American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 12, No. 4	April 2001

CONTENTS

The Revolution in Haiti
Bad Medicine
The Galton Report
Bloody Fat Tuesday
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

The Revolution in Haiti

The slaughter that brought Africa to our doorstep.

by James P. Lubinskas

Most Americans do not give much thought to Haiti. They may know it is a black, French-speaking country, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. From what they see on television they realize it is a poor, violent nation ruled by a succession of dictators, each seemingly worse than the last. They may also associate Haiti with AIDS, crime, drug gangs, boat people and environmental disasters. These are all correct associations but the history of Haiti puts all this in a broader context. It offers one of the most sobering lessons about race in the New World. It is a story that is rarely told, but the grim realities of the Haitian revolution and its aftermath are just as worthy of our attention today as they were 200 years ago. None other than Lothrop Stoddard, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on Haiti and later published it as The French Revolution in San Domingo, called the black uprising “the first shock between the ideals of white supremacy and racial equality.”

Haiti is a nation of eight million people packed into an area the size of Maryland. The illiteracy rate is 60 percent, the unemployment rate 65 percent, and the average per capita annual income is estimated at $225 — the lowest in the hemisphere and less than one tenth the Latin America/Caribbean average. The United Nations says 60 percent of the population is sexually active by age 12 and the average number of births per woman is 4.8-the highest in the hemisphere. The population is expected to double to 16 million by 2030, and Haiti’s overpopulation is ravaging the environment. At the turn of the century it still had half of its original forests, but today only 1.5 percent are left. Most Haitians depend on firewood for fuel. Every year American relief workers plant six million saplings but Haitians cut down 25-30 million trees, causing the erosion of 15,000 acres of farmland. As a result, 25 of Haiti’s 30 watersheds are essentially denuded. Haiti must import 60 percent of its food, and is teeming with poor, diseased, desperate people eager to come to America. Only the US Coast Guard prevents the nation from moving en masse to Florida. It was not always like this in the land once called “the gem of the West Indies.”

French San Domingo

Columbus discovered the island in 1492 and named it “la Isla Española,” which was later shortened to Hispaniola. For a brief period, until the promising discoveries of Peru and Mexico, it was the center of Spanish colonization. The Spanish did not stay long but their stay was important. They killed most of the Arawak Indians, and when they left for other colonies they set their livestock free. The Spanish maintained a presence on the eastern part of the island but abandoned the west. Other Europeans ignored Hispaniola for nearly 100 years but settlers who came in the 1600s found an island filled with cattle and pigs, and empty of hostile natives. The new arrivals to the western part were mostly buccaneers who preyed on Spanish ships and hunted the abundant wild cattle (the word “buccaneer” comes from the French boucaner, “to barbecue beef”). As the Spanish consolidated their hold to the east, the French slowly took control of the west, which became French San Domingo. By the 1700s the colony was turning from what Stoddard called “a nest of hunters and pirates,” into a thriving outpost of agriculture and trade.

At the time of the French Revolution in 1789, French San Domingo was at its most prosperous. In the rich aluvial Plaine du Nord there were a thousand plantation houses set behind pillared gateways, which sparkled at night with the illumination of elaborate balls. The colony was one of the leading exporters of coffee, sugar, cocoa and cotton, and in 1789 the dollar value of its trade exceeded that of the United States. However, its affluence was based on a fragile racial dynamic of 40,000 whites ruling 500,000 black slaves — the majority African-born. There was also an intermediate class of 27,000 mulattos who had come about because of an initial scarcity of white women, and which would play an important role in the future of the colony.

Even after the arrival of French women, it was common for wealthy whites to keep mulatto mistresses. Still, the color line was well observed when it came to marriage. The few white men who married mulattos were shunned by white society and stripped of many rights-with the French government’s approval. One priest who had refused marriage to a white and a mulatto was commended by a French minister who wrote: “His Majesty’s pleasure is not to permit the mixing of the bloods; your prevention of the marriage in question is therefore approved.”

Officially classified as “free people of color,” mulattos could own land, businesses, and even slaves. They despised the slaves but resented the whites, to whom they were subordinate. Mulattos could not vote or hold office. They were segregated in theaters, shops and churches, and even the wealthiest mulatto was the social inferior of the poorest white.

Whites of all classes as well as the authorities in France considered the color line natural and necessary. Outnumbered 13-to-1 by blacks and mulattos, whites had good reason to stay united in the face of occasional uprisings on rural plantations in which slaves slaughtered all the whites they could catch. Moreover, the French blamed the relative failure of Spanish and Portuguese colonies on miscegenation, and did not want to make the same mistake. Whites would maintain the color line at all costs, but the bitterness of the mixed-race class would soon find a sympathetic ear. In the words of the revolutionary leader Honoré de Mirabeau, whites “slept on the edge of Vesuvius.”

The French Revolution

After the French Revolution and the overthrow of Louis XVI, most whites in San Domingo expected to receive more say in running the colony. This hope turned to terror as they learned of the new regime’s revolutionary racial plans. In 1788 a French pamphleteer named Jacques Brissot had formed the Amis des Noirs (Friends of the Blacks). Patterned after English abolitionist groups, the society soon became far more radical. Most of the future Jacobin leaders such as Lafayette, Condorcet, Mirabeau and Robbespierre were members, and chapters soon spread throughout France. San Domingo was subject to French rule, and colonists began to wonder how far these zealots would take their slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

Almost from the beginning, the National Assembly in Paris pushed for full citizenship rights for mulattos. Mulattos were emboldened and whites distressed when the Jacobins announced in 1792 they were sending a civil commission-supported by 6,000 troops-to San Domingo to enforce the rights of mulattos. When the black slaves heard the news they went into open revolt in the hope that they, too, would get freedom. Whites in San Domingo were therefore under siege from slaves, mulattos and their own government. One white who managed to return to France predicted the outcome: “You may announce unreservedly that it is all over with San Domingo. One of three things will follow: the whites will exterminate the whole mulatto caste; the mulattos will destroy the whites; or the negroes will profit by these dissensions to annihilate both the whites and the mulattos. But in any case, San Domingo should be erased from the maps of France.”

The commission arrived and went to work, forcing whites to recognize full citizenship rights for mulattos. The result was chaos and race war. By 1793, most whites had either been killed or fled to France or the United States. (About 10,000 settled in the U.S. where they were received sympathetically. Many soldiers who had accompanied the French commission also left with them rather than help destroy their own people.)

With the defeat of the whites, mulattos expected to rule in their place, exploiting the labor of black slaves, but the blacks, led by General Pierre Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture (1743-1803) and supported by the French government, rose up against the mulattos. Badly outnumbered and without allies, “the yellow caste” soon met the same fate as the whites. L’Ouverture and his troops slaughtered them by the thousand.

By 1801, the former slave was supreme ruler of San Domingo. He strengthened ties with the British, who helped keep his troops well armed in exchange for supplies from the naturally rich island. In 1800 he invited whites back to the island, assuring them they would be well treated. A few thousand returned. He gave many back their plantations and ordered most blacks to work for the whites and for the state. The powerful military made short work of anyone who opposed this neo-slavery. When L’Ouverture’s nephew, a black general named Moyse, led a revolt against these “pro-white” policies L’Ouverture put down the insurrection and executed his nephew. In 1801 he drew up a new constitution and appointed himself “Governor for life” with the right to appoint his successor. Much like post-colonial African leaders, the “black George Washington,” as he is often called, made himself dictator.

Why didn’t the French take a greater role in suppressing the violence after more conservative elements regained control in Paris? In fact, Napoleon wanted to send troops but was stretched thin with campaigns in India and Egypt and war with Britain. In 1802, after peace with Britain, Napoleon did manage to send a force of 12,000 under Charles Leclerc with orders to take San Domingo, restore it to French rule, and arrest L’Ouverture. Napoleon did not at first plan to reestablish slavery but he wanted to restore French sovereignty over a white-run colony. The outnumbered French defeated the blacks, forcing L’Ouverture to surrender in the spring of 1802. Leclerc thought it best to pardon L’Ouverture and let him return to civilian life rather than exile him to France, but kept a wary eye on him. Most of the black soldiers came over to the victorious French side.

What appeared to be a success soon turned to failure. That summer a great many French soldiers, as well as thousands of civilians, caught yellow fever and died. L’Ouverture began to plot an uprising against the weakened French, but blacks loyal to Leclerc managed to lure him within the French lines and capture him. Leclerc packed L’Ouverture off to jail in France where he caught tuberculosis and died. Nevertheless, as disease continued to ravage the white troops, Leclerc began to depend increasingly on the doubtful loyalty of black generals and their followers. To Leclerc’s dismay, Napoleon rescinded the ban on the slave trade and urged the re-establishment of slavery in the colonies. The black soldiers were furious, and many went into insurrection. Napoleon reestablished restrictions on mulattos as well-something completely impossible to enforce in San Domingo-which broke down the strong antipathy between blacks and mulattos and united them against the French.

Leclerc himself died of yellow fever later in 1802 but the death knell of white-run San Domingo was the outbreak in May 1803 of another war with Britain. The British blockaded the island and supported the blacks and mulattos in what was now open race war against the French. In November 1803 the French surrendered and sailed away, leaving San Domingo in the hands of Jean-Jacques Dessalines (1758-1806), a former slave who had been one of L’Ouverture’s generals. It is this combination of yellow fever and support from the British that accounts for the Afrocentric claim that a black army “defeated” Napoleon.

Dessalines, who crowned himself Emperor Jacques I, wanted to break all ties with France. One symbolic step was to change the name of the colony to Haiti, which is what the Arawaks called the island. He guaranteed safety to whites who remained, and even encouraged more to come, but this was a ruse. In early 1805, he ordered their extermination. A French officer who escaped described the carnage:

The murder of the whites in detail began at Port-au-Prince in the first days of January [1805], but on the 17th and 18th of March they were finished off en masse. All, without exception, have been massacred, down to the very women and children . . . A young mulatto named Fifi Pariset ranged the town like a madman searching the houses to kill the little children. Many of the men and women were hewn down by sappers, who hacked off their arms and smashed in their chests. Some were poniarded, others mutilated, others ‘passed on the bayonet,’ others disemboweled with knives or sabers, still others stuck like pigs. At the beginning a great number were drowned. The same general massacre has taken place all over the colony, and as I write you these lines I believe there are not twenty whites still alive-and these not for long.

With this final slaughter, French San Domingo vanished from history and the black nation of Haiti arrived.

Africa in the New World

Haiti was the second nation in the Western Hemisphere — after the United States — to gain independence, and Haitians will officially mark their bicentennial in 2004. It is unlikely that even Afrocentric blacks will celebrate this milestone with much enthusiasm. After 200 years of black rule there is little of which to boast. A United Nations report says Haiti may soon be incapable of supporting human life.

Besides AIDS, crime, drugs, poverty and environmental destruction, Haiti has a form of slavery called restavec. A Haitian Creole term meaning “stays with,” a restavec is a poor child sold to a wealthy family as a servant. The government itself accepts a U.N. estimate of 300,000 such children in Haiti. Jean-Robert Cadet, a former restavec who escaped to America wrote a book in 1999 called Restavec: From Haitian Slave Child to Middle Class American. He says restavecs “are treated worse than slaves because … their supply seems inexhaustible.” Mr. Cadet says restavecs are often beaten and raped. Despite prodding from the U.N., the European Union, and the Catholic Church, Haitian officials have done nothing to stop this practice.

Many Haitian children are fed by aid from the U.S. and the U.N. Haiti gets by far the biggest slice of U.S. aid in the Western Hemisphere (20 percent). From 1994 to 1999, U.S. taxpayers poured over $2.3 billion dollars into Haiti but relief officials are giving up in dismay at the meager results. Even some in Congress have begun to notice we have little to show for our money. Representative Porter Goss of Florida says, “We’ve been ripped off in Haiti and I don’t see why we should put more money into it. There’s so much corruption that the only way to make sure aid gets to the people is to fly down there yourself with some food, hand it to a Haitian, and watch him eat it in your presence.”

Attempts to bolster the Haitian economy have failed. In 1997 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright flew to Haiti to launch a new privatization program funded by U.S. investors, and to celebrate the return of a state-run flour mill to the private sector. Miss Albright’s triumphal visit to the mill was scuttled when advance men found it occupied by angry former workers demanding more severance pay.

What could have been a tropical vacation paradise has been ruined, and is so wracked with crime no travel agency will recommend it as a destination. “You’re not looking at a tropical country,” says Ed Scott, a contractor for U.S. aid to Haiti; “you’re looking at a Nevada desert.” Tourists venture in at their own risk. In January 2000 a French couple was stoned to death along with their Haitian driver during a robbery. A few days later an American couple was carjacked at gunpoint and the woman shot dead.

Despite President Clinton’s claim that the 1994 invasion was to “restore democracy,” Haiti has almost always been ruled by strongmen. Of the 40 rulers of Haiti from it’s independence to the 1994 invasion, only four left office peacefully. Most of the rest were either murdered, ousted in coups, or fled into exile. In 1957 and in 1988 there were four different regimes in a single year. In 1999 then-president René Preval “postponed” elections five times and refused to call Parliament into session. He ruled by decrees enforced by the 6,000-man Haitian National Police. That year the UN accused the police of committing over 500 serious crimes, including 50 murders.

When elections do take place they are a joke. In 1997 only six percent of the voters even bothered to show up at the polls for parliamentary elections. The results were annulled because of fraud. In May 2000 there was finally another parliamentary election. Fifteen people were killed leading up to the vote, two were killed on the day of the vote, and three opposition leaders killed after the vote (one was stoned to death). The government arrested more than 20 opposition candidates after the elections. The balloting itself was rife with fraud. The ruling Lavalas Party of Mr. Preval and former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide controlled the polling stations and thousands of votes were “lost” in transit to the capital Port-au-Prince.

Opponents accuse Mr. Preval of being a puppet of Mr. Aristide, a Marxist former priest ousted in a coup d’état and put back into power after the US invasion in 1994. Mr. Aristide was barred from consecutive terms by the Haitian constitution but still “won” a November 2000 election with 92 percent of the vote, after an opposition boycott. Not even the United Nations could stomach this farce. It announced it was closing its civilian support mission to Haiti, which was supposed to promote democracy and human rights.

Haiti has made one genuinely unique gift to world culture: voodoo. Eighty percent of the population is Catholic, 20 percent are Protestants, and all 100 percent believe in voodoo. Up until the 1950s, Catholics tried to stamp out voodoo but have now adopted some of its rituals.

Mr. Aristide writes in his autobiography, “I do not consider voodoo to be an antagonist or an enemy of the Christian faith,” but rather a vital expression of “a society close to nature, black and Haitian.” He added that “in the veins of voodoo flows a blood that is Christian.” Protestant missionaries report that many of their “converts” are ardent voodoo believers just looking for extra protection.

Mr. Aristide, lapsed priest, is not the first man with a religious background to run Haiti. François “Papa Doc” Duvalier liked to appear in public dressed as the voodoo deity Baron Samedi. Likewise, at the time of the U.S. invasion, the military leaders scoffed at the American threat. Provisional President Emile Jonassaint said the country’s three zombie battalions would crawl out of their graves at the bidding of their voodoo masters and smite the Americans.

What about the Haitians who come here? There are approximately two million Haitians living abroad, mainly in the U.S. and Canada. Since more than eight percent of Haitians are estimated to have the HIV virus, this represents a considerable health risk, but Haitians bring other things with them. In 1998, a Haitian woman on Long Island was almost burned to death in a ceremony by her voodoo priest. He was apparently trying to remove evil spirits from her house when he doused her with a flammable liquid and set her on fire. When authorities charged him with attempted murder local Haitians rallied to his defense. “Like a lot of ethnic groups who’ve migrated here, we’ve brought our culture with us,” explained a community leader.

They have taken the same culture to Canada, where a judge decided it puts a different perspective on certain crimes. When two Haitians took turns raping and smothering a young Haitian woman, Judge Monique Dubreuil gave them only 18 months house arrest and 100 hours of community service. “The absence of regret of the two accused seems to be related more to the cultural context, particularly with regard to relations with women,” she explained. She may be right. In 1997 Miami police were tipped off about a possible wife beating. When they arrived at the address they found a woman tied to a bed and a man swinging a piece of wood. The Haitian couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. “I wasn’t beating someone else’s wife,” he explained. “This is my wife.”

Even a few restavecs have turned up in America. In 1999, Florida police acting on a tip from neighbors removed a filthy, unkempt 12-year-old girl from a Haitian home in upscale Pembroke Pines. She was both a drudge worker and a sex toy for the young man of the house, who had been raping her since she was nine. A trickle of other slaves have escaped, and authorities have no idea how many more restavecs are still hidden among the growing number of Haitian immigrants.

More Haitians live in Miami than anywhere else in America. Their presence does not seem to please Miami’s Cubans or even its blacks. Last year a black activist tried to prevent government funds earmarked for “African-Americans” from being shared by Haitians. This angered Haitians, who reminded Miami’s blacks that Haitians will soon outnumber them. This may not be pleasant. A letter to a Miami newspaper from a newcomer suggests relations are not good: “My experience as a Haitian-American with African-American schoolmates was one filled with racial epithets such as H.B.O. (Haitian body odor), Haitians eat cats, Haitians are boat people, and Haitians have AIDS. These African-American kids were taught at home to despise Haitians.”

Nor is it likely to be pleasant for the rest of America. The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere-a perfect little chunk of Africa-lurks just 600 miles off the coast of Florida. A U.S. Embassy survey in November 1999 found that 70 percent of Haitians have given “serious thought” to leaving. As things get worse they won’t just think about it. Former U.S. ambassador to Haiti Ernest Preeg says bluntly: “If we didn’t have a credible Coast Guard interdiction policy-which presently sends these people back-you would be talking about hundreds of thousands landing on our beaches.”

Some people want to let them come. Black and liberal groups complained bitterly last year about a New Year’s Eve operation that sent back 400 Haitian boat people. U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek (D-Fl) led a group of black protesters waving placards saying “Equal Justice for Haitians,” and demanding the 400 be allowed to “stay.” They want to give Haitians the same rights as Cubans fleeing communism, so that if they set foot in the U.S. they will be let in.

If these groups get their wish we will be importing the descendants of the people who slaughtered thousands of whites and made Haiti unlivable. In sufficient numbers they will have the same effect on America.

Of course, we need not look as far as Haiti to understand the link between race and civilization, and what it means for America. Haiti is nothing more than Camden or East St. Louis writ large, and without the surrounding white society to support it. Africans remake Africa wherever they may go.

Haiti’s Rulers Since Independence

Name	Ruled	Fled
Jean-Jacques Dessalines	1804-06	shot
Henri Christophe(“King” of North Haiti)	1807-20	suicide
Alexandre P”tion	1807-18	died of disease
Jean-Pierre Boyer	1818-43	fled to France
Charles Herard	1843-44	fled
Philippe Gu”rier	1844-45	died of old age
Jean-Louis Pierrot	1845-46	unknown
Jean-Baptiste Riche	1846-47	unknown
Faustin Soulouque	1847-59	fled to Jamaica
Fabre Geffard	1859-67	fled to Jamaica
Sylvain Saenave	1867-69	executed
Nissage Saget	1870-74	retired
Michel Domingue	1874-76	fled to Jamaica
Boisrond Canal	1876-79	fled to Jamaica
E. F”licit” Salomon	1879-88	fled to France
F. Florvil Hyppolite	1889-96	died of apoplexy
Tir”sias Simon Sam	1896-1902 fled	fled
Nord Alexis	1902-08	fled to Jamaica
Antoine Simon	1908-11	fled to Jamaica
M. Cincinnatus Leconte	1911-12	blown up
Tancr”de Auguste	1912-13	poisoned
Michel Oreste	1913-14	fled to Jamaica
Oreste Zamor	1914	murdered in jail
J. Davilmar Th”odore	1914-15	fled
J. Vilbrun Guillaume Sam	1915	dismembered
American Occupation	1915-1934
St”nio Vincent	1930-41	resigned
Elie Lescot	1941-46	fled to Florida
Dumarsais Estime	1946-50	overthrown
Paul Magloire	1950-56	overthrown
J. Nemours Pierre-Louis	1956-57	resigned
Franck Sylvain	1957	overthrown
Daniel Fignole	1957	overthrown
Fran”ois Duvalier	1957-71	died of disease
Jean-Claude Duvalier	1971-86	fled to France
Henri Namphy	1986-88	stepped down
Leslie Manigat	1988	overthrown
Henri Namphy	1988	overthrown
Prosper Avril	1988-90	fled
Ertha Pascal-Trouillot	1990	taken hostage
Jean-Bertrand Aristide	1991	fled to America
C”dras junta	1991-94	deposed
American Occupation	1994

BOOK REVIEW

Bad Medicine

Fighting “injustice” rather than disease

PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness is Corrupting Medicine, by Sally Satel, Basic Books, 2000, 285 pp., $27.00

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

“For several decades the universities, the law profession and the workplace have been under assault by people claiming oppression of one sort or another,” writes Sally Satel in the introduction to PC, M.D. “It’s almost surprising that medicine has been immune for so long.” Dr. Satel, a psychiatrist and American Enterprise Institute fellow, warns that the immunity is over. Nuttiness about race and sex has begun to turn everything from public health to psychiatry into a leftist rant against the white man. “Indoctrinologists,” as Dr. Satel calls them, have not yet hijacked the entire health profession but their mission is to put ideology before all else-before science, commonsense, and even patients.

‘Schools of Justice’

Public health has improved our lives tremendously. Sanitation measures and the discovery of how germs cause disease have saved millions of lives. Today, though, schools of public health take a different approach to disease. Having noticed that the rich are healthier than the poor, and that whites are healthier than blacks, they have decided racism and poverty are what really cause disease, and that people therefore have little responsibility for their own health. The next step in public health is to stamp out inequality, and Dr. Satel has compiled an eye-opening set of quotations that show how far the rot has gone.

Harvey Fineberg, former dean of Harvard School of Public Health, says that “a school of public health is like a school of justice.” Lawrence Wallack of Portland State University and Lori Dorfman of the School of Public Health at UC, Berkeley say, “The practice of public health is, to a large degree, the process of redesigning society.” William Foege of Emory University School of Public Health says, “Every problem is a public health problem.” David G. Whites of Indiana-Purdue University says any public health policy that ignores “social justice is unworthy of the name.” He wants official designation of “poverty as a medical pathogen.” One common theory is that since capitalism produces differences in income it may have to be eradicated in order to improve health.

The resolutions of the American Public Health Association reflect this kind of thinking. APHA has officially condemned aid to the Nicaraguan contras, called for a “nuclear-weapon-free world,” and demanded campaign finance reform. These are “public health” concerns because APHA members have a mission to “redesign society,” a mission that once again betrays the left’s unlimited lust for power.

The theory that injustice makes people sick is called “the social production of disease,” and Dr. Satel reports that it often goes so far as to posit that “the good health of the well-off somehow depends on the poor being sick.” It’s not hard to imagine the policies that follow. Sally Zierler of Brown University’s Department of Community Health offers the following plan to combat AIDS: Limit the power of corporations, cap the salaries of CEOs, eliminate corporate subsidies, stop corporate contributions to political candidates, and strengthen labor unions. This will work because she says AIDS is “a biological expression of social inequality.” Take away the inequality and AIDS will disappear.

Dr. Satel points out that public health activists are selective about the social conditions that will have to change. Church-going and marriage are associated with good health, but the activists are too busy smashing racism and capitalism to encourage anything like that.

Since it is society that makes people sick it is wrong to expect them to look after themselves. Writing with Nancy Krieger of the Harvard School of Public Health, Brown’s Dr. Zierler explains why black women take drugs and get AIDS: “In response to daily assaults of racial prejudice and denial of dignity, women may turn to readily available mind altering substances for relief… Seeking sanctuary from racial hatred through sexual connection as a way to enhance self-esteem … may offer rewards so compelling that condom use becomes less of a priority.” Rodney Clark of the Psychology department at Wayne State University would agree. He says emphasizing personal responsibility for avoiding disease is “a subtler form of racism.”

In Dr. Satel’s view, “the notion that social forces are major determinants of health-that they are so overwhelming in fact that personal responsibility and self-care are reduced to quaint notions and middle-class values-is one of the most pernicious themes in PC medicine.”

Dr. Satel doesn’t think giving poor people money will make them much healthier, since they often don’t make good use of doctors even when they are free. Slum-dwellers often show no interest in free drug treatment, HIV screening, or vaccinations. She also cites a UCLA study in which nearly all whites went back for more visits when a free cancer screening showed an abnormality but only 75 percent of blacks and Hispanics did.

A crucial point Dr. Satel cannot bring herself to make is that good health correlates with intelligence. Entirely aside from whether they have medical insurance, smart people take better care of themselves. They read warning labels, they think about diet, they are more likely to exercise, and less likely to get fat or take drugs. IQ differences alone explain most of the class and race differences that upset public health activists.

About the closest Dr. Satel gets to this obvious but forbidden point is to say: “Social inequalities … do not literally produce the sedentary lifestyle, obesity and risky behavior that typically underlie many of the differences in health status between the less wealthy and the better-off.” True, being poor doesn’t make you smoke and watch day-time television, but it would have been nice to hear some thoughts on what does.

Not surprisingly, the mental health field is even more riddled with “social justice” than public health. Plenty of people who might not swallow the idea that “sexism” can give you breast cancer seem to think it can drive you crazy. Dr. Satel explains “feminist therapy:”

[S]ociety is dysfunctional, not the patient. And because a woman’s mental state is believed to reflect the position of women in society, any symptoms of depression or anxiety are seen largely as the product of a society that is hostile to women. Thus, a feminist therapist is often reluctant to suggest to a woman that she might bear some responsibility for her problems.

“Multicultural therapy” shifts the ground from sex to race:

Multicultural counselors presume that nonwhite patients’ personal difficulties largely stem from their efforts to adjust to a racist society. By urging patients to find only external sources for their discontent, multicultural counseling makes a mockery of self-exploration-the true purpose of therapy-and self-determination.

Dr. Satel reports that the majority of therapy training programs now have a multi-culti element that reinforces the mush students have been learning since high school:

[T]he trainees walk into grad school on the first day of classes already believing that the dominant culture is the root of psychpathology. By the time they graduate as therapists, these multiculturalists will be so thoroughly schooled in the oppressive ways of society that they’ll be able to read bias into virtually anything patients tell them.

Manual Ramirez, author of Multicultural Therapy, calls the problems non-whites have in a white society “mismatch shock.” Dr. Satel writes, “I suspect that no matter what a patient tells Ramirez, he will manage to diagnose ‘mismatch shock.’”

For whites, multicultural training is supposed to open their eyes to their role in oppressing non-whites, and to help them “unlearn racism.” In extreme cases, it produces treatment programs in which white men have no official place at all. Dr. Satel writes that at San Francisco General Hospital all patients are assigned to treatment teams, and every team specializes in one of six areas: blacks, Asians, Hispanics, homo- and bisexuals, AIDS carriers, or women. The only people without specialists are white men, who presumably end up with whatever team has an opening.

Many ethnic treatment programs are merely goofy. Dr. Satel writes about one drug treatment program in which “somehow the [black] patients were supposed to absorb self-esteem by participating in Afrocentric exercises, not from achieving anything in particular.” But in the long run, steeping non-white nutters in tales of white racism does harm, not good: “[O]ppression-based therapies are enormously seductive because they tend to absolve the sufferer of responsibility This is precisely why therapists should not practice them” since the point of therapy is to take “a person from thinking of himself as a victim to one who is an agent of his own destiny.” What good does it do a patient, Dr. Satel asks, to tell him he has no hope of recovery until “racism” and “sexism” are eradicated?

Therapy for victims also has the effect of swelling their ranks, because of the glamorous light it shines on them. Many unbalanced people have noticed the fashionable flutter around anyone who claims he was molested as a child, and Dr. Satel thinks this explains why so many people dredge up “repressed memories” of being raped or buggered by Daddy.

Disparate Treatment

What about the endless complaints that a white male medical establishment mistreats or fails to treat anyone not white and male? Dr. Satel dissects the studies that make this claim, showing that with comparisons of patients with genuinely similar conditions and circumstances the “race” or “sex” effect dwindles to the vanishing point. Many researchers are so eager to unmask discrimination they publish shoddy work that fails to hold other variables constant. Dr. Satel also points out that doctors get paid when they treat people; they’re not likely to turn down a fee just because the patient looks different.

Some claims about discrimination are simply false. Luminaries from Hillary Clinton on down complain that medical research “excludes” women, but Dr. Satel reports that in 1997, for example, of the 6 million subjects in NIH-funded research 62 percent were women. Government studies in 1983 and 1988 found that clinical trials used men and women in much the same proportions as the sexes get the diseases being studied. There are not very many single-sex studies but there are now more that are all-female than all-male. Few medicines have a significantly different effect in men and women anyway.

There has likewise been much whooping about a male establishment that doesn’t bother to study women’s diseases. In fact, breast cancer gets more research funding than any other kind of cancer — and has since 1985. It gets three to five times as much as prostate cancer even though more men are diagnosed with it than women with breast cancer, and the death rates are nearly identical. The one justification is that breast cancer usually kills at a younger age than prostate cancer. In any case there is certainly no sexist plot to leave breast cancer incurable.

Feminist bombast about breast cancer distracts women from worse killers. In 1997, 70,000 American women died of lung cancer while (only) 42,000 died of breast cancer. Heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined, but there is far more outrage about alleged flaws in the medical system than about women who are fat and won’t exercise.

As it always does, the evil, all-powerful patriarchy has collapsed at the merest touch. Dr. Satel says there are now at least 3,600 medical programs that call themselves women’s health centers. It would be hard to find anything specially for men.

PC, M.D. also attacks claims that the medical establishment mistreats non-whites. Although the book is a little light in this area, it does touch on outright racial differences in disease and mortality rates that suggest different outcomes have biological causes. For example, Dr. Satel cites the usual charge that black infants die more frequently than white infants because black mothers don’t get the pre-natal care they deserve. Some black mothers just don’t bother with pre-natal care even if it’s free, but Dr. Satel notes that Hispanics, who get even less pre-natal care than blacks, have lower infant mortality than whites. She hints there may be biological reasons for this, but also talks about “Mexican heritage.” All the evidence suggests Asians are just healthier and live longer than whites, who are healthier and live longer than blacks. Just as intelligence differences cause racial gaps in academic achievement, biological differences cause health differences. Perhaps it is asking too much of the good doctor to make this point, but until she does, her opponents can always argue that “racism” makes blacks sicker than whites.

PC, M.D. covers a number of other areas less central to the concerns of AR. There is a chapter about a loony movement among psychiatric patients who claim they have the right to be insane, and that not even the wildest psychotics should be forced into treatment. Activists like to quote Andrew Weil, an alternative medicine guru, who said, “Every psychotic is a potential sage or healer.” They also like Herbert Marcuse, who said mental patients are revolutionaries and that psychiatry is “one of the most effective engines of suppression.”

Dr. Satel also writes about the New Age mumbo-jumbo that women, mostly, have smuggled into medicine. There are, she reports, 50,000 practitioners of “Therapeutic Touch” (TT) on the loose in hospitals all over the country. She tells us:

A typical TT session lasts between ten and thirty minutes; it is performed by a practitioner who first must be ‘centered’ — a state of mind achievable through meditation. She scans the patient with hovering hands, searching for imbalances in the energy field . . . Then she sweeps her hands over the patient in order to distribute excess energy to areas of deficit. Fanatics launch into TT unasked; one man thought he was getting Last Rites when he saw hovering hands.

Likewise we learn that nursing schools now offer courses like: “Using Energy to Enhance Nursing Practice: Use of Color, Music, Touch and Movement,” “Aromatherapy for Nursing Practice,” and “Using the Power of Our Thoughts for Healing.” Along with this sort of female nonsense comes resentment of men in general, and nurses with chips on their shoulders. Dr. Satel tells us the British have the same problem: freshly graduated nurses who don’t know how to insert a catheter but are experts on “racism” and “gender oppression.”

Dr. Satel also takes a shot at affirmative action for doctors, noting the obvious perils of lowering medical school standards for non-whites. She points out that inner-city blacks often have complicated combinations of diseases that make them tricky patients. Incompetent, affirmative-action doctors are the last thing they need-nor do the rest of us want to fall into their hands.

Where this will all end is anyone’s guess. Dr. Satel assures us there are still many level-headed health workers who understand their job is to fix people, not society, but the forces set in motion in their profession are no different from those wrecking every other American institution. Until the country at large comes out of its decades-long sickness there is no reason to think the physicians will heal themselves.

SPECIAL REPORT

The Galton Report

A sampling of recent scientific literature.

by Glayde Whitney

Revisionism Strikes African Eve

The Out-of-Africa theory (also called the Garden of Eden-GOE-hypothesis), according to which modern man is said to have originated at one location in Africa and then spread quickly and recently to the rest of the world, is in trouble. Two well-publicized studies reported in January 2001, claim to refute the GOE theory. One was an investigation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) taken from an Australian known as “Mungo Man” who lived approximately 60,000 years ago. His DNA was quite unlike that of Africans, leading the author to claim that Africans cannot be ancestral to all of us and that, indeed, modern man may have evolved in Australia.

The second study, conducted by University of Michigan anthropologist Milford Wolpoff and colleagues, compared fossil bones of various ancient groups: early modern man from central Europe, pre-modern Europe man (including some Neanderthals), as well as early remains from Africa, Asia, and Australia. Prof. Wolpoff found that although the early modern European and Australian bones show some resemblance to African fossils they more closely resemble older remains from their own regions. These findings run contrary to the GOE theory and suggest that although there may have been some African hybridization, modern humans evolved from earlier forms that had long ago migrated out of Africa to different parts of the world.

Prof. Wolpoff is the main proponent of the “Multiregional Evolution Model,” which holds that a much earlier primate, perhaps Homo erectus, left Africa at least two million years ago to colonize much of the old world. That pre-human species gradually evolved into modern humans in several widely scattered locations. Prof. Wolpoff argues there are regional differences (in effect, racial differences) that distinguish the earliest European, East Asian, and Australian remains from all others and that these differences persist in the various populations of modern man. GOE theory therefore cannot be true: If modern man had evolved only in Africa and then exterminated all the pre-moderns he encountered everywhere else, there would be no continuity between the regionally distinct pre-modern fossils and the modern men we find in those same regions today.

Even more important than the recent studies in casting doubt on GOE is a new review of all the literature by anthropologists Henry Harpending and Alan Rogers. They write, “Five years ago, we would have said that genetic evidence provided unambiguous support for the GOE model of human origins. Today, the case is far less clear.” What has changed over the last five years is the tremendous increase in knowledge about DNA variation. The variation observed for some genes is consistent with the GOE theory but the pattern of variation for many other genes is not. For example, some assumed-to-be-neutral mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variants are consistent with GOE, but many chromosomal DNA mutations are not. Furthermore, unlike “neutral mutants” of the kind that are thought to occur gradually and spontaneously in mtDNA, genes likely to be of survival value and thus subject to natural selection often do not support GOE.

They write that the “Origin of large-scale human differences is not understood.” (“Large-scale human differences” is the PeeCee academically-acceptable euphemism for racial differences.) The problem is that many data suggest that about 15 percent of the genetic variation among humans is differences between populations. This is the value that the Marxist biologist Richard Lewontin used in the 1970s to argue that differences between the races are too small to bother with. However, about the same time, the eminent geneticist Sewell Wright stated that group differences of about 10 percent were consistent with subspecies [that is, racial] differences in animal species.

Ten to 15 percent of the genetic variation may not sound like much, but remember that there are on the order of 3 billion “base pairs” in the human DNA, and many thousands of base-pair variants. At the same time, very small changes in DNA can have profound effects on physical and mental character. For example, just one regulatory gene, through its effect on many other genes, is responsible for the manifold differences between men and women. The difference between “normal” and defective genes is often a difference in only one base pair. Thus the 10 percent of human genetic variation that represents racial differences can be tremendously important.

If GOE is anywhere near true, the recent expansion of modern man out of Africa, only about 100,000 years ago, does not leave enough time for the evolution of racial differences as large as 10 or 15 percent. Harpending and Rogers mention that “One way out of the problem is to posit that race differences are older than the expansion of our species.” This is reminiscent of “regional continuity,” a theory suggested by the late (and great) Carleton Coon. (Coon is not mentioned in the literature review-he is much too politically incorrect these days for respectable anthropologists to dare say anything favorable about him or his theories.)

One of Coon’s major contributions was his 1962, The Origin of Races. From the fossil data Coon suggested that the widespread Homo erectus had developed both genetically and culturally in different populations, to reach modern “sapiens” level five different times in different places. Although there was enough gene exchange to keep the races from becoming completely different species, different races crossed the gene and culture threshold to modern man at quite different times. He theorized that European Caucasoids may have become “sapient” 200,000 or more years before black Africans-which helps explain why he is in the doghouse today.

Mrs. Wolpoff (Rachel Caspari) and her husband Milford have written a book-length introduction to the data and theory of multiregional evolution, entitled Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction. It is a strange book, in which the Wolpoffs try to defend separate, regional evolution while genuflecting to political correctness. They do this by demonizing Carleton Coon, and emphasizing their own egalitarianism.

Their argument is that there was enough genetic isolation for groups in different regions to evolve with regional (racial) differences. However, at the same time there was enough interbreeding and gene flow throughout the entire evolving human species to ensure that each race reached sapiens level at exactly the same time! Thus all races are equally intelligent and equal in capacity for advanced civilization.

A reviewer put it this way: “Much of the authors’ effort is directed at separating their scientifically sound position from the racist legacy of earlier theories of polygenism [multiregionalism], which argued that races were genetically isolated. They also mount compelling arguments that the ‘single source of humanity’ camp has succeeded thanks to good marketing rather than hard or conclusive data.”

Mrs. Wolpoff echoes Coon in citing the physical differences between different regional populations that are found not only in modern man but in pre-modern fossils found in those same regions. For example, there are characteristic tooth shapes of East Asian populations today that are found in Homo erectus fossils from China. Other traits with regional continuity include the relative thickness of the lower jaw (torus mandibularis), presence or absence of a bone on the back of the skull (Inca bone), the thickness of bone along the top of the head (sagittal keel), and many others.

My own view is that it is well past time for Carleton Coon to be rehabilitated. Many new data support the view that races developed differently; that is, through selection for different specializations, and at vastly different rates. For example, over 40,000 years ago a more advanced style of making stone and bone tools spread throughout Europe. This “mode 4” technology has been considered by many to be the hallmark of modern humans. Australian Aborigines never achieved mode 4.

Out-of-Africa, even if it is wrong, will not go quietly. It is too politically correct for the lefty-liberals to give up without a tantrum. Although many good scientists accept the GOE theory (including Philippe Rushton, author of Race, Evolution, and Behavior) it is the great love of the “race does not exist” lobby, and is the basis for the view that racial differences are too recent to be important. Indeed, Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine wrote that he, like the rest of us, was “African.” Liberals will fight to the death to save any theory that gives them some claim to being “African.” [Constance Holden, “Oldest human DNA reveals Aussie oddity,” and Elizabeth Pennisi, “Skull Study Targets Africa-only origins,” both in Science, 12 Jan. 2001, Vol. 291, pp. 230-231. Milford Wolpoff & Rachel Caspari, Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction, 1997: Simon & Schuster. Henry Harpending & Alan Rogers, “Genetic Perspectives on Human Origins and Differentiation.” In Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, Vol. 1, pp. 361-385.]

Contributing Editor Glayde Whitney is professor in psychology, psychobiology and neuroscience at Florida State University.

Bloody Fat Tuesday

Mardi Gras celebrations have been spreading from New Orleans to many other cities. They tend to be rowdy gatherings of young people, which often turn nasty. This year there was rioting, looting, and violence among the celebrants, some of which was captured on video and aired on television. A reader who monitors the news, reports that in every instance, the cameras caught blacks attacking whites without provocation. He says he saw violent incidents from Philadelphia, Seattle, and New Orleans. In at least one case, blacks savagely beat a blonde woman while crowds of both blacks and whites looked on and did nothing. It is surprising that the news carried this footage; not surprising that not a single news commentator mentioned the obvious racial motive for the violence.

In Seattle, mob violence in the Pioneer Square area left 70 people injured, one in the hospital, and one dead. Some whites certainly misbehaved, getting drunk, shouting, and even overturning a few cars. As for violence, however, witnesses reported seeing gangs of blacks moving through the crowd attacking isolated white men and women. The low-quality photos on these pages, all taken in Seattle, give an idea of what the celebrations were probably like all around the country.

The murdered man was Kristopher Kime, a young white in his 20s. Late in the evening of February 27, as fighting broke out, he bent down to help a white woman who had been knocked to the ground. A black man hit him on the back of the head with bottle. Mr. Kime went down, and the man and several companions stomped him to death. His horrified friends tried to get help, but rescue workers reported blacks punched them and threw bottles at them when they tried to enter the crowd. Mr. Kime eventually reached the hospital and died before his father’s eyes. [Ian Ith and Nancy Bartley, Man Killed at Mardi Gras Was Trying to Help Woman, Seattle Times, March 2, 2001.]

The police are taking the usual line with people who ask if the attacks were racial. “It would be pure speculation,” says police spokesman Clem Benton to talk about motive. Seattle’s black leaders met a few days later with the mayor and police chief to complain blacks were being blamed for the mayhem. The problem was crime, they insisted, not race. [AP, Riots trouble black leaders, March 4, 2001.]

The electronic bulletin boards of the Seattle papers, however, have been swamped with messages from angry whites. Even people who sound like liberals couldn’t help noticing what was happening. This young man may even have learned something from his evening out in Pioneer Square:

“I hate to say this but it was race motivated. Walking towards the square last night I passed about 15 young black men going the opposite way who shouted, ‘You don’t want to be going down there; we’re going to kick some white kids’ ass tonight.’ At the time I thought they were just joking and found it sort of funny, but this was the same group that I saw later just walking up to random people and beating the heck out of them for no reason. Jumping and kicking them while they were down. What a bunch of cowards. Yes, white people acted stupid, too, but this gang was way beyond that. I mean I thought people were going to die they were beating them so bad.”

Price Cochran, who works at the front desk of an apartment building in Pioneer Square said he knew in advance black thugs were planning violence. “They wanted to disrupt the ‘rich white man’s party’,” he explained. “That’s how [black gang members] see Mardi Gras.” Calvin Hildreth, a black who lives in the square agrees that Mardi Gras is “a white man’s party.” Valerie Bugayas is a young woman who lives in the area and who rushed home to safety when the crowd turned nasty. “Black people were doing it,” she says. “It’s like they didn’t want people on the block.” [Robert Jamieson, On Riots, Race, and a Look at Reality, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 8, 2001.]

There is little doubt the police should have stepped in earlier. At 10:30 p.m. several officers patrolling the crowd in regular uniform were ordered to withdraw to the periphery for their own safety. It was not until three hours later that officers in riot gear moved in to break up the crowds. In the meantime, police hovered helplessly at the periphery under orders to stay back, with beatings and robberies going on just yards away. Not a few people have speculated that the restraint was ordered so as not to appear to be singling out blacks for arrest.

One officer is so disgusted with police inactivity he sent a $200 check to Mr. Kime’s parents, writing that it was “the approximate amount of overtime I was paid by the taxpayers of the city to stand by while they were beaten and your son killed.” In an extraordinary blast that will probably have repercussions for his career, the 31-year veteran went on to say the police were inactive because “our politicians and our department’s command staff lack the necessities required to lead.” [Lewis Kamb, Seattle Officer Sends Letter of Apology to Kime’s Mother, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 8, 2001.]

Many whites are furious, and want the city to face up to what happened. As live television and the Internet bring reality into more American homes it will be harder than ever to conceal the truth: Many blacks hate whites, and will beat and even kill them if they think they can get away with it.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Zimbabwe on the Brink

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe is destroying the one remaining institution in the country that stands between him and absolute dictatorship: the courts. Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay, who is white, has been a thorn in his side for years with his quaint Caucasian views about the rule of law. He has led the Supreme Court’s opposition to the illegal takeover of white farms and against unconstitutional manipulations to keep Mr. Mugabe in power. The regime considers this the worst sort of racism, and one ruling party official says Mr. Gubbay was “infiltrated into Zimbabwe by British intelligence to overthrow the government.” If that’s the case, the government the British were trying to overthrow was Ian Smith’s white regime, since Mr. Gubbay arrived from Britain in 1958.

In February, Mr. Mugabe said he would appoint a new chief justice and that Mr. Gubbay had to resign on March 1. Justice Gubbay refused, opening the door to the interesting possibility there would be two chief justices. Mugabe supporters were furious, and one simply pushed his way into the justice’s chambers and told him to clear out. “The police let me in because I am big,” explained Joseph Chinotimba, who reportedly spent an hour haranguing Justice Gubbay in what cannot have been a pleasant interview. When reporters asked Mr. Chinotimba what he would do if the 69-year-old chief justice does not step aside, he said he and his friends would “declare war.”

Justice Gubbay had a chat with Mr. Mugabe’s justice minister and decided to go on pre-retirement leave immediately and step down 10 months early at the end of June. In Mr. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe this is considered a notable achievement since Mr. Gubbay wasn’t simply beaten up and ridden out of office on a rail. Mr. Mugabe intends to replace the remaining justices and lower-level judges, particularly the white ones.

A compliant judiciary will come in handy. Mr. Mugabe plans to put the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai on trial in April for inciting violence at a campaign rally last summer. Mr. Mugabe is undaunted by the fact that his men were vastly more violent than Mr. Tsvangirai’s. Mr. Mugabe has also kicked two foreign journalists out of the country because they wrote displeasing dispatches. [Stella Mapenzauswa, Zimbabwe Settles Row With Defiant Judge, Reuters, March 2, 2001. Jon Jeter, The ‘Endgame’ in Zimbabwe? Washington Post, March 3, 2001, p. A1.]

The occupation of white farms continues with occasionally killings of whites. On March 4 gunmen pumped 15 rounds into Gloria Olds. It is a near certainty that they killed her because she was the mother of Martin Olds, who was one of the seven white farmers blacks killed in the run up to last summer’s election. Although many white farmers have abandoned their land, the 68-year-old Gloria Olds would not run away. [Chris Chinaka, White Woman Farmer Slain in Zimbabwe, Reuters, March 4, 2001.] Her son Martin, an experienced soldier and marksman, held out for two hours against a mass attack on his farm, wounding several assailants. Blacks managed to kill him only by setting his house on fire. When he came out they beat him to mush and then shot him.

In the meantime, European heads of state are treating Mr. Mugabe like royalty. Just about the time Mrs. Olds was being filled with bullets, Mr. Mugabe was a guest in the home of Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian Prime Minister. Then on March 6, he had an hour-long meeting with French President Jacques Chirac, which he described as “very good, very friendly.”

The French and Belgians have been the most strident opponents of including Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party in the Austrian coalition, and for months snubbed Austrian officials on the grounds that Mr. Haider’s party was a threat to democracy. The Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel has even said the European Union should sanction Italy if the next general election-likely to be held in May-produces a coalition government that includes the anti-immigrant National Alliance and Northern League. This, too, would be an unacceptable threat to democracy. [Harry de Quetteville and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Dismay in Britain at Red Carpet for Mugabe, Telegraph (London), March 6, 2001. Matthew Green, Chirac Meets Zimbabwe’s Mugabe Amid Criticism, Reuters, March 6, 2001. Steve Pagani, Berlusconi Outraged by Belgian Comment, Reuters, Feb. 28, 2001.]

The British are reported to be annoyed with the continentals for fêting a man they consider a miscreant. One British citizen traveled to Belgium to try to make a “citizen’s arrest” of Robert Mugabe and was beaten up by body guards for his troubles. He vowed he would follow the president around Europe and attempt another arrest if he got the chance. Is this a stout-hearted Englishman protesting the ethnic cleansing of whites? No. Peter Tatchell is a stout-hearted pederast, incensed at Mr. Mugabe’s view of homosexuals, whom he calls “worse than dogs and pigs.” [UK Gay Activist Promises to Target Mugabe Again, Reuters, March 6, 2001.]

Pure Stupidity

The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University is dismayed to report that black children are 2.9 times more likely than whites to be classified as mentally retarded and to be put in special education classes. They are even more dismayed to find that black boys who attend suburban schools with large numbers of white students are more likely than ghetto-dwellers to be put in special-education classes. The suburban schools, they say, are practicing “systemic bias,” and all over the country black children are “labeled mentally retarded inappropriately.” [Jay Mathews, Study Finds Racial Bias in Special Ed, Washington Post, March 3, 2001, p. 1.]

What the study has found, of course, is not “bias.” It has found just one more consequence of racial differences in IQ. Most students in special education classes are “educable mentally retarded,” meaning they have IQs of 50 to 70. An estimated 2.2 percent of whites are in that range and 14.9 percent of blacks, which is a ratio of 6.6 rather than the 2.9 the study finds too high. Schools are already bending the standards to keep blacks out of those classes.

Why are blacks more likely to be in special education in the suburbs than in black schools? Some have speculated that it is because white schools have more money and can afford better special-education programs, but in fact many ghetto schools now spend more, per student, than suburban schools. It is more likely that because black schools are operating at such a low level to begin with, many of the “educable mentally retarded” are not so far behind their fellows as to require special attention. At schools with higher standards, the same blacks would be incapable of doing normal work and would be put in separate classes.

Who are the Bigots?

David Horowitz has been stirring up the campuses with a series of ads offered to college newspapers, entitled “Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea — and Racist Too.” The arguments, which are posted on his web page for all to see, are sound and reasonably expressed. That, of course, is the problem. Seven of 18 colleges that received the ad refused to publish it and three that did have already apologized to readers. The March 1 issue of the student newspaper at U.C. Berkeley beat its breast, confessing on the front page that “the ad allowed the Daily Cal to become an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry.” The next day, the California Aggie of U.C. Davis apologized for a “grievous mistake,” which it called “an embarrassment not only for the newspaper, but the university community at large.”

The Wall Street Journal and even the Washington Post have criticized student closed-mindedness. Today, any argument that offends lefty academics, no matter how reasonable, is “bigotry,” and “a grievous mistake.” Mr. Horowitz reports, however, that the traffic on electronic bulletin boards at colleges is overwhelmingly in his favor. He now insists that colleges explain to him in writing why they will not take has ads, and publish a note to readers explaining they have censored him. [frontpagemag.com]

‘Related Intolerance’?

The United Nations is gearing up for another great hate fest directed at the West: the third World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, to be held in Durban, South Africa, Aug. 31 to Sept. 7. The two previous meetings were held in 1978 and 1983, the first to fight colonization (a little late-most colonies got independence in the early 1960s), and the second to bring down apartheid. Third-Worlders are particularly excited that the agenda will include concrete demands for reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade and compensation for colonization.

Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and now the UN commissioner for human rights, generally supports these demands, especially compensation for slavery. “That trauma is still there,” she says, “and it’s deep, and it hasn’t been properly acknowledged.” The conference will also have a grand time criticizing American and European immigration restrictions.

There is some indication, though, that non-whites may not escape scot-free. Although the Indians have managed to spike it so far, there is a move to put the caste system on the agenda, and at a preparatory meeting in Santiago, Chile, black American groups succeeded in raising the subject of anti-black “racism” in Latin America. Amid the lip-smacking at the prospect of reparations for slavery, there have been a few mumbled acknowledgments that not only did Africans supply black slaves for the New World but slavery continues in Africa to this day. [Barbara Crosette, Global Look at Racism Hits Many Sore Points, New York Times, March 4, 2001.]

It remains to be seen whether the Chinese treatment of racial minorities in the eastern provinces and Tibet, or the constant tribal warfare in Africa will come up for discussion. If the conference were conducted honestly, it would report that group conflict is universal, and that ethnic harmony can be achieved only in the absence of ethnic differences.

Bitter Refuge

Herbert H. Lehman High School in the Bronx has about 4,000 students, almost all of them black or Hispanic, except for 200 Albanian students, many of whom are refugees from the fighting in the Balkans. They have arrived to find another fight on their hands. Last December racial tensions erupted into a full-scale brawl with dozens of students fighting it out, Albanians against blacks and Hispanics. Police had to stop the riot and arrested 13 pugilists. The year before, another brawl started when a member of the black Bloods gang spotted an Albanian wearing a red-and-black Albanian flag; the Bloods claim these colors for themselves.

Weeks after the latest riot, Albanian students said they were afraid to walk the halls alone. “They all hate us,” says 17-year-old Diana Gjoljaj of the blacks and Hispanics. “That’s why we hang together.” “They’re a bunch of racists, all of them,” says John, a 19-year-old Albanian who is afraid to give his last name. “The kids think because we’re white we’re not going to fight back. The principal’s with them because they’re on the football and basketball team.” Ylli Mujaj, a 15-year-old freshman, explains that Albanians refuse to be pushed around. “We stick together,” he says. “We give as good as we get.”

Evan Small, a black 18-year-old junior, says that when the fists begin to fly it is race that matters. He says he did not hesitate to join the riot as soon as it started: “If you see guys fighting you are going to jump in and protect your people.” [Dexter Filkins, In the Bronx, Ethnic Mix Breeds Tensions at School, New York Times, Feb. 12, 2001.]

‘Because of Their Skin’

Andress High School in El Paso, Texas, is 55 percent Hispanic, 27 percent white, and 16 percent black. The blacks and the Hispanics do not get along. On March 1, a fight in the morning resumed in the afternoon as a full-scale brawl involving 400 students. Police responded to a call around 12:20 p.m., but the situation only got worse. By 1:00 p.m., 100 officers had arrived and closed a road to the school as part of their attempt to restore order. A police helicopter circled overhead as police arrested 11 students for rioting. Terrel Tate, a 16-year-old white student, explained that “they [blacks and Hispanics] hate each other because of their skin.” [400 Texas Students Involved in Riot, AP, March 2, 2001.]

Watch Your Words

On February 9, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante of California gave a Black History Month speech at the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists’ annual awards dinner. In what he later called an embarrassing slip of the tongue he used the word “nigger.” About a quarter of the audience of 400 walked out of the room. Mr. Bustamante claims he never uses that word but one of the blacks who attended says, “you don’t make a slip like that unless it is something you say normally.” [Lt. Governor Uses Racial Slur, AP, Feb. 13, 2001.]

How Much Worse?

Everyone knows crime is getting worse in South Africa but no one knows just how bad it is. Since last summer the country has refused to release crime statistics, claiming they are so poorly and inconsistently gathered they don’t make sense. The government may have a point. About a quarter of police officers cannot read or write, and those who can sometimes get it wrong. Pickpocketing on a bus is sometimes called a “cash in transit heist,” a category usually reserved for armored-car holdups. Police authorities also note that according to the statistics, some white suburbs are more crime-ridden than the shanty-towns. This is because whites report and record every crime while blacks-both victims and police-are more lackadaisical. [Philippe Bernes-Lasserre, Violence a Well-Kept Secret in South Africa, The Age (Melbourne, Australia), Feb. 16, 2001.]

Still, many people believed the police were refusing to publish the data simply because they are shockingly high, and amid the controversy a policeman made a few leaks to the papers. In Pretoria armed robbery is reportedly up by 50 per cent over the previous year and carjackings by almost 25 percent. [Crime Rise Rocks South Africa, The Age, Feb. 23, 2001.]

Sooooeeeee!

For years, Georgia offered state tax exemptions of up to $100,000 to companies that use minority suppliers. Until now, “minority” has meant at least 51-percent ownership by blacks, Asians or American Indians, and Hispanics want to put a foot in the trough, too. “In my opinion, it’s a discriminatory law,” says Sara Gonzalez of the Atlanta Hispanic Chamber of Commerce with no sense of irony, “and it’s simply not acceptable that Latinos aren’t included.” After much strenuous lobbying it appears that the law will be changed to include Miss Gonzalez’ fellow ethnics. [Carol Stavraka, Latino Business Owners Won’t Count Unless Georgia Law is Changed, DiversityInc.com, Feb. 14, 2001.]

Wales for the Welsh!

Simon Glyn is a councilor from north Wales for Plaid Cymru, the Welsh national party. He thinks too many English are moving into Wales, bringing what he calls their “foreign language,” and pushing out the Welsh. Despite much outcry and having been made to apologize, he is not exactly repentant. After a mandatory grovel he told the BBC: “Nobody should have to defend themselves for highlighting issues to do with the language of their community, or the economic situation within the community, or the fact that the community is unable to absorb inward migration.” In response to claims that his comments were too extreme, he replied, “I did choose pretty powerful language-but it’s a pretty powerful crisis,” adding, “I don’t regret it.” Mr. Glyn has received hundreds of messages of support and Sion Jobbins, Plaid’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Cardiff North, has attacked his own party leadership for not standing by Mr. Glyn. [BBC News, Feb. 21, 2001.]

Oldham Back in the News

Last month we reported that the British town of Oldham has had 572 racial incidents in the past year and that 60 percent of the victims were white. This represents a 100 percent increase in racial crime and intimidation over the previous period. In the latest incident, two 14-year-old white girls fled into a pub to escape from a gang of Asians (Pakistanis or Bangladeshis). The police arrived and arrested an Asian who claimed he was being singled out because of race. Later, other Asians used cell phones to call out their friends and a gang of 40 massed outside the pub. They then started throwing Molotov cocktails through the windows. Customers dived for cover and beat out the flames. Police came back and arrested three more Asians. Motive? Detective Sergeant Jim Slater of Chadderton Crime Management Unit, solemnly says: “I cannot comment on whether or not these incidents were racially motivated.” [Andrew Chapman, Asians Attack Whites, Daily Mail (London), Feb. 21, 2001.]

Black Pride

Carson Pirie Scott & Co. is a black-owned cosmetics company. As a special for Black History Month, it ran an ad in the Chicago Sun-Times offering a free calendar with pictures of famous blacks to anyone who bought $15.00 worth of Vantex Skin Bleaching Creme. [John Kass, Missing the Point Just in Time for Black History Month, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 22, 2001.]

Here They Come

Chicago immigration officials have granted political asylum to a 10-year-old autistic boy from Pakistan on the grounds that autism is so misunderstood there that he would be persecuted if he returned. Officials said the decision does not automatically open the door to all afflicted children. “His asylum was granted not on the basis of being disabled or autistic,” said Robert Esbrook, director of the Chicago Office of Asylum for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. “It’s the persecution his disability itself causes. He fits the classic definition of a refugee.” So far, it is only Umair Choudhry and not his mother who is a refugee, but Mr. Esbrook commended Mrs. Choudhry for her courage (courage?) and said she would not be separated from her children. Depending on the degree of affliction, long-term care for an autistic child can cost between $8,000 and $100,000 every year. Umair is now eligible for publicly-funded treatment. [Julie Deardorff, Mom Wins Asylum for Son With Autism, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 21, 2001.]

Enough is Enough

Whiteville High School in Whiteville, North Carolina, has 752 students, about evenly divided between blacks and whites. On Feb. 22 the last period of the day was a special program for Black History Month. About 200 white students showed up that day with notes from parents saying they had doctor’s appointments or other personal reasons for coming home early. Another 75 just went home without permission, leaving only about 50 whites in the audience. Associate principal Vicki Frink-Lawrence says the black students were “disappointed and hurt.” [White Students Skip School’s Black History Celebration, Charlotte News and Observer, Feb. 24, 2001.]

Glimmer of Truth

An otherwise unremarkable Los Angeles Times story about electricity shortages in California contained two interesting sentences: “Fundamentally, the rest of the West has outgrown its electrical system just as California has its own. And it has done so in very much the same way — by adding too many people without enough new power or conservation.” [Peter Gosselin, Most of West in the Same Power Jam as California, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 26, 2001.]

Muzzling the Europeans

Last month’s cover story noted that the Europeans have grown accustomed to government censorship, and a case last year in the European Court of Justice underlines the direction in which the continent is going. Bernard Connolly is a British economist who used to work for the European Commission, one of the governing bodies of the European Union (EU). The commission fired him for writing a book called The Rotten Heart of Europe, in which he criticized the European Monetary System and the introduction of the single European currency. Europeans have socialist employment laws that make it nearly impossible to fire anyone for anything short of a felony, and Mr. Connolly appealed his case to the EU’s Court of First Instance.

To his astonishment, it upheld his dismissal, reasoning that the EU has broad, undefined power to stifle political criticism to protect “the general interests of the Communities.” It turns out that what offended the bureaucrats was not Mr. Connolly’s economic arguments. In a carefully drawn up bill of particulars, they explained that his sin was to have written about such things as the “blind arrogance of Frenchmen such as Jacques Delors and his Commission acolytes,” the “opportunism” of the Italian government, and the European Commission’s man in London’s “ceaseless denigration” of his own country. Mr. Connolly also compared “British Euro-enthusiasts” to fellow-travelers who defended Stalin in the 1930s. This sort of talk greatly pained the European ruling class when The Rotten Heart of Europe was published in 1995.

Mr. Connolly appealed the lower court’s decision to the EU’s Supreme Court and got another shock. The court’s prosecutor Damaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer explicitly compared Mr. Connolly’s words to blasphemy, arguing that some forms of expression are so offensive to the “rights of others” that they must be suppressed — a view the court happily endorsed. Mr. Colomer cited as a precedent the British case of Wingrove v. United Kingdom, in which the court refused to permit the distribution of a pornographic movie called “Visions of Ecstasy” about the 16th-century Carmelite nun St. Teresa. In the movie St. Teresa has visions of lesbian couplings, as well as a necrophiliac fantasy about the crucified Christ, which culminates with her astride the body of Jesus who is laid on the ground still nailed to the cross. As heavy rock music plays in the background and she appears to reach orgasm, Christ begins to revive and holds hands with St. Teresa.

It is very unusual for the British to ban something because it offends Christians, but a court made an exception for “Visions of Ecstasy” because of the magnitude of the offense. It is ominous that the EU’s Supreme Court should use identical reasoning to justify taking action against its employee, but perhaps not very surprising for a continent that forbids truth about race and denial of Holocaust orthodoxy.

Decisions of the EU’s Supreme Court are final and cannot be appealed. Fortunately, they have a limited jurisdiction, and Mr. Connolly’s book can still be found in bookstores. However, like lefties everywhere, EU bureaucrats crave unlimited power, and European nations continue to strip themselves of what was once called national sovereignty. [Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Now it’s Blasphemy to Mock Europe, Spectator (London), Nov. 18, 2000.]

Africans at Work

Sloan Financial Group is the largest black-owned money-management firm in America. It sells shares in the New African Opportunity Fund, which is supposed to invest in businesses in Africa. Sloan has filed suit against an employee who, along with his wife, managed the fund from offices in South Africa. Justin Hackett paid himself huge bonuses, charged kickbacks from African companies he recommended for inclusion in the fund, and is accused of stealing millions of dollars of fund money. The New African Opportunity Fund is private, and returns to investors are not publicly available. [Judith Burns, Sloan Financial Sues Ex-Employees on Looting Charges, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 27, 2001. p. A8.]

Meanwhile, Eyethu Mining Association, one of the first black-owned gold mining companies to be established after the end of apartheid, has been discovered to be selling gold off the books. It owes at least 500,000 rand in taxes and 70,000 rand in royalties, and the ministry of minerals and energy says the entire board of trustees will have to go, before the company gets another operating license. However, a spokesman for the ministry says there are no plans to press criminal charges. “We would still like to help these people,” he explains. [Unscrupulous Businessmen Destroy Black-owned Mining Company, Africa News Service, Feb. 26, 2001.]

Dissing the Queen

Richard Blackwood is a popular black comedian in Britain. Last October, on a television program, he complained that Queen Elizabeth looks bored on British banknotes and referred to her as a “a bitch.” Complaints poured in to the Broadcasting Standards Commission, which has now ruled that the term is not offensive when used by blacks. “Richard Blackwood was using the term as it is used in rap music, to mean ‘woman’, and not as a term of abuse,” explained the BBC. [Adam Sherwin, Blacks Can Call Queen Bitch, Says TV Ruling, Times (London), Feb. 28, 2001.]

Classic Urban Renewal

Vallejo is a city of 118,000 people an hour’s ferry ride north of San Francisco. It has worked hard to make itself attractive and is often included on “best places to live” lists. Recently the city installed a CD system to play classical music at a downtown bus stop that had become a hangout for black teenagers. Loitering complaints immediately dropped by half. A downtown businessman then donated a sound system for his street corner, which also plays classical music to clear out the riffraff. Mayor Joe Intintoli says other cities are calling to learn more about this method of urban renewal. “The arts can be a great technique for changing the environment of an area of town,” he says. “We can change the whole feel of this downtown.” The usual people say this is “racism.” [Gil José Duran, Vallejo Gets Bad Rap for Experiment in Classical Music, San Jose Mercury News, Feb. 27, 2001, p. 1.]

Here They Come

In mid-2000 there were 6.1 billion people on earth, a number that could reach 11 billion by 2050. The world’s population is growing by 77 million people or 1.2 percent every year. Just six countries, none of them white — India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Indonesia — account for half the increase. Some countries are losing population. By 2050 Russia, Georgia and Ukraine could be 28 to 40 percent smaller. Italy and Hungary could lose a quarter of their populations, and Japan and Germany could be 14 percent smaller.

AIDS will not be a significant brake on population growth. Thirty-six percent of the people of Botswana are HIV positive, but that will not stop the population from growing by 37 percent. In Swaziland and Zimbabwe, more than 25 percent are carriers, but their populations are projected to grow by 148 percent and 86 percent respectively. For the nine most affected countries in Africa, where HIV prevalence is above 14 percent, the total population is likely to grow from 115 million to 196 million. [William Reilly, UN: World Population Could Reach 11 Billion by 2050, UPI, Feb. 28, 2001.]

Meanwhile, in the United States, the Census Bureau cheerfully reports that we have 60 percent more Hispanics than we did in 1990, and that there are now more Hispanics than blacks in America. [D’Vera Cohn and Darryl Fears, Hispanics Draw Even With Blacks in New Census, Washington Post, March 7, 2001, p. A1.]

Diversity Breeds Mistrust

A high-priced Harvard study has uncovered the obvious: People who live in diverse parts of the country trust each other less than do people in homogeneous areas. In a study of what he calls “civic engagement,” Robert Putnam found that people who live in places like Lewiston, Maine, or the white mid-West are more likely to trust co-workers, shop clerks, strangers, and the police then are people who live in Los Angeles, for example. Mr. Putnam, who wrote the popular book Bowling Alone, adjusted the results for population density, and found that diversity still undermines trust. [Peter Hong, Love They Neighbor? Not in L.A., Los Angeles Times, March 2, 2001.]

‘No’ to Intermarriage

A group of 25 Jewish rabbis, scholars, and community leaders has been established to try to persuade more Jews to marry each other rather than gentiles. In a written statement after its initial meeting in February, it announced the following intention: “to work together to help restore the ideals of in-marriage, and to promote its importance to the future of the Jewish community, and to the preservation of Judaism and the Jewish people.”

Steve Bayme, national director of contemporary Jewish life for the American Jewish Committee, who organized the meeting, said the goal is no less than “to change the culture” around intermarriage in American Jewish life. Steven M. Cohen, who teaches at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and who spoke at the meeting, put it this way:

“To say that intermarriage is indeed an unfortunate and inevitable consequence of life as a minority in an open, democratic and pluralist society is not to say that we must endorse the acceptance of intermarriage. We cannot abandon one of the most critical and fundamental norms of Jewish life, one which is the linchpin of so much else that we hold dear and value about being Jewish.”

Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin of The Community Synagogue, in Port Washington, Long Island, also took part in the meeting and stressed the importance of articulating the message that “there’s only one reason for Jews to marry Jews: because we want Judaism to continue.” “There has to be a ‘what for’ in the message that we give people to marry Jews,” he added. “The ‘what for’ is that Judaism is worth struggling for.” [Debra Nussbaum Cohen, Coalition Formed to Fight Intermarriage, New York Jewish Week, March 3, 2001.]

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — The examples of persecution you cite from France and Germany [in “Return to the Dark Ages” in the March issue] are straight out of the old Soviet empire in its war against dissidents. We Europeans are indeed returning to a New Dark Ages. The European Union has gone a long way towards creating the Soviet Union mark II, and this is yet another reason we British should resist further integration or, preferably, withdraw altogether.

You are quite right to argue that the social costs of suppressing error (and overwhelmingly it is not error that is being suppressed at all) far outweigh the benefits. This was, as you correctly assert, a major conceptual breakthrough in human thought and one that was made in a very small part of Western Europe — and not in China, Russia, South America, the Middle East and certainly not in Africa. Censorship was a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Soviet-style censorship is death to post-industrial societies-a warning we ignore at our peril.

Double standards and hypocrisy are everywhere. The same leftists and so-called conservatives, who would love to see AR banned, are the same people who turn a blind eye to, or gush about the hate-filled lyrics of rap and hip hop. Presumably, these are among the many benefits of “diversity.” Recently, Greg Dyke, a senior figure in the BBC, declared that the BBC was “hideously white.” Imagine the breast beating if he had said the Commission for Racial Equality and Equal Opportunities Commission were “hideously black.”

Your article is one of the best things I have read in AR, or anywhere else for that matter, on the nature of the vicious and increasingly brazen new age of censorship. It is a timely, superbly written article. I just hope enough people will heed the warning. Time is not on our side.

Frank Ellis, Leeds, England

Sir — I commend you for the theme and content of “Return to the Dark Ages.” In addressing the consequences of Holocaust denial, it was clear you were not interested in debating the merits of the positions taken by the Holocaust establishment, but rather to consider the silencing of dissent. However, even to tread in this area, so zealously guarded by a powerful ethnic group, requires courage not found in mainstream, “conservative” publications, and I applaud you.

P. Stephen Keith, Blairs, Va.

Sir — The ten-page lead article in the March issue of AR should be read carefully by all people who value intellectual freedom. Brutally enforced censorship laws are a demonstration that the censors seek to reinforce and propagate falsehoods. The detailed enumerations in your article of the victims of censorship and their outrageous treatment are a powerful protest against intellectual tyranny. A further important value of the article was that it brought out the fact that respectable, idealistic and courageous men with outstanding credentials have been expressing well-founded doubts about propaganda generated during the Second World War. Some of this propaganda is still being used to weaken, confuse, and demoralize our race.

Charles Weber, Tulsa, Ok.

Sir — I do agree with you that AR should oppose any and all forms of censorship, on-line or off-line, in America or abroad. However, this does not mean we should give credence to people like Willis Carto and his various front groups. The exact number of Holocaust deaths is open to debate, but David Irving’s figure of something in the neighborhood of one million is way too low, which can be shown as follows. The population of Jews in pre-war Europe was in the range of 8 to 9 million. After the war, it was 3 to 4 million.

Hence, the total dead are in the range of 4 to 6 million. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Israel, currently has the names of 4 million dead, which conforms to the lower bound. The figure of 6 million may be considered the upper bound and is probably too high — but that’s what Eichmann said it was. Recall that the Nazis destroyed all of the documentation related to the Holocaust at the end of the war. The Holocaust deniers/revisionists are really Hitler apologists, rather than objective social scientists trying to establish the facts.

You’ve done a fine, objective job in presenting the facts of black crime. Please do the same in discussing the crimes of the Nazis. Note: the Jews are just as Caucasian as the Irish, the French, the British, the Italians, and even the Germans.

Ronald W. Satz

Sir — Your discussion of censorship and suppression in Canada need not have stopped with Ernst Zundel and Doug Collins. A little-known but significant case is that of Donna Upson, who was sentenced to two years in a Nova Scotia prison for telling a black clergyman he was unfit to preach. No ethnic slurs or epithets were alleged. In her confinement, Donna is now subjected to daily de-programming sessions, and a prison psychologist has told her she can be held indefinitely if she refuses to embrace multiculturalism. Cases like these have inspired Canadian patriots to refer to their country as “Soviet Canuckistan.” I would pay close attention to events to our north, for they may give us a glimpse of our own future.

Steve Meisenbach, San Francisco

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