Glenn Greenwald points to this genuinely disgusting column by Kathleen Parker, in which she writes,

“A full-blooded American.”

That’s how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. His feelings aren’t racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with “someone who is a full-blooded American as president.”

Parker argues that Fry isn’t necessarily racist, mind you.

Who “gets” America? And who doesn’t?

The answer has nothing to do with a flag lapel pin, which Obama donned for a campaign swing through West Virginia, or even military service, though that helps. It’s also not about flagpoles in front yards or magnetic ribbons stuck on tailgates.

It’s about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots. …

…We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are. But there’s a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice. …

…What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Republicans more than Democrats seem to get this, though Hillary Clinton has figured it out. And, the truth is, Clinton’s own DNA is cobbled with many of the same values that rural and small-town Americans cling to. She understands viscerally what Obama has to study.

Glenn points out that Barack Obama’s white grandfather fought in World War II, but somehow Barack Obama hasn’t earned the same “blood equity” that whiter candidates have, nor is his DNA properly “cobbled.” Gee, I wonder why that is?

Of course Parker is a racist. She’s worked out some system in her head by which she can justify being more comfortable with the white candidates than with the black guy, and then she kids herself she isn’t a racist. But she is.

Anyway — Since my ancestors starting earning “blood equity” in the Revolution, I assume I have the authority to tell Parker she doesn’t know America from grapefruit. Conservatives cling to a much-beloved fantasy that the “America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years” was somehow all of a piece culturally until recent times. Fantasy, I say. As I wrote a couple of years ago, the fact is that American culture has been in constant flux since the first white guys sailed into Chesapeake Bay to found Jamestown. Each group of immigrants, from the 17th century on, both changed whatever culture they found here at the time and were changed by it.

As I wrote in the earlier post, if we could reconstitute Daniel Boone and show him around, he wouldn’t recognize this country at all. I think they had apple pie in his day, but much of “traditional” American culture — baseball, jazz, barbecue, John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” — didn’t exist in Daniel Boone’s America.

If you spend much time with American history, surely you understand that different parts of the country developed very different “heritages,” in part because of the differences in immigration patterns. This was very apparent in the 19th century. The cultural differences between the slave-owning South and the free-soil North were particularly striking, and traces of that difference linger to this day. But there were also big cultural differences between, say, New England and the upper Midwest.

At the same time, although my fore-parents have been on these shores for just about three centuries, to native Americans I’m still an interloper. I respect that.

For a more nuanced look at what White America is going through, check out this column by Gregory Rodriguez. Although his DNA may not be properly cobbled either, I say Rodriguez understands America better than Parker does. (And per Parker’s own criteria my bloodlines make me the authority in these matters.) Rodruguez writes,

Last week, exit polls in West Virginia showed that Barack Obama might be facing some fierce racial resistance if he becomes the Democratic nominee. More than half of West Virginia Democratic voters — 95% of whom are white — said they would be dissatisfied if Obama won the nomination.

Is this white supremacy? No, in fact it might be its opposite, an acknowledgment that white privilege has its limits. With immigration and globalization reformulating who we are as a nation, it isn’t the white elites that are threatened by the changes; rather, it’s the nearly 70% of whites who are not college educated who figure among the most insecure of Americans. Many feel that their jobs are being outsourced or taken by immigrants — legal or otherwise — and that their culture is being subsumed. When Clinton promises to make their voices heard, she’s appealing not to Anglo-Saxon racial triumphalism but to the fear of white decline.

They’re bitter, you know, whether they’ll admit it or not.

Granted, not everyone who fits under the rubrics of “white, working class, not college educated” is going to vote against Obama. But by rallying to Clinton’s faltering candidacy, some sectors of white society might be trying to solidify the old racial boundaries of American nationhood. It’s not so much that they are hoping to reclaim their place, but that they are seeking to carve out a niche and demanding that, at the very least, the presidency remains “theirs.”

Like black or Latino activists who insist that a particular congressional district should be represented by one of their own, the disgruntled white working-class, non-college-educated voters might be demanding that their majority status still translate into something at least symbolically meaningful to them.

I say it’s splitting hairs to claim this isn’t a variation of white supremacy. For a very long time white supremacy has been all about building up the flagging self-esteem of unexceptional white people. But Rodriguez points out that we’re turning into a nation in which everyone’s in a minority.

Romantic notions of ethnic self-determination and multiculturalism may have once served to dismantle empires and garner attention for forgotten minorities. But today they are more likely to nurture the kind of white nationalism on which Clinton has placed her last political hopes.

Parker’s skewed perception of people’s “bloodlines” and “DNA” rests on the biased fantasy that the United States is a white nation. If the United States is going to be a functional nation in the 21st century, we’d best learn that we’re all in this democratic government thing together.