March 2011
| American Renaissance magazine | |
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| Vol. 22, No. 3 | March 2011 |
| CONTENTS |
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A Busy Month for American Renaissance
Boxy Lays Down His Life
Saving the Negro Family
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters
| COVER STORY |
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A Busy Month for American Renaissance
False news and a scuttled conference.
American Renaissance has had a lively time since you received your last issue. First, Fox News mistakenly reported that Jared Loughner, the deranged killer who tried to assassinate Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was “strongly suspected” of having an association with AR. This raised a massive media stink until the truth came out: The report was nonsense.
Two weeks later, the hotel that had agreed to hold the 2011 AR conference sent us notice it would break its contract. This sent the staff on a wild search for an alternative venue for an event that was to be held in just 10 days. The search failed, and the conference had to be cancelled, causing great annoyance and inconvenience to the nearly 200 people who had registered. The speakers nevertheless gathered for a hastily arranged video session, where the talks — perhaps the best lineup ever for an AR conference — were recorded and will be made available for download and on CD.
It is a severe blow to AR’s credibility for two conferences in a row to have been stopped (see “Reflections on the 2010 AR Conference,” AR, April 2010). We will certainly have more conferences, but will have to rethink their structure.
Jareds Loughner and Taylor
On January 8, I went to bed horrified by the news that someone had murdered half a dozen people in an attempt to kill a congresswoman. The next morning, imagine my shock when I got a call from a CNN reporter asking for details about the connection between American Renaissance and the killer, Jared Loughner. The reporter said Fox News was claiming it had a Department of Homeland Security memo (see page 3.) that said Mr. Loughner might have had anti-Semitic reasons for trying to kill a Jewish congresswoman, and that his ties to the “neo-Nazi” American Renaissance could be a key to his motive.
I told the reporter I had never heard of Jared Loughner. I quickly searched AR’s records and found he had never been a subscriber and had never attended an AR conference. I found no record that he had even left a comment on the AR website. I went to the Fox News website and sent frantic stop-the-presses messages to every e-mail address I could find. I left a message on Fox’s phone number. I called the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to ask for evidence of any connection between the killer and AR. It was Sunday, and I got only a moronic clerk who said I would have to call back on Monday.
In the meantime, the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg News, Associated Press, assorted bloggers, and even media organizations in Australia and Italy were calling to ask about the Loughner/AR connection. They wanted to check with AR before they repeated the Fox story, and accepted my assurances that the Fox story was wrong.
The ‘Memo’
* no direct connection – but strong suspicion is being directed at AmRen / American Renaissance. Suspect is possibly linked to this group. (through videos posted on his myspace and YouTube account.). The group’s ideology is anti government, anti immigration, anti ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), anti Semitic. Gabrielle Gifford is the first Jewish female elected to such a high position in the US government. She was also opposite this group’s ideology when it came to immigration debate. |
Finally, about 12 hours after it first started broadcasting about AR — correspondents Bret Baier, Jennifer Griffin, and Greta Van Susteren had all cheerfully hung a deranged killer around our necks without checking with AR — someone from Fox took the trouble to call. Correspondent James Rosen was not responding to my frantic e-mail messages; it had simply dawned on him to see what we had to say. I was finally able to tell someone at Fox that whatever they were hearing from DHS was rubbish. Mr. Rosen went on the air and reported my denials.
Over the next 48 hours, Fox News began to downplay the Loughner/AR connection, and DHS said it was not aware of any link. Veteran hate-sniffer from the SPLC, Mart Potok, was rolled out to tell the media that although AR was guilty of a gaudy variety of sins, anti-Semitism wasn’t one of them.
Still, thousands of people were at least briefly convinced we had somehow prompted the killings, and the hate e-mail poured in. Here are samples:
YOU ALL MUST BE VERY F**KING HAPPY popping your champagne corks that a democrat was killed. Is this the revolution you want, you f**king coward piss ants? Keep up the good work; we’ll be waiting for you cowards when you come out of your f**king ignorant backward foxholes you c**ks**ing motherf**kers.
You folks are the perfect mix of s**t and scum. I do wish your children are brutally slaughtered exactly the same way.
I hope your daughter has a n**ger baby!
We even received a bomb threat. Someone left a message on our answering machine: “Evacuate the office building. Evacuate the office building.”
It soon came to light that it was not DHS that issued the “memo.” Instead, it was raw intelligence from something called the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC), and not intended for outside consumption. ACTIC is one of the organizations set up in the wake of the September 11 attacks to try to coordinate state and federal intelligence sharing. I have spoken several times to the agency’s head, Major David Denlinger, but he professes not to know how anyone could have thought AR was “neo-Nazi” — it would have taken a ten-year-old with an Internet connection two minutes to realize that wasn’t true — or what caused anyone to think Mr. Loughner had anything to do with us. He promised to look for answers, but a month later he is still looking.
There have been fanciful theories about the “memo.” Some people think it was a deliberate smear against the “far right” that was supposed to protect the Tea Party against the inevitable accusation that it had contributed to the “climate of hate” that is supposed to have pushed Mr. Loughner over the edge. I think the chances of that are zero. Anyone who wanted to smear AR would not have immediately damaged his credibility by doing something so transparently stupid as calling AR “neo-Nazi.”
Another theory is that AR has a secret friend at ACTIC who used the memo to call attention to AR. First, a friend would not link AR to mass murderers. Second, the “memo” was written within the first chaotic hours after a completely unexpected shooting. It is vanishingly improbable that a “friend” in law enforcement would coolly circulate deliberate nonsense he thought would profit AR but that would inevitably come back to discredit him.
I have a not-very-convincing theory of my own. The ACTIC e-mail says Mr. Loughner was linked to AR “through videos posted on his myspace and YouTube accounts.” Before the killer became famous, his goofy clips could reportedly be found on YouTube. Perhaps just after the shooting, the ACTIC person who wrote the e-mail typed in Jared Loughner’s name and got — along with Mr. Loughner’s ravings — some computer-generated suggestions of other clips to watch, including some of mine. Jared is not such a common name; it’s just the sort of coincidence computer algorithms look for. In the scramble after the shooting, maybe that was all ACTIC needed to write its idiotic note.
Whatever the explanation, I would be astonished if stupidity isn’t at the heart of it. Napoleon is supposed to have said, “Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.” One blogger, who goes by the name “Federale” and who claims to have police experience, probably got it right when he wrote, “Clearly this memorandum was written by some useless flatfoot hack with ADL/SPLC connections and training.” A really useless flatfoot hack wouldn’t even need ADL/SPLC training.
Conference Cancelled
What has vastly more serious consequences for AR is the cancellation, for the second time in a row, of our conference. This is a particularly painful setback because we thought we had taken every possible precaution, with the cooperation and understanding of the hotel, to ensure a smooth event. Although AR staff made most of the arrangements with the Sheraton Airport hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina, I made a point of explaining directly to hotel management exactly what our event was, and what pressures the hotel might face.
I explained that some people think the views expressed in AR are controversial and that hotels had come under so much pressure from opponents the previous year that they cancelled contracts with us. I explained that there have been demonstrations outside conference hotels, that louts have trespassed on hotel property to distribute inflammatory leaflets, and that there have even been threats to blockade access to hotel property. I noted the clause in the contract that gave the hotel the discretion to ask us to pay for additional security if that was necessary, and gave assurances that we understood our obligations under that clause.
I pointed out to Sheraton management that we would ensure that the hotel was exposed to as brief a period of pressure of possible. We would take all the reservations ourselves, and would announce the location only 48 hours before the conference began, thus giving opponents very little time to organize. The hotel fully accepted the importance of secrecy, and one of our contacts even spoke of the value of free speech.
There were other reasons to think the Sheraton would honor its agreement. Cancellation would mean walking away from more than 100 hotel room bookings for two nights, a fancy sit-down banquet, and large incidental bar and meal tabs — as well as payment of a five-figure penalty. There was an escalation clause in our contract, so that the penalty increased as the conference approached, so it would have been in the interests of the hotel to cancel early rather than late.
About three weeks before the conference was to begin, the Charlotte papers began to write about it. There was the usual lazy journalism about “hate” and “white supremacy,” but I defended the conference on a number of local radio programs and was quoted in the Charlotte papers. A splinter group that styles itself the Jewish Defense Organization phoned more than 40 hotels but could not learn where the meeting was to be.
We were therefore astonished to get a one-line e-mail message from the Sheraton on January 25 claiming that “in light of recent disclosures as to the nature of your event” it was canceling the contract. This, of course, is a pathetic, embarrassing lie. We could not have been more open with the hotel, and their claim to have learned something new about the “nature” of the conference is rubbish. From the moment it sent the cancellation message, the hotel has refused all contact with us.
It later came to light that on the very day of the cancellation message from the Sheraton, a black member of the Charlotte city council — Mayor pro-tem Patrick Cannon — sent a constituent the following e-mail message:
I have all hotels, motels, and gotels [sic] on notice and they seem to be cooperating well still. An attempt was made for accommodations at another hotel but based on what I ask to take place they were denied again. It’s my thought that they will still try over and over even if the [sic] end up in Cabarras County or Rock Hill. I will keep the level of intelligence up as best I can.
Could pressure from the city have had anything to do with the cancellation? The timing hardly seems coincidental. I went to Charlotte on January 31 and held a press conference to denounce the city’s efforts to suppress free speech, and my remarks were widely reported. However, given the built-in headwinds against us, we were unable to find an alternate venue, and were forced to cancel the conference.
We did, however, gather the speakers together to record their talks, and we expect to have DVDs available for purchase by the time the next issue of AR goes to press. In order to maintain security and because of limited space, we decided to limit the live audience only to other speakers and to registrants from overseas. We had guests from Europe, Hong Kong, and even Australia whom we felt we could not turn away, but we made the agonizing decision to draw the line there. We were deeply disappointed not to be able to accommodate so many of our friends and supporters.
A score of conference registrants decided to come to Charlotte anyway, where they discussed strategy, listened to speakers of their own, and even picketed the Sheraton that had cancelled our contract. Passers-by reportedly gave them the thumbs up.
Film clips are hardly a substitute for the camaraderie of a real conference, but we hope the talks described below will reach a large “virtual” audience.
The meeting was opened by Filip Dewinter, one of the top leaders of the Vlaams Belang. The VB is the main opposition party in the Flemish parliament, and is one of many increasingly influential European parties devoted to protecting the continent from religious and demographic transformation.
In his talk, “The Colonization of Europe: How Europe Will Become Eurabia,” Mr. Dewinter described in chilling detail the Muslim tidal wave that is sweeping across the continent. In the very period when European birthrates have dropped well below replacement level, Muslim populations are surging, and are projected to reach 73 million by 2030. The admission of Turkey to the European Union would add another 80 million Muslims.
Mr. Dewinter decried the current fashion of multiculturalism which, he said, “attacks national identity the way AIDS attacks the body’s immune system,” leaving Europeans defenseless against cultural invasion. But perhaps the most disturbing part of his talk consisted of quotations from Muslims themselves. Abu Imran, one of the Islamic leaders of Belgium, has said:
We won’t rest until Europe has become an Islamic state. And then we will march on toward the White House and Vatican. We will carry out the promise of our dear Prophet. In a peaceful way, but we will continue until the Lord grants us victory.
Haouri Boumedienne, president of Algeria, has said:
One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it.
Recep Erdoğan, the current prime minister of Turkey, says: “Mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets, believers our soldiers.” He has also said that “democracy is like a train, we shall get out when we arrive at the station we want.”
Fortunately, noted Mr. Dewinter, there are many increasingly influential opposition parties in Europe in addition to his own, which are fighting what he called the “hereditary enemy of Europe:” the Northern League in Italy, the Freedom Party of Austria, the Swedish Democrats, the Danish People’s Party, and others. They are joining forces across the continent to preserve the civilization and culture of the West.
The next speaker was South African Dan Roodt, the founder of the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group (PRAAG). In a very thought-provoking speech, Dr. Roodt described the mentality that led to the psychological capitulation of whites. He pointed out that despite ritual condemnation of “imperialism,” the white man’s colonial burden really was one of uplift and dedication. He quoted Kipling: “Send forth the best ye breed/Go bind your sons to exile/To serve your captive’s need.” Even after colonialism, the metropolitan powers supported their former charges through direct aid, medicine, and transfers of technology. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is an example of massive private charitable transfers to the Third World, especially to Africa.
At the same time, women in the West are abandoning their traditional role as homemakers, and many now put more effort into careers than into child-rearing. Dr. Roodt said it could even be argued that by seeking employment outside the home, white women have shouldered the burden of continued wealth transfer to the Third World.
In South Africa itself, whites are ruled by blacks who make no secret of their desire to Africanize the economy and culture. Virtually all salaried positions in government and large businesses are now filled by blacks, though whites can still find jobs as consultants. Dr. Roodt said that whites are now, in effect, the “intellectual slaves” of their black rulers. At the same time, whites pay in taxes 63 times more than the benefits they receive from government. Because of racial preferences and anti-white bias, there are now 700,000 poor whites, many of whom live in miserable shanty towns.
The dispossession of whites is symbolized in the most brutal way by the continued torture and slaughter of white farmers. As Dr. Roodt noted, the world looks on with indifference at this slow genocide of families who may have plowed the same earth for generations.
Dr. Roodt pointed out that South Africa and Zimbabwe are simply the end points of the trends set in motion throughout the West, as immigration thins the ranks of whites. The future of the West, he said, will be played out in the next 40 or 50 years, but the future of the Afrikaner will be decided in the next two to five years. “The lessons of our struggle will be invaluable for the coming existential war of the West,” he warned.
The next speaker, education expert Robert Greenberg, spoke about the lies whites seem to feel compelled to tell to and about blacks. Michael Holzman of the Schott Foundation, he noted, claimed that 63 percent of blacks drop out of Chicago public schools because they do not have access to advanced math classes. Mr. Holzman never explained how students who are puzzled by basic math would be helped by advanced courses.
When Michigan voters banned racial preferences in higher education, the University of Michigan’s president, Mary Sue Coleman, said the ban would set back the university’s quest for intellectual excellence even though it was clear that the beneficiaries of preferences rarely met even minimal academic standards.
Dr. Greenberg argued that whites tell lies like this for several reasons: It is a way to endorse the black agenda and thereby take the side of the virtuous oppressed; it may be possible to say something slightly unpleasant about blacks if it is smothered in flattering lies; saying fantastic things about blacks is a rite of passage that eases whites into the ranks of the elite. In a black-humor vein, Dr. Geeenberg suggested that it may be a way some liberals vent their contempt for blacks — that a white who has gone before the NAACP to say that every black child has the brains to do well in college may go home later and tell his wife that blacks are so stupid they actually believe this rubbish.
Dr. Greenberg was pessimistic about the likelihood of whites beginning to speak truthfully. Lies win plaudits, honors, and promotions, while the truth — which is usually unpleasant — is greeted with mock horror and obloquy. Lies will therefore continue to drive out truth, as the country continues its decline.
In my talk, I characterized the present age as one of “belief in miracles.” I recalled the rapture that greeted Mr. Obama’s election and inauguration, and attributed it to the realization among Americans that race continues to be a colossal problem that cannot be solved without miracles. I listed a few of the miracles in which we must believe: that the effect of genes can be overcome by environment, that diversity can be transmuted from a weakness into a strength, and that a ballooning population will somehow not thwart our goal of energy independence nor burden the environment.
I noted that one “anti-miracle” the country actually can count on is the sustained cowardice and stupidity of whites. I cited the vote in Congress last year to remove the ban on racial discrimination from the enabling legislation of the Coast Guard Academy. The academy is now officially free to discriminate in its admissions, prompting the black congressman Elijah Cummings to say with a straight face that blacks are now finally ensured of federal protections against discrimination. I noted that 86 percent of US senators and congressmen are still white, and wondered what they thought as they voted for a provision that was clearly meant to discriminate against their own children.
I chided some race realists for believing in their own miracle: that the economic and social systems will soon collapse, and that a strong white racial consciousness will emerge from the rubble. Instead, I urged whites to take advantage of the rising anger against the direction in which the country is moving and to undertake the hard, painstaking work of politics. Even just a few race realists on school boards or city councils would have a huge psychological and propaganda effect, and would begin to channel current frustrations in promising directions.
I concluded by saying that although times have never been better for success, the chances of success do not matter because whites have a duty to their ancestors and to their descendants to work for the preservation of their people and culture.
Attorney Hugh Kennedy described the prospects for hate-speech legislation in the United States and ways to resist it. He pointed out that the robust First Amendment protections we take for granted are the result of judicial rulings that are surprisingly recent and vulnerable. In fact, only a few years after the adoption of the First Amendment, Supreme Court justices presided over Sedition Act trials that were plainly repugnant to the First Amendment as we understand it today. The rationale for these trials was that the amendment prohibited only prior restraint of certain kinds of speech, not punishment after the fact. It was not until 1931 that the Supreme Court struck down a government act as inconsistent with freedom of speech.
Mr. Kennedy suggested how a future Supreme Court might subvert its own recent precedents and uphold a hate-speech law. It could simply purport to return to a pre-1931 “original understanding” or prior-restraint conception of the free speech clause. The Court could even point to the 1952 Beauharnais decision, which upheld an Illinois hate-speech law and has never been expressly overturned. The Court could also adopt Justice Ruth Ginsburg’s recommendation that our courts pay more attention to European law, which overwhelmingly favors hate-speech legislation. Mr. Kennedy nevertheless pointed out that the Court’s rulings that establish an “imminent threat of lawlessness” standard for suppression of political speech are very strong, as is the American culture of freedom of expression.
Mr. Kennedy also described less direct means of government interference with speech, including enforcement of foreign hate-speech judgments in US courts, hate-crimes prosecutions, and federal, state and local campaigns of harassment, defamation and surveillance. Mr. Kennedy urged the potential targets of hate-speech legislation to use the judicial system vigorously to resist such efforts. The affected groups may lack resources and experience with the system, but useful allies may be found among civil rights groups that are often hostile on other issues. Mr. Kennedy warned that cynicism about the courts does not excuse passivity in the face of threats to our freedoms.
Raymond Wolters spoke about some of the work he has done for his forthcoming book, tentatively titled, Profiles in School Reform. He plans to devote a chapter to the arguments of race realists and their attempts to end the blackout on race and IQ. He noted that the mainstream media give the impression that only a few “maverick” psychometricians think race has any link to IQ, but that ever since the famous — but anonymous — Snyderman and Rothman survey of 1988, this has been proven completely wrong.
The pressure of ignorant conformity is nevertheless immense. Even James Watson, the Nobel-prize-winning discoverer of the double helix, could not endure the criticism he suffered when he suggested that the genes for intelligence would eventually be discovered and would be found to be unequally distributed among races. He apologized “unreservedly,” and claimed “there is no scientific basis” for the views he expressed.
Prof. Wolters also spoke of Chinese-American Professor Bruce Lahn’s research, which found evidence for racial variation in the distribution of mutations that affect brain development. At first, Prof. Lahn stood his ground, saying that “society will have to grapple with some very difficult facts,” but he, too, recanted, concluding that “some knowledge might not be worth having.”
Prof. Wolters gave other examples of submission to dogma but closed with the more encouraging example of John Derbyshire, who spoke about racial differences to the Black Law Students Association of the University of Pennsylvania. His comments were received politely by the students, and despite criticism, Mr. Derbyshire retains his position as one of National Review’s best known writers. He even received much praise for speaking the truth and refusing to back down.
Prof. Wolters concluded that the arguments for race realism are strong and widely known, and that society will eventually have to grapple with them.
David Yeagley, the great-great-grandson of the Comanche leader Bad Eagle, spoke movingly in a talk entitled, “A Comanche View of White America,” which was received with a standing ovation. He began by explaining that even as a young child, he was vividly aware of the threats to his people and culture. When his grade-school teacher asked the otherwise all-white class to draw pictures to encourage fire prevention, he drew teepees engulfed in flames, along with the words, “Stop fires.”
And yet, despite the dispossession of the Indian by the white man, Dr. Yeagley cannot bring himself to hate whites; he admires them. He noted that no other conquering people ever named its states, cities, rivers, and even athletic teams and advanced weapons after a conquered enemy. To call an attack helicopter the Apache, he said, is to pay homage to the bravery and prowess of the defeated enemy.
Dr. Yeagley fully recognizes the crisis the now-denatured white man has created for himself, as he lets others push him off his land. The great tragedy is that although the Indian fought valiantly to protect his land, the white man has lost his warrior virtues and is giving up without a struggle. The American white man, said Dr. Yeagley, has voluntarily become the “Indian of the 21st Century,” adding, “Let me be the first to welcome you onto the reservation.”
Liberals, he said, have made Indians their favorite anti-white mascots and cannot comprehend an Indian who admires the warrior qualities of the white man of old. Conservatives, as well, shut their ears when an Indian warns them that they are destroying their country through immigration. Dr. Yeagley said that he used to speak often to conservative and neo-con groups, but that invitations are drying up. He added that after having listened to conference speakers from South Africa, Europe, and the United States describe the threats to white civilization, he found the invitation to speak at an American Renaissance conference to be perhaps the most rewarding of his career.
Adrian Davies, a British trial lawyer, spoke about nationalist developments in Europe. He noted that although generous welfare cushions the blows of economic hard times better than in the United States, the current crisis is causing many Europeans to rethink the directions in which their nations are heading. He noted the significance of British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent concession that “multiculturalism has failed.” He added that although British elites can insulate themselves from the effects of demographic transformation, the common people now understand that many aspects of Third-World immigration are incompatible with British values.
Mr. Davies surveyed the recent progress of nationalist parties in such places as Austria, Switzerland, France, and Eastern Europe, but lamented the inability of some nationalists to set aside ancient quarrels in the name of a united front to defend Europe. He pointed out that, for example, the Hungarian nationalists of Jobbik are at daggers drawn with the Slovak National Party because it supports the mandatory use of the Slovak language, which Jobbik considers a form of oppression of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia. It also has a dispute with the otherwise largely compatible Greater Romania Party over Transylvania. German and Polish nationalists disagree about the border that was redrawn after the Second World War.
The unfortunate effect is that nationalists have had great difficulty establishing parliamentary groups in the European Parliament, which confer considerable powers and privileges. Nationalists may also be unable to put together a single list for future elections to the Euro-Parliament in which some seats will be reserved for groups capable of agreeing on Europe-wide single lists, but Mr. Davies expressed the hope that Europeans will soon settle these family squabbles and unite to preserve the West.
Sam Dickson, who has addressed every AR conference since the first one in 1994, began by noting that the cancellation of the 2011 conference showed just how unsure of itself today’s racial orthodoxy has become. The city of Charlotte fears us and suppresses us precisely because our ideas are powerful and our vision is clear.
Mr. Dickson then made a heartfelt statement about the goals of our movement. He first noted that we should not be called “race realists” but, instead, “racial communitarians” or “racial idealists.” He pointed out that a sense of community with one’s racial kin is healthy and normal, and argued that to ask whites to turn their backs on their race and people is like asking parents to turn their backs on their own children.
He said he longed for a white ethnostate that would be a home for all whites — rich and poor, conservative and liberal, hetero- and homosexual, brilliant and slow — in which they could be confident that their traditions and peoplehood would flourish. He pointed out that only an ethnostate can practice a genuine tolerance for all, as opposed to the brittle, agonizing “tolerance” of the multi-cultural experiment. Whereas an ethnostate automatically accepts and nurtures all its members, an “idea nation” of the kind proposed for the United States is constantly fractured by the incompatible demands of warring ethnicities. Ironically, he added, it is only ethnostates that can preserve the true and beautiful diversity of man, which is destroyed in the multi-culti mish-mash.
Mr. Dickson described the creation of the state of Israel, reestablished after 2000 years of diaspora, as the most powerful expression of peoplehood in the history of the world. In that sense, he said, racial idealists are Euro-Zionists, striving for a land that reflects our values and aspirations, just as Israel reflects the values and aspirations of its people. His conclusion of the conference was met with a sustained standing ovation.
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A R T I C L E
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Boxy Lays Down His Life
The loyalty of a South African farm dog.
Boxy was a dog of uncertain descent, but by no means ugly. He was big, with a beautiful head, big ears, and friendly brown eyes. One of his parents must have been a Mastiff type and the other probably a Labrador.
While driving back to the farm one day, Granddad saw a shoe box lying next to the road, which actually moved. Curious, he stopped to investigate, and found a skinny little puppy inside, already very weak from exposure and lack of oxygen. Granddad was an animal lover, and immediately gave the puppy heart massage, while blowing air into its tiny nose. He was overjoyed to see the little guy open his eyes and begin breathing regularly.
He took the puppy home, where it thrived under his and Grandma’s love, and grew into a massive dog. They named him Boxy, because of how Granddad found him, and the older Boxy got the more intelligence he showed. But his biggest virtue was absolute loyalty. Whenever his masters stepped outside the house he was their ever-present security guard and companion.
When Granddad and Grandma left the farm for town, Boxy would take up a position on the porch, and would not move until he heard their vehicle coming down the road. When Grandma got out to open the gate to the garden around the house, Boxy would clear the yard of any possible danger — even the poultry pecking about. Then he would greet them with a wide grin and happy brown eyes, his tail swinging in wide arcs. After Granddad parked the vehicle, Boxy would personally escort them into the house.
As the number of farm murders increased in South Africa, we tried to convince Granddad to sell the farm, but he refused. It was where he and Grandma had spent their whole lives. We therefore suggested that he get another big dog for outside, and have Boxy start sleeping inside for better protection. Granddad bought a Rottweiler named Nero.
I was on my way home after visiting a client in the Northern Cape, when I suddenly felt the urge to visit my grandparents. It meant going 60 miles out of my way, but something drove me to it.
Thinking back, I should have started to worry when I didn’t get an answer to my cell-phone call. I thought they just could not hear their telephone ringing. When I stopped my car in front of the gate, I could tell something was wrong. The gate was open, I couldn’t see the dogs, the doors of the homestead were open, and Granddad’s vehicle was not in its shed. It felt as if an icy hand had gripped my heart. Cautiously, I walked towards the house, and then I saw Nero, lying at the corner of the house, shot dead.
At the stairs to the porch, I saw a young black man lying on his back, with his arms badly chewed and his throat bitten away. A broad trail of blood led from him, up to the porch. I followed this trail into the house to the kitchen, and that was where I found them. Granddad and Grandma were lying next to each other, their feet, hands, and heads crushed with a bloody hammer that was lying on a table. On top of them lay Boxy, as if he were trying to protect them from the horror. His hind quarters and rib cage were hacked to pieces with a machete, his right hind leg was hanging by a sinew, and the left side of his face, lying on Grandma’s chest, was attached to his skull by only a piece of skin.
It was Boxy who had left the trail of blood. What an effort it must have taken for him to crawl up those stairs, through the house, and all the way to the kitchen to join his beloved owners in death. I think Granddad must have still been alive when the dog joined them, as his broken hand was on Boxy’s head, and he and Boxy were looking into each other’s eyes.
White clouds of insanity
While the police scurry around looking for clues, I sit on the porch, shivering under a blanket during the hottest month of the year. A sympathetic sergeant has brought me a cup of sweet black tea, which I try to force down. It is as if I am part of a horror movie. The blood, the mutilated bodies, the silence over the whole place. Then I realize that even the birds are quiet. I try to stay calm, but there are white mists clouding any effort to think. As I try to make sense of this, I realize that I am insane with rage. I am looking for someone to kill in the most horrific way possible.
I wonder where God was, to allow two such beautiful and religious people to die in such a terrible way. “Where the hell were you? Why — why — why?” I say under my breath, but there is no answer. I look at the body of the unknown black man, and think: “I hope you died slowly, suffocating in your own blood, you bastard!”
Suddenly I realize I must let the family know. As if in a trance, I walk to the telephone and call my parents. When my mother answers the phone, I say: “Mom, I’ve got bad news.” She senses my distress and shouts: “God, Heinrich what’s wrong?”
“Mom, its Granddad and Grandma” I say, cringing inside, because I know how she must feel. Suddenly my dad is on the phone, and as always his voice brings some feeling of calmness. In a monotone I tell him what happened, and ask him not to bring Mom. She must not see this. He understands immediately. As I hang up and look around, I start wondering how I am going to muster the courage and strength to clean up this place. All the blood . . .
My thoughts are interrupted. They are putting the two broken bodies, wrapped in body bags, into a dirty police vehicle. I can’t believe that two, dear elderly people are being put into such a dirty vehicle, and the white clouds start to spread over my thoughts again. I experience the same, intense hatred. Those responsible must be punished! They must suffer!
The sergeant brings me a sandwich, but it tastes like rubber, and I put it down. I wonder if I will ever have an appetite again. Another vehicle comes to a halt in front of the house, and a friendly blonde woman gets out. She looks at me sympathetically, and tells me they clean up crime scenes, so I need not worry. As soon as the police are finished, they will clean up the house. I try to smile appreciatively.
Then I see two policemen dragging Granddad’s beloved dog from the house by his hind legs. I want to shout at them to treat the dog with respect, but I don’t. I just take Boxy from them, and carry him to the cooling room. Then I fetch the other dog. Suddenly I remember the livestock and start walking to the pens. All the time I fight the white clouds in my brain and in my thoughts. Then I see the blood on my clothes, and wonder how much of it is Granddad and Grandma’s.
Everything is quiet at the pens. All the cattle stand still, watching the house, as if they are afraid they will once again hear screams. As if I were sleep walking, I start to put fodder in the troughs, and fill up the watering bins.
The first relief from this terrible ordeal comes. The neighbors, Willie and Erica, come walking towards me. They have known me since I was a child, and suddenly I can’t hold back the tears. The two old people hold me to them as if I were their child, and I let out all my pain. The crying of a grown man has a forlornness of its own. It is filled with the anger, frustration and pain that you feel because you could not prevent this tragedy, because even your manliness was not enough to protect your loved ones. As the two old people hold me, I feel a bit of calm coming back. The white clouds of insanity are receding a bit — for now.
Today, Granddad, Grandma, and Boxy are buried together on the farm. It is where the willows hang over the stream that passes the house.
Mr. Zaayman is a businessman and internet columnist from Pretoria, South Africa, who plays a leading role in the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group (PRAAG). He accompanied Dr. Roodt to the AR recording session described in the previous article.
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A R T I C L E
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Saving the Negro Family
Patrick Moynihan and the black family breakup.
James T. Patterson, Freedom is Not Enough: the Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life — from LBJ to Obama, Basic Books, 264 pp., $26.95.
In 1965, Patrick Moynihan, then an obscure Labor Department bureaucrat, wrote a report for President Lyndon Johnson called The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. It drew attention to the then-shocking rate of black illegitimacy — 25 percent — and described the “tangle of pathology” in which lower-class blacks seemed to be trapped.
What came to be known as the Moynihan Report caused a huge stir. It was the first and most famous of a series of investigations into the deterioration of the black family that has continued with varying degrees of urgency to the present day. In Freedom is Not Enough, historian James T. Patterson, emeritus of Brown University, describes the effects of the report, recounts the life of its author, summarizes various academic attempts to explain black illegitimacy, and describes the policies that were meant to reduce it. His book is also an unwitting account of the floundering that comes from an unwillingness to face the facts about race.
Moynihan and his report
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was born in 1927 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but grew up in New York City. His father abandoned the family and he grew up poor. This gave him an abiding and undoubtedly genuine concern for children who grow up without fathers. He served in the Navy and eventually got bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tufts. He was ambitious, a skilled flatterer, and had a knack for cultivating useful connections. He had a brief stint in the Nixon administration but was otherwise a life-long Democrat with a typically Democrat faith in the power and inclination of government to do good. Negro uplift was one of his pet projects.
Moynihan was not yet 40 when he became an assistant secretary of labor in the Johnson administration. He caught the president’s eye, and helped write the speech from which Prof. Patterson has taken the title of this book. It was the famous Howard University commencement speech of 1965, in which Johnson explained the need for racial preferences. For blacks, he explained, “freedom is not enough.” It was not fair to cut the chains that had bound the Negro for centuries, put him at the starting line of a race, and expect him to compete. Johnson called for “a more profound stage of the battle for civil rights” that would achieve “not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and as a result.”
Moynihan genuinely believed that government could bring about equal results, and Johnson at least pretended to. Later that year when he lit the White House Christmas tree, Johnson announced that “these are the most hopeful times since Christ was born.” This was the era of “Great Society” legislation, some of which survives to this day: Medicare, Medicaid, and federal spending on education.
The Howard commencement speech drew much of its inspiration from what followed the colon in Moynihan’s The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. Although the report is now best known for the light it cast on black reproductive habits, the Howard speech reflected the spirit of its policy recommendations. Moynihan thought that the 25 percent black illegitimacy rate — the white rate was then 3 percent — was due mainly to the fact that many black men did not have jobs and were thus not marriageable. If nothing were done, illegitimacy and poverty would continue to spread, generation after generation, but if the government would just ensure that black men got good jobs, black women would want to marry them and the black family would be saved.
Underlying this optimism was a crucial, unsupported assertion: “There is absolutely no question of any genetic differential: intelligence potential is distributed among Negro infants in the same proportion and pattern as among Icelanders or Chinese or any other group.” Moynihan also insisted that the Negro’s problems stemmed from “three centuries of sometimes unimaginable mistreatment” and that “the principal challenge of the next phase of the Negro revolution is to make certain that equality of results will now follow.”
In other words, while the report hinted obliquely that blacks might have some responsibility for their plight, it served up the usual eyewash: Blacks were fully equal, wicked whites had held them back, and it was now up to whites to ensure “equality of results.” And yet, Moynihan — and by extension the Johnson administration — were met with waves of hate. Merely to notice reckless procreation was to “blame the victim.” To use the phrase “tangle of pathology” was to call prurient attention to degeneracy. The real pathology, claimed just about every black who could get on television or into print, was white racism. Feminists blasted Moynihan for assuming that single women were not as good at rearing children as married couples. All this put the administration on the defensive, and shifted the focus from the programs Moynihan was recommending.
Prof. Patterson actually seems to believe that as a consequence, “A historic moment for reforms to improve race relations may indeed have been lost,” and that if Johnson had not been distracted by the Vietnam War, laws to achieve “equality of results” could have been passed. He concedes that the Watts riots of August 1965, which killed 34 people, might have slightly dimmed the country’s enthusiasm for splashing out billions for blacks, but he clearly believes that government was then and may well still be capable of mighty works of uplift.
Moynihan was hurt by the criticism, but continued to make a combination of arguments that were, for the time, fairly bold. Slavery and racism had been, of course, terrible scourges, and meant that there must be explicitly “unequal treatment for the Negro” to make up for them. This was to take the form of racial preferences in education and hiring. Just giving blacks money would “pension the Negroes off” into idleness, so if the private sector would not hire blacks the government must concoct jobs for them. All his life, Moynihan believed that unemployment and poverty were the greatest enemies of the black family.
At the same time, blacks had to take responsibility for something. “Liberals,” he wrote in 1967, “must somehow overcome the curious condescension that takes the form of defending or explaining away anything, however outrageous, which Negroes, individually or collectively, might do.” He added that liberals were “preoccupied with white racism” and wallowing in “white guilt.” In 1968 he even went so far as to say that there should be “sharp curtailment of the freedom now enjoyed by low-income groups to produce children they cannot support.” Blacks therefore continued to hate him even while he continued to push for massive economic intervention on their behalf.
Unlike the present age, it was then possible for a white man who had earned the near universal ire of blacks to be held in high esteem by whites. In 1967, Life magazine published a six-page puff spread about Moynihan titled “Idea Broker in the Race Crisis.” By 1969, many people considered him the nation’s most prominent intellectual.
That same year, Moynihan went to work for Richard Nixon — this was his brief flirtation with Republicanism — as head of the newly-created Urban Affairs Committee. Nixon, who was far more concerned about the plight of blacks than liberals have ever acknowledged, wanted the Urban Affairs Committee to be the domestic equivalent of the National Security Council — and just as important.
In this position, Moynihan pushed for a committee that would review every relevant government program to see if it was helping or hurting the black family. Even more important, he persuaded Nixon to promote the Family Assistance Plan (FAP), which would have reformed welfare. Moynihan had always disliked AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) because he thought means-tested programs stigmatize recipients. FAP was essentially a guaranteed income for all working people with children that would remove the stigma of the dole. Above a certain level of income, FAP benefits would drop by 50 cents for every dollar earned, thus leaving an incentive for work. Two- as well as single-parent homes would get a government check, and this would do away with the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor.
In 1970, the House actually voted for this hugely expensive program 235 to 155, but FAP never made it through the Senate. The country was simply not ready for the massive transfers from whites it would have taken to achieve “equality of results.” Moynihan was bitterly disappointed, and Prof. Patterson laments the loss of yet another vital “moment” of opportunity.
But would large-scale handouts have converted blacks to marriage and monogamy? As Prof. Patterson himself notes, local tests of guaranteed income schemes found that they “moderately reduced work effort among recipients” and led to “higher rates among black families of marital breakup and divorce.” He writes that Moynihan was shocked by such findings. “We were wrong about guaranteed income!” he reportedly concluded. “It increases family dissolution by 70 percent, decreases work, etc.”
In 1970, the year he left the Nixon Administration, Moynihan got in trouble again for something he said about blacks. He noted that things were improving for blacks as racism faded, and the country might “need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades.” There was too much agitation about the plight of the Negro, and race relations could benefit from a period of “benign neglect.”
Needless to say, blacks were incensed at the suggestion of “neglect” of any kind, and Moynihan went through another phase of vilification. His son was turned away at the door of a friend’s house when the mother learned who his father was. A daughter’s schoolmate showed her a book that said Moynihan was someone who would have to be killed if blacks were to make progress.
As it is today, during the 1960s and ’70s, it was safest for whites to say nothing at all about the reproductive habits of blacks, but if they hazarded an opinion as to why marriage was disappearing among blacks there were only three options: slavery, 20th-century racism, or a combination of the two. It was typical to argue in the 1960s that slavery did not permit proper marriage, that few slaves knew their fathers, and that masters had so stripped black men of dignity that their conception of fatherhood never recovered. Charles Silberman, writing in 1966 in Crisis in Black and White, claimed that slavery “had emasculated Negro males, had made them shiftless and irresponsible and promiscuous.”
By the 1970s, scholars had begun to point out that all available records suggested that family life was quite stable under slavery, and that most slave children appear to have grown up with both parents. Besides, if marriage had been obliterated by slavery, what had brought it back at all? Black illegitimacy rates rose from 17 percent in 1940 to 18 percent in 1950 to 22 percent in 1960, to 25 percent in 1965. By the 1970s, they were creeping into the 30 and 40 percent range. It was absurd to claim that slavery made the black illegitimacy rate double from 1940 to 1970.
Social scientists then had to scramble for uniquely 20th century evils committed by whites on which to pin the blame. Whites miseducated black children, they herded blacks into ghettos far from jobs, they deprived them of role models, they jailed them for spurious reasons, they refused to hire them, they depicted them insultingly on television, they circulated “negative stereotypes” about them, etc., etc. None of this straining made much sense, given that legal and social barriers were falling at a great rate. During the 1970s, Moynihan began to think it had become impossible to speak or write rationally about black family life.
Inconvenient facts
That was true and continues to be true, because racial orthodoxy has no room for inconvenient facts. Prof. Patterson actually concedes that family patterns in West Africa, from which most slaves were brought, are “more fluid than European models.” However, he refrains from pointing out that some traditional African societies are matrilineal because so few people know who their fathers are; the only family trees anyone can draw with certainty show descent only from the mother.
Nor does Prof. Patterson point out that marriage has essentially disappeared among blacks in Canada, Britain, and Jamaica, which have very different histories of race relations from that of the United States. Any suggestion that American blacks were simply reverting to ancestral patterns would have been met with as much outrage in the 1960s or ’70s as it would today. Could this perhaps have been the sort of thing Moynihan was hinting at when he wrote in 1972 that “I accept that in the social sciences some things are better left unsaid”?
In any case, in 1975, Moynihan got himself appointed ambassador to India, and in 1977 he started a 24-year career in the Senate. He was no longer in a position in which he could afford to say anything original or provocative on the subject of race.
In 1984, it was Charles Murray who said something genuinely useful about social policy in his book, Losing Ground. Dr. Murray made a strong case for the view that welfare promotes dependence and irresponsibility. If the state rewards every teenage mother with a free apartment and a monthly check, there will be a lot more teenage mothers, especially black ones. Prof. Patterson mentions Losing Ground but only to dismiss its arguments. What prompted the illegitimacy boom? “Poverty, poor education, and (among blacks) the miseries of inner-city existence.”
Prof. Patterson rather prefers the black scholar William Julius Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged, which appeared in 1987. Prof. Wilson conceded that racism was less a problem for blacks than it had been in the past, and even praised Moynihan for having realized so early that black illegitimacy was a serious problem. Prof. Wilson argued that blacks were the victims of “macroeconomic forces” that were reducing the number of unskilled and factory jobs, thus putting blacks out of work. Prof. Williams summarizes Prof. Wilson’s solutions: “long-term programs to attack large structural weaknesses in the economy.” Whatever a foggy phrase like that actually means, it is still within the bounds of acceptable discourse because it means that America, not blacks, must change.
Meanwhile, Moynihan was still in the Senate still lobbying for more money to pay for more Negro uplift. In 1983 he actually accused President Ronald Reagan of deliberately running up deficits so as to have an excuse to cut welfare spending. A few black conservatives, however, were daring to propose that blacks themselves should take responsibility for their lives. Glenn Loury, now at Brown University, wrote about “a profound need for moral leadership among blacks.”
During the period Prof. Patterson covers in this book, the only really significant government action was President Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform. What was known officially as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act abolished AFDC, which began in 1935 as a program to help widows with children, and replaced it with TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families). AFDC had an increasingly bad name because women could stay on it for years, and the check increased with every new illegitimate baby. Over 70 percent of the long-term recipients were black.
TANF set a lifetime limit of five years of benefits (though with exceptions for “worthy cases”) and required that dole payments be tied to job training. Moynihan, like most liberals, shrieked that Americans would be driven into the streets and children would be sleeping on subway grates. In fact, the new system was a huge success, with the welfare rolls dropping from 12.1 million to 4.1 million, the first real decline ever. No one starved to death. “Moynihan had underestimated the adaptability of the poor,” notes Prof. Patterson. He was hardly the first.
Illegitimacy took a dip but then kept on climbing, and scholars kept recycling the same foolish theories. Black men had “the vicious desire to impregnate and abandon black women,” wrote Orlando Patterson in 1998, “as if Afro-American men were unable to shake off the one gender role of value (to the master) thrust upon them during slavery, that of progenitor.”
Prof. Patterson begins to glimpse the truth of the matter when he wonders whether people may be influenced by “powerful cultural changes that neither government nor private efforts could overcome.” The latest figures now put US illegitimacy rates at a staggering 72 percent for blacks, 66 percent for American Indians, 53 percent for Hispanics, 29 percent for whites, and 17 percent for Asians. Whites are now well past the figure Moynihan found disturbing in blacks 45 years ago.
As Prof. Patterson points out, most of the developed world has shrugged off the stigma of bastardy. Throughout the 1990s, the illegitimacy rate in Denmark was at 45 to 46 percent, and at 66 percent in Greenland and Iceland. Sweden went from 47 to 54 percent, and Norway from 38 to 48 percent. There were exceptions. Greece kept illegitimacy rates at 2 to 3 percent and Switzerland at six to seven. Japan famously kept its rate at 1 to 2 percent. Outside the West, illegitimacy ranges from 70 to 80 percent in El Salvador and Panama to low single digits in most Muslim countries.
However, as Prof. Patterson notes, for whites, illegitimacy need not mean fatherlessness, as it almost always does for blacks. He points out that cohabiting Swedes are more likely to stay together than married Americans. Whether they marry or not, whites are more likely than blacks to do their duty to their children.
Many things no doubt contributed to increased illegitimacy: the decline of religions that condemned it; greater urbanization and the resulting loss of communities that censured it; the selfishness and independence that come with greater wealth; and an increasing preoccupation with personal indulgence rather than social obligation. Effective contraception and liberalized abortion could have reduced the illegitimacy rate by making it easier to prevent or end childbirth out of wedlock, but they had the opposite effect. They made it much safer to have sex without marriage, and a steady diet of promiscuous sex without marriage led to childbirth without marriage.
What Moynihan and Prof. Patterson and the rest of the liberal herd failed to understand was that “racism” had essentially nothing to do with it. How could even the most malevolent white people make blacks have irresponsible sex? How — even if they wanted to — could they prevent black men from sticking around to support their children?
Poverty and lack of jobs had very little to do with it either. Traditionally, Americans did not marry until they could afford it, and did not have children until they married. A woman who became a mother without a man’s support faced both contempt and poverty, so almost all women avoided it. Blacks broke the rules more often than whites because they always do, but many still shunned illegitimacy. When the sanctions against it began to fade, and welfare took the place of a man’s wages, there was little reason to marry.
Blacks living in every white-majority country quickly went back to African habits of procreation. Indeed, it may be that the proper question is not what destroyed black marriages but what caused them temporarily to appear in the first place. There is evidence for the view that blacks are simply doing what blacks have always done, and that it was only strong pressure from the surrounding white society that caused them to deviate temporarily from ancient patterns.
It is the disappearance of marriage among whites and even some Asians that is a departure from traditional norms, and to the extent that it means fatherlessness for their children it is an alarming departure. It is among these groups that modernity is causing real changes in behavior. What would bring down the white illegitimacy rate? The abolition of all public support for indigent mothers. If single mothers had only disapproving relatives to look to for support, out-of-wedlock childrearing would once again become a grim experience, especially for the poor. The stigma of illegitimacy would return, and there would be less of it.
Prof. Paterson understands none of this. He still thinks that with the right will and enough money, government can give fathers to lonely children. Just what the government is supposed to do that it has not yet tried — a guaranteed middle-class income for every layabout and teenage mother? — he doesn’t say. But he ends his book with yet another repetition of Johnson’s foolish jabbering about how federal bureaucrats must see to it that blacks enjoy “equality as a fact and a result.” Forty-five years since the Howard commencement talk some people have learned nothing.
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I N T H E N E W S
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O Tempora, O Mores!
Naval Diversity
Rear Admiral Anthony Winns, who is black, is inspector general of the US Navy. In a recent interview, Admiral Winns talked about how to improve the service:
Diversity is a strategic imperative for the United States Navy. We defend the greatest nation in the world . . . [G]iven the changing demographics, if an organization like the United States Navy wants to be relevant and wants to tap the most talented and the best and brightest — who are our most precious resources — then you have to go where the talent is.
Diversity is critical to mission accomplishment. We’ve got to access, mentor and retain the best talent available. New ideas and diversity of thought are vital to getting your goals accomplished in any organization, and it’s no different in the United States Navy. [Luke Visconti, The Future of the Navy Lies in Diversity, DiversityInc, com, Jan. 19, 2011.]
Illegally Expensive
According to Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, welfare payments to the children of illegal aliens cost county taxpayers $600 million in 2010. Add law enforcement and medical costs, and the total comes to more than $1.6 billion, “not including the hundreds of millions of dollars for education,” he says.
Isabel Alegria, communications director at the California Immigrant Policy Center, says it’s unfair to lump together the costs of illegal immigrants and their US-born offspring. “Those children are US citizens, children eligible for those programs,” she says.
Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell points out that it is illegal alien parents who collect the money on behalf of their children, and that they are a “burden” on all taxpayers, including legal immigrants. “The problem is illegal immigration. Their parents evidently immigrated here in order to get on social services. We can no longer afford to be HMO to the world.”
A study released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform last summer put the total cost of illegals to US taxpayers at $113 billion, with California’s share coming to $21.8 billion. [Welfare Tab for Children of Illegal Immigrants Estimated at $600M in LA County, Fox News, Jan. 19, 2011.]
Smart and Serious
Older readers will remember the 1970s television program, Charlie’s Angels, which was about three beautiful, resourceful, and tough female private detectives who worked for a mysterious, unseen employer. The show starred white actresses Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith, and most notably, Farrah Fawcett, in the role that made her famous.
ABC is bringing “Charlie’s Angels” back to television this year, and while the premise is the same, some things have changed. The location is Miami rather than Southern California, and the role of Kate, the leader, will be played by black soap opera actress Annie Ilonzeh. She is “a smart and athletic ex-policewoman who is a master of martial arts.” She’s also “the most serious [of the angels] but also knows how to let her hair down and have a great time.” The other two roles have yet to be cast, but the Miami setting and name of one, Marissa, suggests a Hispanic. [General Hospital Star Annie Ilonzeh is First to be Cast in New Charlie’s Angels TV Series, Daily Mail (London), Jan. 21, 2011.]
Mandatory Arabic Hits a Snag
The US Department of Education considers Arabic a “language of the future.” Last summer it awarded five school districts five-year, $1.3 million grants for classes in Arabic language and culture. One of the districts was the Mansfield Independent School District in Mansfield, Texas. Arabic classes would be optional at most schools, but mandatory at two: Cross Timbers Intermediate School and Kenneth Davis Elementary School.
Most parents weren’t happy when they heard about the plans. Some didn’t want the classes to be mandatory, while others thought they would promote Islam. Superintendent Bob Morrison says the classes will not teach religion. According to the grant, however, the curriculum covers government, art, traditions, and history, and will almost certainly touch on Islam. “The school doesn’t teach Christianity, so I don’t want them teaching Islam,” says parent Baron Kane.
Middle Eastern immigrant Kheirieh Hannun welcomes the classes, believing they will help her son learn more about his culture and “broaden the minds” of others. Parent Trisha Savage agrees. “I think it’s a great opportunity that will open doors. We need to think globally and act locally.”
Twenty-four hours after news of the mandatory Arabic classes broke in the Dallas media, the Mansfield district announced it was putting the program on hold until it heard more from parents, and hinted it may decide to return the grant. [Mansfield Arabic Program On Hold, KTVT -TV (Dallas), Feb. 8, 2010.]
Whites are getting closer to becoming a minority. Several states — Hawaii, California, New Mexico, Texas, along with the District of Columbia — are already “majority minority.” Nationwide, more than half of children three and under are non-white. White children are a minority in nursery schools, preschools and kindergartens in eight states — the four above, plus Mississippi, Arizona, Florida and Nevada — and will soon be in Georgia, Louisiana and Maryland.
As recently as 2000, whites made up 64.6 percent of all school enrollments, from preschool to graduate school. In 2009, that number had fallen to 58.8 percent. Brookings Institution demographer William Frey notes that the country is experiencing the biggest surge in immigration since the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, and that nearly all of the population growth is non-white, primarily Hispanic. Hispanics, for example, now account for 23 percent of US kindergartners, up from just 10 percent in 1989, and are nearly a fifth of all school enrollments from nursery school to college. [Sabrina Tavernise, Among Nation’s Youngest, Analysis Finds Fewer Whites, New York Times, Feb. 7, 2011.]
A recent study from the Pew Hispanic Center found that eight percent (350,000) of US newborns from March 2009 to March 2010 had at least one illegal alien parent. Of the illegal aliens giving birth during that period, nine percent had arrived in the US in 2008 or later, 30 percent had arrived between 2004 and 2007, with the rest before 2004. The study also found that 17 percent of newborns had parents who are legal immigrants, which means that 25 percent of US births were to foreigners, but all the babies were granted US citizenship. [Pew Hispanic Center: Eight Percent of U.S. Newborns are to Illegal Aliens, Foundation for Immigration Reform Legislative Update, Feb. 7, 2011.]
Diplomatic Quotas
Although Brazil is majority-black, it’s diplomatic corps is overwhelmingly white. In order to diversify the corps, in 2002 the Foreign Ministry began awarding scholarships to black students applying to the diplomatic academy. The scholarships haven’t helped — only 16 of the 200 recipients have actually entered the foreign service — so the Foreign Ministry will now try quotas. Beginning this year, at least 10 percent of the 300 applicants who pass the initial testing stage for admission into the academy must be black. [Brazil Sets Quota for Black Diplomatic Students, AP, Dec. 29, 2010.]
| L E T T E R S F R O M R E A D E R S |
This letter appeared in the Charlotte Observer on February 3, 2011.
Sir — As an American Renaissance conference attendee and repeat visitor to Charlotte, I was dismayed to learn that Charlotte Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon has used his position to pressure private businesses into refusing to host this conference.
Mr. Cannon is a member of the National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Black Political Caucus, Omega Psi Phi black fraternity, and a life member of the NAACP. He has spent much of his life serving the interests of his fellow blacks and dividing people along racial lines.
It is hypocritical of him to work to prevent whites from meeting privately to discuss issues of importance to them. It is despicable and immoral that he is using his office to stomp on the rights of free speech and association.
Jaenelle Antas, Indianapolis, Ind.
This is a sampling of the many letters we received from North Carolina in response to the cancellation of the AR conference.
Sir — I just walked in the door from hearing AR editor Jared Taylor speak [at his press conference] in Uptown Charlotte. . . . I told the white punks to shut up and let him speak when they tried to shout over his speech. I’ve also been writing in the comments section of the Charlotte Observer website denouncing what Patrick Cannon and others did to twist arms at the Sheraton Charlotte Airport Hotel.
Anyway, I hope logic, facts, and honest discussion will win the day. I read Paved With Good Intentions many years ago when it came out and found nothing racist in it at all. If it can’t be AR, then who is speaking up for the white minority?
Name Withheld, Charlotte, N.C.
Sir — I had never heard of your magazine, but you were on our local news this morning. Apparently the NAACP is appalled you are coming here for your conference. My thanks to them for turning me on to your publication. So far I like what I see, and intend to subscribe.
Name Withheld, Charlotte, N.C.
Sir — I was looking forward to your organization coming to Charlotte and my husband and I hoped to attend your conference. The way things turned out seems about right as of how things are starting to work nowadays when it comes to race. Blacks can complain about racism and how they are treated so badly, and about how all the cuts in social services will affect them. It makes me sick. I live near Charlotte. We have been hit hard by the recession in this area. I know plenty of white people who are poor and are now losing out, along with everyone else.
Even if you were supremacists, which you are clearly not, you don’t deserve discrimination from public officials; if it were the Black Panthers meeting in Charlotte they would not dare say a word against them. I have a feeling if you sue it will be swept under the rug because you are white, even though it is reverse racism. Also for only that reason it will probably not have much media coverage. If you’re not black or Latino you can’t speak out and get results from the government here.
Name Withheld, Claremont, N.C.
Sir — The radical left’s “civil rights” movement of the 1960s claimed to seek racial “equality,” but the radical left never sought equality — they just used that word to mask their true goal. What they were really after was a different kind of inequality, in which the totem pole would be turned upside down and whites, instead of being at the top, would be at the bottom. As you experienced for yourself in Charlotte, the totem pole has indeed been turned upside down. Our racial enemies are succeeding spectacularly.
Name Withheld, North Charleston, S.C.
Sir — I applaud you for going to Charlotte, and I hope that you do sue the city council for interfering with your First Amendment rights. If you had followed all of the nonsense surrounding the school district and the MLK holiday a few weeks ago [blacks were furious because the Charlotte school district had a snow makeup day on the King holiday], you would have realized just how many Charlotte folks are tired of the NAACP and all of the race-card-playing. The overall sentiment here is to tell them to take a hike.
Name Withheld, Charlotte, N.C.
Sir — I hope you sue the City of Charlotte and its two racist politicians. They play the race card and call whites racist and then everybody runs scared and gives them what they want. Why is it that only whites can be racist and not coloreds, negroes, blacks, African Americans or what else they might decide to go by. I will be subscribing to your publication. God bless you and keep up the good work.
Name Withheld, Charlotte, N.C.
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