of course, was Cambodian dictator Pol Pot's term for the inauguration of a Maoist state, a moment when the past would no longer exist.  The killing fields were testament to Pol Pot's murderous ambitions, and butchering dictatorship, one far worse than Stalin or Mao could ever imagine. 

The American Left was just as uncompromising as Pol Pot - the brutal, oppressive, racist colonial past of Europe and the early days of the new American republic were to be expunged, deleted from history, consigned to anonymity as if they never existed. 

 

In its place would be an ethos based on race, gender, and ethnicity at the center of which would be the black man - the very symbol of the new, progressive America.  Child of the forest, attuned to nature and the subtle currents of prehistory; strong, able, and preternaturally intelligent, the black man would repopulate white America and turn it into a new world of high natural nobility.

Parker was nonplussed.  It was one thing to urge social reform - after all Oliver Cromwell did his patriotic best to democratize England; and although the nation happily returned to monarchy, he was part of the ebb and flow of politics - but it was another thing altogether to reject the motherlode of values inherited from Europe. 

Europe was no different, Parker had said.  Politicians from London to Budapest were warning of the de-Europeanization of the continent.  Within a generation, Europe could be Muslim, radicalized and isolationist.  This new majority - like the American Left and its coalition of color - would erase Western values and replace them with medieval torture. 

Parker listened to distant rumble of thunder over the Sound - the North Shore was getting the rain which would soon be over Connecticut.  A few yawls and catamarans were reefing their sails while the more experienced sailors were running with the wind to make it to port before the storm hit. Parker smiled, having been caught out on many a summer afternoon like this.  The decision was always this - reef or run - but he and his father had always had a second sense for water, wind, and current.  

He turned from the window and watched the servants put the final touches on the dinner table, polishing the last fork, adding a zinnia to a bouquet (Fall was quickly approaching), and making final adjustments to the symmetry of the wine glasses - all a marvel of elegant perfection, a table of balance of shine, color, and transparency, a constellation of crystal, silver, and starched linen, 

The dinner table was more than just the proper way to serve guests.  It was the centerpiece of a tradition which dated back centuries.  There was no difference between the assembly of dukes, duchesses, and earls of 18 century England and this evening in America. 

Parker and his family had never treated anyone with disrespect.  Although America's progressive cant and diaspora mentality was unsettling - the tribalism of forest, veldt, and savannah was to be honored despite its primitivism and its status of received wisdom dangerous, divisive, and damaging to the commonwealth.  Minority rights and democratic inclusiveness were one thing, but raising the specter of profound underdevelopment to the level of kings and courtiers was absurd. 

The storm cleared over the Sound.  Sails were unfurled and courses set for the Atlantic or safer harbors to the west.  The air was always particularly clear, briny, and brisk after thunderstorms, and he opened the French windows to the verandah where he waited for his guests to arrive. 

Not only was the anomaly of race, gender, and ethnicity being promoted - the championing of the formerly enslaved for nothing more than their suffering; the cheers for the medieval societies of Gaza and the West Bank - but Europe, the continent that gave civilization to the world - laws, learning, art, music and high culture - was being described only as an oppressor, a predator, and a force of evil. 

The Gao and Ghanaian Empires that ruled West Africa in the 6th and 7th centuries CE left nothing behind - a scouring of the land and intent on extensive rule left no room for culture.  There is no architecture, no formal gardens, no bridges, aqueducts, or roads. Nothing other than oral history, the songs of griots, and the mythological tales handed down over the generations to suggest their presence and influence.  

The rest of the sub-Saharan continent was ruled by tribal chieftains - warring, slave-owning, confined societies.  The chronicles of European travelers to Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries, Mungo Park and Rene du Chaillu among them, reported savagery, cannibalism, and tribal inhumanity. 

Every society has its dark ages, but Africa has barely emerged from its own.  The continent is a morass of tribalism, underdevelopment, poverty, and misgovernance; and this, thought Parker, was to be the cultural counterpart of London, Paris, and Rome?

It was one thing to nationalize the newcomer - to give every new American the chance and the opportunity for advancement, influence, and wealth; but the African diaspora has remained ineluctably linked to its enslaved past and its tribal origins.  Eventually and hopefully the ties will be loosened or broken and black Americans will join the mainstream; but to assume some native superiority, by fiat raise them to the pinnacle of American society, and to replace the words of the Constitution and the ethos of the Founding Fathers with street culture is absurdity. 

The evening's guests began to arrive.  There was Dame Elizabeth Fowler former prima ballerina of the New York City ballet, guest dancer with the Bolshoi, philanthropist, patron of the arts, and owner of Far Oaks, Frank Lloyd Wright's only waterfront estate.  She was escorted by Henry Wadsworth Banning, great grandson of Ezekiel Banning, Newport shipbuilder and investor in transatlantic trade. 

There were the Fieldings, Sir Compass Atkins, recently knighted by King Charles, Mr. and Mrs. Atwater Parsons of Philadelphia and Palm Springs; Dexter Vibberts, Nobel Prize nominee; and the Hatfield Scarboroughs of Sewickley. 

Coats and hats were taken, drinks and canapés, and the dinner served.  It was another memorable occasion.  Parker was proud of his guests, his family, and his home.  America might be going through some unfortunate times - this happens every few generations or so when the old socialist fervor of times past gets new life - but there is no way that the country can survive without its past and those, like him, who were appointed to preserve, protect, and promote it. 

'Racist', claimed an editorial piece in the New York Times calling out faux aristocrats like the Parker Anthonys as throwbacks, unrepentant colonialists, and champions of white empire; at which Parker smiled as he used the newspaper to start the blaze in the Severn Library, the repository of the complete works of Audubon and Fielding.