Unpersoned Writer’s Ideas Still Echo on the Alt-Right, Even if Nobody Will Mention Him by Name

[John Derbyshire: “Place Your Bets! Jim Crow, Jim Snow—or Murraytopia?”]

By Nicholas Stix

In spring 1990, while writing a big manuscript on race for my magazine, A Different Drummer, I coined the phrase, “Jim Snow,” as a counterpart to “Jim Crow.”

At the time, I saw the concepts as morally equivalent, but I no longer do. Though “Jim Crow” was designed to benefit Whites, in practice, it benefited blacks at least as much. By contrast, while “Jim Snow” was designed to benefit blacks and harm Whites, in practice, it harmed both groups.

In April 1990, I finally published my first issue of ADD, but that did not include the new manuscript. I then went broke, and couldn’t get the scratch together, or learn how to use WordPerfect5.1 (courtesy of my friend and managing editor, Laura Lander, who taught me it) for the next issue, until April 1992.

I split that manuscript between that issue, and one I got out in April, 1993, which was to be my last. (I was always hemorrhaging money, and on the verge of financial disaster and homelessness.)

I tried using the phrase in a 1990s’ manuscript for Chronicles Magazine, but my managing editor, Ted Pappas deleted it, the only words he cut from the entire ms. (The only other phrase Ted ever cut from my work was “Chocolate City,” which I’d gotten from a black female D.C. bus driver, who’d used it in her self-description, when she submitted poetry.)

When I started writing for the Web in 2000, I would occasionally recall “Jim Snow,” and in recent years other people have used it, most notably my longtime VDARE colleague, John Derbyshire, the essayist/blogger, Zman, and Occidental Dissent’s Hunter Wallace. Some people, including Steve Sailer, have quoted Zman using my phrase.

Some people (besides me) are even using it in discussion thread comments.

However, nobody ever cites me. At VDARE, there appears to be an unwritten rule, whereby I am He Who Must Not be Cited.

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I am aware that President Reagan once said that there’s an awful lot one can accomplish, as long as one doesn’t worry about who gets the credit for it, but the President got credit for more things than anyone but Thomas Edison, so that won’t cut it.