Mr. Wilhoit’s Opus
Francis Wilhoit (1920-2010) was the Thomas F. Sheehan Professor of Political Science at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. His obituary notes that he grew up in Carthage, North Carolina and worked at the local bank in the 1930’s before enlisting in the Army Air Corp in WW2 where he served as a cryptographer. After the war, he attended Harvard on the GI Bill, earned three degrees, and graduated Magna Cum Laude. His friends apparently called him “Ike.” After receiving his Ph.D., Francis went on to spend most of his academic career at Drake University where he wrote two seminal works: The Politics of Massive Resistance (1973) and The Quest for Equality in Freedom (1979). He was an opera lover who lived a solitary life that appears to have been rather quiet but for one thing; he was a ferocious and vocal opponent of racism and Jim Crow in the United States. Indeed, from 1966 until at least 1972, he was the regular recipient of threatening telephone calls on the subject.
Wilhoit has become a posthumous celebrity in the past couple of years with this very meme-able quote that has been attributed to him and shared virally across social media:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
It’s powerful stuff and indeed perfectly encapsulates the lot of racialized minorities in the United States and Canada who find themselves regularly at the mercy of the law but without the benefit of its protections. The White Gaze seldom fixes upon the systemic racism, inequality and suffering faced by those groups – but becomes laser-focused on them during criminal justice encounters, sometimes with fatal results. Laws that we take for granted to protect us: clean water regulations, equal access to government services, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, etc. become, in their case, something which much be asked for (and potentially denied) rather than something that can be counted on. Criminal justice, on the other hand, is all too happy to intervene in their lives, whether invited or not.
Frank McCourt, the author of Angela’s Ashes, said that some words were so perfect that they were like jewels in your mouth when you said them. For anyone interested in progressive social justice issues, Wilhoit’s quote does just that. The words are are …perfect. They are also not his. They were actually written by a man named Frank (not Ike) Wilhoit in 2018 as part of a comment on a progressive blog post (see: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/). Somehow, in the endless game of telephone that is social media sharing, Frank and Francis were conflated - though I rather doubt Frank would be offended. He is a musician and composer who lives in rural Ohio and works as a software engineer. His website (https://www.broadheath.com/) lists a number of orchestral and chamber music pieces he has composed and, intriguingly, some songs based on the words of Blake and Shakespeare. That his genius extends beyond music should come as a surprise to no one familiar with “greatness.” Friedrich Nietzsche was a highly proficient pianist. Tom Lehrer, a musical comedy “star” of the 1960s, was a professional musician, a mathematician AND a political scientist. Queen guitarist(!) Brian May works mainly as an astrophysicist these days. Frank Wilhoit may never write “Under Pressure” or “Beyond Good and Evil” but his face, and his words, belong on a t-shirt.