O Tempora, O Mores! (November, 2006)
American Renaissance, November 2006
‘Wetback’ Redux
Arizona state representative Russell Pearce, Republican, is a strong proponent of border security and enforcing immigration law. He also doesn’t mince words. Speaking about illegal immigration during an interview on a Phoenix radio station in late September, Rep. Pearce said, “We know what we need to do. In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower put together a task force called ‘Operation Wetback.’ He removed, in less than a year, 1.3 million illegal aliens. They must be deported.”
His comments riled up the usual suspects. Roberto Reveles, president of something called Somos America, called Rep. Pearce’s comments “outrageous,” and said his views show “a sense of insecurity on his part and his fear and loathing of undocumented immigrants.” Arizona Democrats are calling for the state GOP to denounce Rep. Pearce, and are insisting he apologize for using the term “wetback.”
Rep. Pearce is standing firm. “I’m not rewriting history to make the silly leftists feel good,” he says. Rep. Pearce may have a personal interest in securing the border. In December 2004, an illegal alien shot his son, Maricopa County Deputy Sheriff Sean Pearce, as he was trying to serve a search warrant in a homicide case. Officer Pearce survived, although he lost part of his large intestine. [Amanda J. Crawford, GOP Urged to Denounce Pearce, Arizona Republic (Phoenix), Oct. 3, 2006. Rep. Pearce Calls for Mass Deportations, AP, Sept. 29, 2006. Kim Smith and Kristina Davis, Representative Russell Pearce’s Son Shot by Illegal Alien, East Valley Tribune (Mesa, Ariz.), Dec 17, 2004.]
Rep. Pearce Speaks Out
When AR posted a story about Rep. Pearce on our website, one of our readers wrote to thank him for his support for border enforcement. Here are excerpts of Mr. Pearce’s reply:
It is incredible how the liberal icons of Arizona have turned an HISTORICAL comment about a federal government program into a full blown scandal.
However, the troika of the Arizona Latino Research Association, the pro-illegal alien Democrat party and the Arizona Republic wants to paint me as a racist. That is a claim which I vehemently deny.
Yes, during a radio interview last week, I referenced a federal program called ‘Operation Wetback.’ It was the name given the program to deport illegal aliens by the federal government in the 1950s. That is neither a term I use nor one I approve of. But I didn’t name the program . . .
WE need to see a desire on the part of the federal government to deport illegals. Enough is enough!!! The Cost in Crime, Cost in Dollars, the Cost in Lives!!! I hope folks understand the damage to America by this invasion of over 3 million illegal aliens annually, 5,000 to 10,000 every single day. One out of 12 of those crossing our borders illegally already has felony convictions. I did not even mention the over 9,000 lives lost each year (25 everyday, 13 by DUI, and 12 by stabbings and shootings) by the hands of illegal aliens according to Congressman King on the Homeland Security Committee . . .
The Arizona Latino Research Association would have us believe that illegals are needed and our economy would collapse without them. The group’s tactics do not scare me and they should not scare you. Our economy hummed along for generations with minimal involvement of illegal aliens and will continue to do so.
The Republic, much to my dismay, refuses to even acknowledge that illegals exist. The paper refers to them as undocumented immigrants. That is like referring to someone who breaks into my house as key deficient.
As much as Democrats, ALRA and the Republic want to make me the issue, they will miss the growing resentment festering throughout Arizona communities. They will miss the increased crime, lower wages and the damage to our cities and towns. But the growing movement to oust illegal aliens will continue to expand; that I am confident of.
I will never apologize for my zeal to secure our borders. And I will never back down from those who would rather cover up their own complicity in the illegal alien invasion than work to find a realistic solution.
In August, the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse announced a tuition hike of $1,320 for each student to pay for more “diversity.” The university plans to use the $15 million to recruit 1,000 non-white and poor students, set up 100 new teaching jobs, and hire an unknown number of bureaucrats. Since only a quarter of the money would be used for scholarships, the rest would presumably pay for “outreach” and diversity operatives. The Board of Regents has approved what the university calls its “Growth and Access Agenda,” and is submitting the proposal to the legislature as part of the next budget request.
University administrators say all students will benefit from a more diverse campus, claiming that companies like GM and Proctor & Gamble have stopped recruiting at UW campuses, citing a lack of diversity. “We realized that if we’re going to be serious about diversity, we have to do something bold,” says Al Thompson, assistant to the chancellor for affirmative action and diversity. Many students and parents, however, aren’t worried by the supposed lack of diversity (the campus is already 5.5 percent non-white), and even many of those who are, don’t want a tuition hike. “I support racial diversity, but I don’t want to pay more for it,” says sophomore Jay Rumpca.
The proposal faces strong opposition in the legislature. Both candidates for governor oppose the plan, fearing it will make tuition, currently $5,555 per year for in-state students, unaffordable for some students. One state legislator asked the university’s chancellor point blank, “Could you explain what I would learn about working with people of ‘color’ had I attended the university that you envision?” [Megan Twohey, Some Balk at Tuition Boost for Diversity, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Sept. 11, 2006.]
Promoting “diversity” has become one of the main purposes of many universities. Michael J. Tate, the black vice-president for equity and diversity at Washington State University, epitomizes the fetish. He is head of an office with a staff of 55 and an annual budget of $3 million. Mr. Tate says he is helping students “embrace difference,” which is supposed to help them prepare for “a global society.” His office has given diversity training to more than 1,000 people, and is also renovating two dormitories to be used exclusively by blacks and Hispanics. When Mr. Tate isn’t promoting brainwashing and segregation, he is junketing to Seattle for “diversity luncheons,” used to recruit non-whites. Over just the last two years, many colleges and universities, including Harvard, Texas A&M, Berkeley, Texas, and Virginia, have set up similar positions. [Ben Gose, The Rise of the Chief Diversity Officer, Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 29, 2006.]
Sensible Swiss
Twenty percent of Switzerland’s population of 7.4 million are foreign-born, one of the highest percentages in the world. More than half of these are non-European. Tired of being seen as a “soft-touch” for asylum-seekers from the Third World, on Sept. 24, the people of Switzerland voted by a two-thirds majority to enact one of Europe’s strictest asylum laws. The new law allows for the easier removal of people whose asylum requests have been denied, and carries mandatory prison sentences for both adults and children who falsely claim to be refugees.
Swiss voters also approved a law to bar all unskilled, non-European immigrants from moving to Switzerland. Opponents of the laws, which were proposed by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party, say they will turn non-Europeans living in Switzerland into “second-class citizens.” [Swiss Voters Ratify Tougher Asylum and Immigration Laws, AP, Sept. 24, 2006.]
Black Magic
We reprint the following item verbatim and in toto:
LAGOS, Nigeria — A Nigerian murder suspect accused of killing his brother with an axe told police investigators he actually attacked a goat, which was only later magically transformed into his sibling’s corpse, officials said Thursday.
The man, whose name wasn’t released, offered police this explanation after his arrest on Tuesday in the death of his brother the previous day at Isseluku village in southern Nigeria.
“He said that the goats were on his farm and he tried to chase them away. When one wouldn’t move he attacked it with an axe. He said it then turned into his brother,” Police Commissioner Udom Ekpoudom told the Associated Press.
Murder suspects in Nigeria, where many people believe in black magic, sometimes claim spirits tricked them into killing. In 2001, eight people were burned to death after one person in their group was accused of making a bystander’s penis magically disappear. [Murder Suspect: Goat Turned Into Corpse, AP, Sept. 15, 2006.]
Also in Nigeria, villagers are thwarting efforts by World Health Organization (WHO) doctors to wipe out polio, claiming the vaccination is really a trick to sterilize them. “Allah used Muslim scientists to expose the Western plot of using polio vaccines to reduce our population,” says Ramatu Garba, a food vendor in the town of Kano, who refuses to have her daughter immunized. In some rural areas of Nigeria, entire villages run away at the sight of vaccination teams. Others paint their children’s fingers with fingernail polish, which is the way WHO teams usually mark people they have vaccinated.
According to the agency’s chief polio expert, rumors of sterilization have cost WHO an additional $200 million, and set back by two years its plan to eradicate the disease by 2005. In Kenya, the rumor is that the polio vaccine is a tool for devil worship. Many other Africans are convinced vaccinations cause AIDS. [Maria Cheng and John Alechenu, Polio Vaccination Dismissed as Devil’s Work Across Africa, news. scotsman.com, Sept. 14, 2006.]
Violent Tendencies
People who are quick to condemn the United States as hopelessly violent are largely silent about South Africa. Since blacks took power in 1994, South Africa has seen a dramatic upsurge in murder. Gunfights routinely take place on city streets and in shopping malls. Robbers more often than not murder their victims — whether or not they resist. Between April 2004 and March 2005, 18,793 people were murdered in South Africa — an average of 51 per day in a country with a population of 44 million. There were an additional 24,516 attempted murders, 55,114 reported rapes and nearly 250,000 violent assaults. (Since these are government figures, the actual numbers are probably much higher.) A South African is therefore officially 12 times more likely than an American and 50 times more likely than a Western European to be murdered.
The violence is leaving many who should know better scratching their heads. “This is an extraordinarily violent society and nobody understands it,” says Peter Gastrow of the Institute for Security Studies in Cape Town. He believes it may have something to do with white minority rule and the fight against apartheid, but adds, “There is no explanation that makes sense. The million-dollar question is why.”
Let us hazard a guess: Under white rule, blacks knew they were subordinate, understood the authorities were firmly in charge, and that crime did not pay. Now, with blacks running the country, policing is much less efficient, and crime is more likely to pay. At the same time, the simple-minded expectation of blacks that black rule would make them all rich has been disappointed. This frustration, combined with the collapse in authority, probably explains much of the crime. A glance at the chaos of the rest of the continent suggests that Mr. Gastrow should ask a different question: Why did an African population high in testosterone and low in average IQ have relatively low crime rates under white rule? It is the unusual that requires explanation, not the commonplace.
South African whites worry less about the reasons for black violence than about how to protect themselves. They are among the most heavily-armed civilians in the world. There are 4.5 million registered firearms in the country, including 2.8 million handguns, and perhaps as many as a million more unregistered. [Terry Leonard, Murders, Theories Abound in S. Africa, AP, Sept. 27, 2006.]
One Nation, Divisible
According to the Census Bureau, sometime in October 2006, the US population was to reach 300 million. Whether an immigrant or a child born in the US, the three hundred millionth American had a good chance of being non-white.
There are 35.7 million immigrants in the United States, and they account for 12.4 percent of the population, the highest proportion since 1930. Hispanics are now the largest non-white group, having pulled ahead of blacks several years ago. There are now 42.7 million, or 14 percent of the population. Hispanics tend to be younger than whites, with an average age of 27 as opposed to 36, and a third are under age 18. The number of Hispanics is growing at a rate of 3.3 percent (1.3 million) per year. The Census Bureau expects Hispanics to make up a quarter of the population — 102.6 million — by 2050. Sixty-four percent of US Hispanics are Mexican.
At 39.7 million, blacks are the second largest non-white group. Of the non-white population, blacks are growing the slowest, at 1.3 percent per year. One fifth of the current increase is due to immigration from Africa or the Caribbean.
Asians currently number 14.4 million, making up five percent of the population. The Asian population increases by three percent per year, mainly because of immigration.
Fully one third of the population is now non-white. There are still 200 million whites in the country, but the percentage is falling rapidly. In just six years, their percentage dropped from 70 percent to 66.7 percent, and in 1960, the country was 90 percent white. Whites are already a minority in four states — California, Texas, Hawaii and New Mexico — and the District of Columbia. Perhaps most ominously, nearly half of all children under the age of five are non-white. [Virginie Montet, One in Three Americans is Hispanic, Black or Asian, AFP, Oct. 1, 2006.]
Blacks and North Africans in France have by no means lost the spirit that sent the country into two weeks of chaos last fall. Their suburban housing projects continue to be hives of degeneracy, where the authorities fear to tread. Police report that the old taboo against violent assault on officers is now broken, and that they dare not make an arrest unless they are present in force. Michel Thoomis, secretary general of the Action Police trade union explains: “You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their ‘comrades’ free when they are arrested.” Police work has become dangerous. By October of this year, a record 2,400 officers had been wounded in attacks on the job.
The official explanation for the violence is that crime bosses are consolidating their hold on the housing projects, and that massive police sweeps are breaking up crime networks. Mr. Thoomis disagrees. “We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists,” he says. “This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails.” How would he solve the problem? “We need armored vehicles and water cannon. They are the only things that can disperse crowds of hundreds of people who are trying to kill police and burn their vehicles.”
Others worry that stern measures will only harden the anti-French, scoff-law spirit that already prevails among non-whites. The civil authorities in the worst-afflicted areas do not like crime, but worry that enforcing the law will fuel even greater hostility and may make things worse. [David Rennie, Muslims Are Waging Civil War Against Us, Claims Police Union, Daily Telegraph (London), Oct. 5, 2006.]
Hazleton Fallout
Hazleton is a small former mill town in the Pocono Mountains region of Pennsylvania. After the Sept. 11 attack, a number of Hispanics from New York City — mainly Dominicans — began moving there. By 2006, nearly a third of the population of 31,000 was Hispanic. Prompted by the murders of two illegal Dominicans last May in a drug deal gone bad, Mayor Louis Barletta and the city council passed an ordinance in September against hiring illegals or renting them property. The new law quickly won national attention, with Hispanic groups promising to challenge it in court and other cities from New Jersey to California adopting similar measures.
Critics say Hispanics “revitalized” Hazleton’s downtown, which they say was a ghost town before the Dominicans arrived. Local resident Ed Makuta is not impressed. “Half our stores have Spanish signs,” he says. “We’re not welcome there. I don’t even have a clue what they’re selling. We don’t need this new downtown. We don’t need it and we don’t want it.”
Police say downtown Hazleton has become a center for drugs and gangs. Thefts and drug-related crime have risen by more than 50 percent since 2001. “For a town our size that previously had very little of that type of activity, it’s very frequent,” says Police Chief Robert Ferdinand. There are an alarming number of [illegal] aliens involved in criminal activity.”
Local Hispanics say they’re suffering “xenophobia” and “racism” like never before. “We feel everything change,” says Oscar Rubio, a legal immigrant from Colombia who operates a downtown gift shop. “[Non-Hispanics] look at us, and they think we’re illegal. Never before this happens, that they say, ‘Go home. Go back to your country.’” Social worker Anna Arias of Catholic Social Services says, “You see contempt in people’s faces. You can see the rejection.”
“People get concerned when they see the face of their neighborhood change,” says Rev. John Ruth, an opponent of the law, who welcomes Hispanics to St. Gabriel’s Church. In what is no doubt an unintended admission, he says, “Like any American in this day and age, what we’re all missing is a simpler time where we could all walk without fear. Our natural fear is being directed at the stranger among us.” [Gaiutra Bahadur, Hazleton Gets a Jolt It Didn’t Want, Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 18, 2006, p. A1.]
Weeding Out ‘Racists’
Last year, Scottish police began using psychological screening exams to identify supposedly racist police recruits. The tests feature 24 policing scenarios. Recruits are asked to say what they would do, and to indicate on a scale of one to ten how certain they are that what they would do is right. The scenarios show alternating pictures of whites, blacks and Asians — which in Britain means Indians or Pakistanis. The recruits’ answers are then checked against what purports to be a “standard” to cull those whose responses reveal “unusual” or “undesirable” attitudes. The tests have apparently been so successful that the police are using them to ferret out sexism, “sectarianism,” and dishonesty. [Michael Howie, Police May Extend Screening Tests to Bar Bigots, news.scotsman.com, Sept. 26, 2006.] How often do non-whites fail the test?
Hispanic Votes Must Not Be Diluted
In 2003, the Republican-controlled Texas legislature redrew state Congressional districts to their own advantage, diluting Democratic voting strength as much as possible. The Republicans rejigged things so cleverly that they knocked four Democrats out of office. The Democrats cried foul and took the newly-drawn district lines to the Supreme Court, only to get a 7-2 decision upholding most of the newly gerrymandered districts. Blatantly political redistricting is apparently fine with the Supreme Court.
But only up to a point. The court said it was legal to dilute the voting strength of Democrats, but not of Hispanics. When Democrats happen to be Hispanic, which they very often are, even the most rigorously race-blind gerrymandering plan may violate the Voting Rights Act. The Court said that because Hispanics demonstrated “sufficient minority cohesion,” the new district lines reduced their collective power, and that “the Anglo citizen voting-age majority will often, if not always, prevent Latinos from electing the candidate of their choice in the district.”
In other words, the Supreme Court now admits that race trumps politics. It is business as usual for Republicans to dilute the voting strength of white Democrats, but if Hispanic Democrats have enough “minority cohesion” to appear likely to elect a Hispanic (who is also a Democrat), the Republicans had better leave them alone.
This, of course, is a big incentive for Democrats to fill the country with Hispanics. The Supreme Court has said that cohesive clumps of Hispanics must not be broken up by redistricting. Since cohesive clumps of Hispanics almost always vote Democratic, the Democrats have a race-based constituency that is now immune from gerrymandering. Presumably blacks — who also vote heavily Democratic — are also immune. The party in power can therefore draw new districts for the most blatant partisan purposes; it just better make sure the people whose votes they are diluting are white. The next time the Democrats get into power in the Texas legislature, they will redraw the district lines, just as the Republicans have done. However, they are unlikely to have to worry about race. All the clumps of Republican voters they break up are likely to be whites, and their votes can be diluted with impunity.
The League of United Latin American Citizens was the plaintiff in the case, and takes it for granted that more Hispanic voters mean more Hispanic congressmen. “Latinos are responsible for the fastest growth in Texas,” said a spokesman, “and the state of Texas refused to give us another district.” [Gina Holland, Court Nixes Part of Texas Political Map, Associated Press, June 28, 2006.]
Construction work has begun on a private hospital in Rotterdam, Holland, that will accept only Muslim patients. Scheduled to open in 2008, male and female patients will be segregated, and will be treated only by doctors, nurses, and attendants of their own sex. Paul Sturkenboom, whom press accounts identify as a “health industry entrepreneur,” justifies his new project on the grounds that newcomers have to be eased into Dutch society. He says a hospital in which they feel comfortable “will give Muslims time to integrate at their own speed.” [David Rennie, Anger In Holland Over ‘Apartheid’ Islamic Hospital, Daily Telegraph (London), Oct. 5, 2006.]
For many blacks, racial solidarity and law-breaking go hand in hand, that flouting the white man’s law can be an act of racial loyalty. Twenty-one-year-old Candace Darcel Jones of Sheffield, Alabama, gave an unusual demonstration of this in October. She had been shoplifting at a Sears store, and raced out with a pile of clothes. With a store detective in pursuit, she dumped the clothes, ran into the street, and started beating on the windows of cars with black drivers. “They’re going to take me to jail,” she shouted. “I’m black. I’m black. Let me in. You know how it is. Just take me anywhere, man.” Whether as an incentive to male drivers or because of her exertions, her breasts were seen to flop out of her shirt. In any case, a store detective caught her before she could get a ride. [Seth Burkett, Accused Shoplifter Exposed in Chase, Decatur Daily News (Ala.), Oct. 4, 2006.]
Domingo Garcia is a former Texas state legislator and is civil rights chairman for the League of United Latin American Citizens. He likes to sue police departments that do not require officers to learn Spanish. He sued the city of Irving, Texas, on behalf of an illegal alien, Jose Palomino, who had been working in the United States for 23 years but still did not understand when a police officer shouted “Down! Down!” The officer ended up pepper-spraying Mr. Palomino and hitting him with his baton. Mr. Garcia says the officer’s actions may have been justified by Mr. Palomino’s refusal to obey, but it was not Mr. Palomino’s fault he did not speak English. Instead, the city of Irving was negligent in not requiring officers to learn Spanish.
In September, Mr. Garcia filed a similar suit against Royse City, Texas, because one of its officers could not get through to a Spanish-speaker. Mr. Garcia is seeking $1 million in “exemplary” damages so that other cities will get the message. “A police officer, like any public servant or anybody in the private sector, has to cater to the language of the market,” he explained, in what was perhaps unintended recognition of the high rate of crime among Hispanics. [City Sued: Didn’t Teach Cop Spanish, WorldNetDaily.com, Sept. 30, 2006.]
Even if Mr. Garcia does not win any of his suits, some municipalities may well decide to hire Spanish-speaking policemen out of self defense. Jobs for the boys has probably been Mr. Garcia’s goal all along.
