April 2000
| American Renaissance magazine | |
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| Vol 11, No. 4 | April 2000 |
| CONTENTS |
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Don’t Write Off the Liberals
Non-white Liberals?
Turkey Should Not Join Europe
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers
| COVER STORY |
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Don’t Write Off the Liberals
A real racial movement cannot be exclusively conservative.
I am a liberal. I am also a white woman committed to my race and civilization. I am in favor of much of what is called “big government,” I think the Second Amendment is an anachronism, and I have been reading American Renaissance for more than five years. This may appear to be a shocking contradiction but, as I will show, it is not. Nor am I alone in my views. Admittedly, there are not very many of us liberals-cum-racial nationalists, but I predict there will be more. The white consciousness movement needs friends — from across the political spectrum — if it is to succeed, and it should not structure itself in a way that discourages potential allies needlessly.
To read AR is to get the impression that racial consciousness is a package deal based mostly on opposition; opposition to welfare, gun control, big government, women’s liberation, homosexuals, the United Nations, free trade, and maybe even public schools and social security. There is no logical reason racial consciousness has to be tied to these things, and to do so as explicitly as AR does risks failing to be — dare I say it? — inclusive. It is true that a clear understanding of race is today more likely to be found among people who also take certain positions generally called “conservative,” but there is nothing inherent or inevitable about this.
The Historical Perspective
As AR is fond of pointing out, until just a few decades ago, virtually every aspect of what is today called “racism” was part of the unquestioned fabric of American society. It should not be necessary to note that that fabric has always been made up of competing schools of thought, many of which were “liberal” by today’s standards. “Liberalism,” in that sense, was perfectly compatible with a healthy understanding of the meaning of race.
Although it probably saddens the hearts of most AR readers, it is possible to view American history as the steady triumph of “liberalism,” defined as the steady dismantling of tradition, hierarchy, and inequality in the search for equality. The very establishment of the country as a republic rather than a monarchy was in this sense liberal, as were a long list of Constitutional and legal changes: abolition of the property qualification for voters, direct election of senators, abolition of slavery, voting rights for women, compulsory education, the income tax, social security, organized labor, inheritance taxes, etc., etc., all the way up to the Americans With Disabilities Act and homosexual marriage.
Whether one sees this as the march of progress or the march of folly, my point is that however bitter the debates may have been over these policies, up until just a few decades ago neither side doubted that America was a European nation that could not survive if it ceased to be European. The suffragettes, for example, wanted votes for women — a radical idea at the time — but they were not “liberal” about race. And of course, many abolitionists, including Abraham Lincoln, wanted to free the slaves and then expel them from the country. In that sense, he was more “conservative” on race than the supporters of slavery; he didn’t want blacks in the country under any circumstances. My point is that ever since the founding of this country, it has been possible to work for far-reaching, even revolutionary change without upsetting race relations or losing sight of the racial identity of the nation.
It is easy to find “liberals” from America’s past who were also “racists.” Take William Jennings Bryan (1860 — 1925), certainly no reactionary. He thought blacks should be prevented from voting “on the ground that civilization has a right to preserve itself.” At the 1924 Democratic convention he spoke strongly against a motion to condemn the Ku Klux Klan, and helped defeat it. His Populist Party running mate in 1886, Tom Watson (1856 — 1924), went even further, calling blacks a “hideous, ominous, national menace.” In 1908 Watson ran for public office “standing squarely for white supremacy.” “Lynch law is a good sign,” he wrote. “It shows that a sense of justice yet lives among the people.” When he died, the leader of the American Socialist Party Eugene Debs (1855 — 1926) — certainly no conservative — wrote, “he was a great man, a heroic soul who fought for power over evil his whole life long in the interest of the common people, and they loved and honored him.”
Eugene V. Debs
The common people, certainly as represented by the Socialist Party, were not liberal on race. The socialists reached the height of their power during the early part of this century and at one time could claim 2,000 elected officials. They were split on the Negro question, but the anti-black faction was probably the stronger. The party organ, Social Democratic Herald, argued on Sept. 14, 1901 that blacks were inferior, depraved degenerates who went “around raping women and children.” The socialist press dismissed any white woman who consorted with blacks as “depraved.”
In 1903, the Second International criticized American socialists for not speaking out against lynching and other violence against blacks. The Socialist National Quorum explained that Americans were silent on the subject because only the abolition of capitalism and the triumph of socialism could prevent the further procreation of black “lynchable human degenerates.” At the 1910 Socialist Party Congress, the Committee on Immigration called for the “unconditional exclusion” of Chinese and Japanese on the grounds that America already had problems enough dealing with Negroes. There was a strong view within the party that it was capitalism that forced the races to live and work together, and that under Socialism the race problem would be solved for good by complete segregation.
In their racial views, American socialists were in complete agreement with Karl Marx. He and Friedrich Engels both despised blacks and used the English word “nigger” in private correspondence even though they wrote in German. Marx called his rival for leadership of the German socialism movement, Ferdinand Lassalle, “the Jewish nigger,” and described him thus, in a letter to Engels:
It is now entirely clear to me, that, as his cranial structure and hair type prove, Lassalle is descended from the Negroes, who joined Moses’ flight from Egypt (that is, assuming his mother, or his paternal grandmother, did not cross with a nigger) . . . The officiousness of the fellow is also nigger-like.
Samuel Gompers (1850 — 1924) epitomizes old-school American liberalism. He was a Jewish immigrant who founded the American Federation of Labor and worked constantly for “progressive” causes, but when it came to race, he was firmly in the white man’s corner.
Samuel Gompers
In a 1921 letter to the president of Haverford College explaining the AFL’s position on immigration, he wrote: “Those who believe in unrestricted immigration want this country Chinaized. But I firmly believe that there are too many right-thinking people in our country to permit such an evil.” In an AFL monograph entitled “Meat vs. Rice: American Manhood Against Asiatic Coolieism,” he wrote, “It must be clear to every thinking man and woman that while there is hardly a single reason for the admission of Asiatics, there are hundreds of good and strong reasons for their absolute exclusion.”
The author Jack London (1876 — 1916) was, in his day, the best known, most highly paid, and popular author in the world. He was a committed socialist but also a white supremacist. He wrote that socialism was “devised for the happiness of certain kindred races. It is devised so as to give more strength to these certain kindred favored races so that they may survive and inherit the earth to the extinction of the lesser, weaker races.” There were, however, some races that were not going to go quietly extinct but would have to be taken firmly in hand. In a little essay called “The Yellow Peril,” London worried about what would happen if the 400 million Chinese were ever taken in hand by the 45 million Japanese and led on a crusade against the white man:
Four hundred million indefatigable workers (deft, intelligent, and unafraid to die), aroused and rejuvenescent, managed and guided by forty-five million additional human beings who are splendid fighting animals, scientific and modern, constitute that menace to the Western world which has been well named the ‘Yellow Peril.’
Jack London
The English philosopher Bertrand Russell, (1872–1970) was another well-known socialist free-thinker, and eternal gadfly to all things conservatives hold dear — well, almost all things. On the race question he was entirely on Jack London’s side. In a 1923 book called Prospects of Industrial Civilization he wrote:
[The] white population of the world will soon cease to increase. The Asiatic races will be longer, and the Negroes still longer, before their birth rate falls sufficiently to make their numbers stable without help of war and pestilence . . . Until that happens, the benefits aimed at by socialism can only be partially realized, and the less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by methods which are disgusting even if they are necessary.
These people were socialists, but that did not blind them to race. They were for socialism and progress but whites came first.
It is also worth noting that a certain central European politician who had considerable influence on mid-century events was a National Socialist. The most famous racist in world history was no libertarian friend of big business. He was a typical rabble-rousing lefty who got his start in beerhalls, not in boardrooms.
Woodrow Wilson is on the enemies list of many conservatives who see his love affair with the League of Nations as a precursor to national capitulation and One World Government. But he, too, was a committed racialist who kept Princeton University all white when he was in charge, and made sure, as President, that white bureaucrats did not have to sit next to blacks. After a private showing of D.W. Griffith’s movie, Birth of a Nation, attended by selected senators, congressmen, and Supreme Court chief justice Edward White, he remarked admiringly that the film wrote “history with lightening.”
Woodrow Wilson
Not even feminism, which is today closely associated with anti-racism, had origins of which it can today be entirely proud. Margaret Sanger (1883 — 1966) was an early advocate of women’s liberation and was the founder of what is now Planned Parenthood. She was a militant advocate for female suffrage, published articles on sexuality in a socialist magazine named The Call, and in 1914 founded her own feminist journal, The Woman Rebel. Sanger was a revolutionary — but not when it came to race. She liked the racial hierarchy exactly as it was, and was friends with Lothrop Stoddard, who contributed to her publication.
There is nothing illogical or inconsistent about any of these examples of liberal “racism.” The natural human perspective is that of the tribe. Within the tribe there can be libertarians, socialists, Christians, atheists, and any number of antagonists who are nevertheless loyal tribesmen. Politics is supposed to end at the water’s edge, meaning that whatever differences Americans have among ourselves are set aside when we face the outside world. Although it never became a catch-phrase, it used to be that politics ended at the race’s edge too.
There is no reason why it should not continue to do so. There is no contradiction between virtually every traditionally liberal position and racial consciousness. In fact, many liberal policies require an understanding of racial differences. For example, I think government has an important role in helping look after people who cannot look after themselves. But I also think people support welfare programs only when there is a shared feeling of social obligation, which cannot be felt across racial lines. Just as Americans resent it when aliens go on welfare, they resent it when people who are visibly not their kin — but happen to be citizens — take public charity. As well they should. And no one should pretend that it is only whites who feel this way. If it turned out that whites were getting scholarships from the United Negro College Fund the black outcry would be deafening — even though most of the funding comes from whites.
I think welfare benefits at a certain level are a natural reflection of the way whites build societies. Every white nation, without exception, has moved in this direction. If the nanny state goes too far, as it did in Scandinavia, voters will rein it in, but the record suggests that welfare programs are inherent to white societies. It is only when non-whites who do not feel the same reciprocal web of obligations to society are included in welfare that we get abuse and degeneracy so flagrant that we are tempted to throw out the whole system. But it is silly to think that just because blacks and Hispanics make a mess of welfare that welfare itself is wrong.
The emancipation of women and the loosening of sexual restraints must also be understood in a racial context. It has opened up opportunities for many white women but has condemned huge numbers of black and Hispanic women to wretched single-motherhood. Here again we see racial traits that do — or do not — make “liberalism” possible, and it would be a mistake to condemn liberalism itself because of the havoc it has wrought on certain groups.
It is true that in Scandinavian countries illegitimacy rates are high — 65 percent in Iceland, 49 percent in Norway, and 54 percent in Sweden — but this does not mean for the Nordics what it means for Harlem. Swedes may not be marrying but they are cohabiting in exactly the kind of stable relationship that is necessary for children and which marriage is designed to ensure. High rates of black bastardy and its attendant horrors are the price Americans pay for “liberalism,” but in Sweden high rates of bastardy are essentially benign.
There are many “liberal” movements — animal rights, environmentalism, ecumenicism, homosexual rights — that have virtually no following among non-whites, and that unmask liberalism’s best-kept and most embarrassing little secret: only whites can really be liberals (the verdict is still out on north Asians). Try explaining women’s liberation to Africans, or telling Honduran millionaires there should be income redistribution, or arguing for religious freedom with Muslims, or telling Japanese to be nice to homosexuals, or even asking American blacks to recycle beer cans.
To repeat: A far-reaching liberalism involving redistribution of wealth requires, first of all, a homogeneous society in which people think of their nation as an extended family. Those feelings do not easily cross the racial divide. Second, liberalism succeeds only with whites. Although they refuse to admit it, the frustration of so many of today’s liberals comes from trying to make their policies work in a multi-racial society like our own and from trying to export them to places like Haiti. A dedicated liberal with any sense of the practical should be a dedicated separatist.
Liberalism is no different from so many other practices and institutions that sprang up among whites and are not appropriate for others. Our country keeps mindlessly trying to push democracy, rule of law, freedom of the press, etc. onto people for whom these things are meaningless. But it would be a mistake to note the racial aspect of the mismatch only when a “conservative” idea or institution fails to take root among non-whites. Liberalism deserves the same analysis.
Let me explain. It seems to me that AR has come very close to suggesting that private ownership of firearms is appropriate for whites but not for blacks. In effect it is saying it is superficial to conclude, as liberals do, that guns are to blame for our rates of violence. AR loves to go the NRA one better and argue that not only do people rather than guns kill people, it is certain people who kill people. Don’t throw out the Second Amendment, says AR; wake up to race.
Likewise, in the November 1999 issue there is an “O Tempora” item about the disproportionate number of non-whites who fall afoul of the University of Virginia honor code. AR writes that if non-whites succeed in junking the honor code, “one more institution built by whites for whites will have been set aside because non-whites could not meet its demands.” Once again, the AR argument is that we must not consider institutions or ideologies to be failures just because non-whites wreck them.
AR should judge liberalism by the same standards. It should be open to the argument that, like private ownership of weapons and the UVA honor code, liberalism is perfectly sound when practiced by the people among whom it originated and for which it was designed. To expand distinctively white institutions to include others is like putting a saddle on a cow. Do not be unfairly selective in this insight and apply it only when non-whites destroy “conservative” ideals. They destroy “liberal” ideals, too.
It is racial nuttiness that is our enemy, not liberalism, and they are not the same thing. You may disagree all you like with Margaret Sanger, Jack London, Tom Watson, and the turn-of-the-century socialists, but they had no illusions about race. The fatal mistake was when liberalism jumped the tracks and went soft-headed about blacks. Two very important things happened as a result. First, liberalism became hated as never before. To be sure, there were fights over women’s suffrage, the League of Nations, the New Deal, and all the rest, but only in recent times have large numbers of Americans thought of something called “liberalism” as pure poison.
They hate liberalism because of its association with affirmative action and non-white immigration but also because of liberalism’s very evident failure when applied to non-whites, particularly blacks. Liberalism became associated — unnecessarily and illogically in my view — with racial idiocy, and at the same time, because its programs were being applied to non-whites for whom they could not possibly work, liberalism appeared to be inherently defective.
People also hate liberalism because it was only when racial equality became one of its central goals that liberalism grew spiteful and incapable of gentlemanly disagreement. It was only when anti-racism became its central project that liberalism started using police-state psychology and began to excommunicate opponents. There were no jokes about the tyranny of “political correctness” until liberalism was poisoned by racial idiocy and became snarling and sanctimonious. It should be possible to mount a reasoned, libertarian attack on the welfare state without being called a Nazi and driven from respectable society. One should be able to argue for indirect election of senators, raising the voting age, restoring the property qualification for voters, or even establishing a monarchy without being considered much more than an eccentric. However, as soon as any of these ideas can be seen as hurting non-whites today’s liberalism requires that their advocates be banished to outer darkness. Racial foolishness has made liberalism so small-minded and intolerant that it can no longer muster wide support for the genuine benefits it has to offer.
The second thing that happened was that when liberalism and then the country lost its nerve on race and set in motion trends that could reduce whites to a minority, it meant that liberals had written their own death sentence. If the country really does become an Afro-Caribbean-Hispanic mishmash it is not going to meet either the racial or economic requirements for liberalism. You cannot have European-style welfare in a country with a Third-World population or a Third-World economy. It is all very well to pass laws that guarantee universal medical care, but if large parts of the economy are off the books, everyone cheats on taxes, and the doctors are on the take, you end up with private medicine anyway. In its new, anti-white incarnation, liberalism will destroy liberalism. In order to survive, liberalism must reverse course on race. Believe it or not, some of us liberals understand this.
Was Anti-Racism Inevitable?
In objection to everything I have written so far, some would argue that “anti-racism” is inherent to liberalism, that it was only a matter of time before the leveling impulse that characterizes so much of liberalism would eventually get around to race. This may sound plausible but it is wrong. Turn once again to the historical record. Marx, Engels, and the rest of the most determined levelers drew the line at race, as did virtually every historical figure who was “liberal” by today’s standards. They were not cleverly hiding an anti-racist agenda; like everyone else, they knew that politics stops at the race’s edge.
What’s more, liberalism always draws lines and will always be beaten back when it fails to draw lines. The greatest defeat of the leveling impulse was, of course, the collapse of Communism, but there have been other defeats: The states refused to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The hippie movement, communes, and Israeli kibbutzes have come and gone. Everyone now recognizes that capitalism creates wealth and competition stimulates efficiency. No one thinks foreign aid will cure the world’s problems.
But perhaps the most powerful argument against the view that anti-racism is inherent to liberalism is that not even passionate liberals are true anti-racists. There is no end to liberal hypocrisy about race. The judge who orders school busing but sends his children to private school, the “diversity” advocate who lives in a white neighborhood — these are now stock figures in the American comedy. Not one college official or corporate executive has ever offered his own job to an under-qualified non-white in the name of “diversity.” And this, of course, is why two aspects of the anti-racist movement — affirmative action and school busing — are on the ropes. Not even liberals are willing to send their children to school with blacks or be elbowed out of jobs.
I would add that it is only on race that liberalism is so offensively hypocritical. The people who want stronger gun laws, no tariff barriers, world government, high taxes, and more government look forward to living in the world they wish to legislate into existence. They genuinely don’t want gun laws for everyone else but concealed carry for themselves. There can still be honest, sincere liberalism — except when it comes to race.
I wish I could say that liberals were soon going to wake up from this anti-racist nightmare, and that Democrats will eventually become so ashamed of saying one thing and doing another that they will stop saying anything at all about race. Alas, not so. At one level my liberal friends know that they and their associates are hypocrites, but this doesn’t bother them. They are like Christians who thrill to the gospel of charity and humility but ignore it in their daily lives — and who still consider themselves strong Christians. When everyone is a hypocrite there are no penalties for hypocrisy, and when there are no penalties there is no pressure to change.
At the same time, most liberals make the same mistake about race that AR does: They think anti-racism is inseparable from liberalism. Their commitment to “social justice” (within the tribe) is far stronger than their commitment to non-whites, but they think they must give up the former if they abandon the latter.
Finally, liberals have so great an investment in anti-racism they cannot possibly write it off now. It is hard enough to change intellectual course in middle age; for most people it is impossible if it means conceding that people they hate were right after all. Can you imagine a Kennedy or a Clinton making even the slightest concession if it meant he agreed — if only in part — with David Duke? Not even the most overwhelming proof can drive men to that kind of humiliation. The battles over race have been too vicious for liberals to admit gracefully that they were wrong.
So what are we to do? First of all, it can be useful simply to understand that liberalism and anti-racism are not permanently linked, and to bear in mind which is the real enemy. Just because you meet someone who is “liberal” on some issue, do not assume he could never be an ally. If we are trying to build a movement for our people, it is counterproductive and wrong to think it must be exclusively conservative. If this is to be a larger movement, we should not tie racial consciousness to any political positions. We need all the friends and help we can get, and dear though they may be to the hearts of conservatives, the Second Amendment, outlawing abortion, and prayer in the schools count for nothing compared to a common position on race.
For the time being, it is undoubtedly true that our allies are more likely to read National Review than Nation or New Republic, but there is no logical reason why race cannot eventually become like the war in Kosovo, opinions on which cut across the usual divide. I predict that some day this will happen, and AR and other “conservative” whites should not prevent or delay this. In order for racial consciousness to reach anything like the critical mass necessary for us to change this country we need a lot more people who are willing to take a stand as whites. The people who make that happen are not all going to be gun-toting government-haters. They are not all going to be members of the Council of Conservative Citizens. They are going to be proud, healthy-minded white people who disagree on a lot of things, but who see eye to eye on the only thing that really matters now, and that is race.
HomosexualsThere is one liberal project AR readers would endorse if they were intellectually consistent: Sympathy for homosexuals. AR has frequently reported data suggesting that everything from religious affiliation to personality to choice of hobbies is largely genetically determined. If it is so easy to believe that whites are naturally more intelligent than blacks and men are naturally more aggressive than women — and that these differences are biological — it should be very difficult to believe that something as basic as erotic orientation is freely chosen and therefore perverse and blameworthy. The best current evidence suggests that homosexuals cannot help the desires they feel. If so, they should not be despised for feeling them. I am opposed to glorification of homosexuals and to special laws to protect them, but their lusts are no less real and no more easily stifled than those of heterosexuals. Homosexuality is nothing to be proud of; it is an affliction like deafness or Down’s Syndrome. But it is as graceless to torment homosexuals as it is to torment the dim-witted. Besides, with their trim houses, well-kept lawns, and social-climbing tastes, it would be hard to think of a group less compatible with blacks. They are potential allies; don’t chase them away out of pure prejudice. |
Mrs. Jelliby is a character in the Dickens novel, Bleak House. She is so devoted to the missionary movement and to the uplift of “infant negroes” that she neglects her own children.
| ARTICLE |
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Non-white Liberals?
In the body of this article I have argued that liberalism is essentially a white way of looking at the world. But doesn’t the reality of American politics belie this view? Blacks and Hispanics vote overwhelmingly Democrat and back every redistributionist and big-government program there is. Aren’t they obviously liberals?
No. What non-whites are up to is not liberalism, but racial power-grabbing dressed up to look like liberalism. Blacks and Hispanics support redistribution and leveling not out of principle but because it benefits them. They are happy to be socialist if socialism means taking money out of the pockets of whites. They love government only because it is such an efficient machine for squeezing whitey.
Non-whites have no interest in liberalism when it doesn’t fit their racial plans. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton won’t move a muscle to stop slavery in Africa today, but they can’t shut up about slavery in America 150 years ago. This is because they don’t care about “social justice” unless it gives them a chance to Mau Mau the white man. Why don’t blacks get excited about female genital mutilation in Africa? Because they can’t think of a way to blame whites for it.
How much support is there among blacks or Hispanics for women’s liberation, homosexual rights, environmental protection, saving the whales, the United Nations, fighting child labor overseas, opposition to nuclear testing, etc.? None, because these issues offer no useful racial angles. It is only the rare, odd-ball black who works for any cause — liberal or conservative — that isn’t a more or less obvious scheme to get more money or power for blacks. Non-whites are not “liberals” in any real sense; they are racial activists, pure and simple, even though white liberals are too stupid to see it. One way to gauge the “liberalism” of blacks is to ask yourself how they would behave if they had their own equivalent of blacks to deal with, that is, if they were beset by a group that was as unproductive, crime-prone, pesky and importunate to them as blacks are to whites. Would they support welfare and “affirmative action” for the little dears? Judging from the way Africans deal with troublesome elements, if blacks had their own equivalent of blacks they might well exterminate them.
| ARTICLE |
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Turkey Should Not Join Europe
Hats Off to the “Principle of Precaution”
This is a translation of a first-page editorial that appeared in the Dec. 17-30, 1999 issue of the French weekly, Rivarol (1, rue d’Hauteville, 75010 Paris, France).
On December 9th, the French President and Prime Minister girded for combat against mad cows and the British bulldog, and flew to Helsinki for a meeting of the 15 members of the European Union (EU). The summit was to discuss defense matters and the addition of 13 new members, but important as those questions may have been, it was the battle of our white knights [President Jacques] Chirac and [Prime Minister Lionel] Jospin against [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair that most delighted the media. Though one is Socialist and the other conservative, they stood shoulder to shoulder, a living wall against imported British beef. Thumbing their noses at the market, they held the “principle of precaution” über alles. After all, was it not better to risk financial reprisals and diplomatic isolation than to expose one French brat or geezer to the perils of a disease as mysterious as it is undetectable?
For our part, we applaud this priority finally being given to matters of public health but we note that it is a selective priority. Mad cow disease has felled some 50 victims across the Channel and we still do not know if it has killed anyone in France. But on “AIDS Day,” December 1st, crowds were moved to learn that 23 million Africans are carriers of HIV, a disease from which they are dying like flies. Would not the “principle of precaution” therefore require that we follow the example of New Zealand, which has declared all AIDS carriers personae non gratae, and that France double-bar its doors against African seekers of jobs and asylum? And that we deport at once all infected two-legged cattle — our Ghanaian, Ivorian, and Zairian prostitutes?
The principle of precaution should be applied to all matters, not just public health. On the European front, at the very same meeting at which Mr. Chirac and Mr. Jospin were heroically holding the line against Mr. Blair, they were salaaming to the Grand Turk, which has for the first time won official status as a candidate for admission to the European Union. As it happens, Turkey, with only three percent of its territory in Europe, is recklessly trying to restore its empire in Central Asia and to ride its galloping population growth into the ranks of the great powers. To its 64 million inhabitants can be added, at least potentially, the 170 million Turkic peoples of the ex-Soviet Union, to whom Ankara offers citizenship on very liberal terms. Within a few years those 170 million people could conceivably become EU citizens and constitute a majority!
If a nation that is increasingly Islamic and Asiatic and decreasingly Western is tied to the European Union would it keep Turkey from veering off to the East and ensure its harmonious transition to democracy? So says Mr. Chirac in praising this “decisive step in the construction of Europe.” Of course, nothing could be less certain. What is certain is that in endangering both the security and the future of our continent — on the pretext of bolstering them with Turkish reinforcements — Mr. Chirac and his gang have bowed to the Diktat of Bill Clinton who, last month, could not find words harsh enough with which to condemn the “chilliness” of the “Christian club” in the face of the Turks.
So Turkey may yet return to her old ways. For seven centuries it terrorized and then colonized a Europe which, in the Balkans in particular, never recovered from the long Ottoman night. And it is strange that Washington should insist on injecting into Europe this foreign body that even today occupies one third of Cyprus after having driven out and massacred more than 1,400 Greeks in 1974. The most elementary prudence would require that the 15 members of the EU again defer Ankara’s candidacy or, even better, give it the definitive veto.
We have nothing against the Anatolians (who are, moreover, mixed with Celt to a certain degree). We like them just fine when we go visiting in Anatolia; we appreciate them in small doses. But even without their country joining Europe, the people have swarmed in by the million, with a religion, folkways, cliques, financial sources, and ethnic and political rivalries that make them a permanent danger. They are a community in rebellion against the very idea of integration to the extent that they think of themselves as part of a great and separate nation. Have we forgotten that the very first French student to die (by strangulation) in a high school (in Mulhouse) died at the hand of another Turkish student, and that the first act of student carnage in the Netherlands was the spectacle (of Dec. 7th at Veghel) of a young Turk settling scores with fellow Turks?
Pure coincidence, of course. But so would be your luck in tucking into the one flank steak in a million that gave you mad cow disease. And without being obsessed with immigration (any more than with death or disease during an epidemic), we note that certain coincidences are just a little too frequent. The best way too avoid them would no doubt be to apply the sacred principle of precaution. But there appear to be times when the sacred principle conflicts with those of our New World Order masters and their lackeys, whereupon it must be abandoned.
| IN THE NEWS |
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O Tempora, O Mores!
Jörg Haider Resigns
Austria continues to be the center of a political storm because of the participation of Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party in the new government. Americans and Europeans preening themselves publicly on their self-righteousness gave no hint they would soften their stance against the party even when, in a surprise decision on Feb. 28, Mr. Haider resigned as party leader.
Jörg Haider
Earlier in the month, as representatives of the new government took their places at international conferences, Europeans tried to outdo each other in snubbing and insulting the “racists.” At a February 11 meeting in Lisbon of European Union ministers — the first to be attended by a Freedom Party representative — so many speakers got up to condemn the Austrians that Portuguese Labor Minister Eduardo Rodrigues had to tell them to stick to the agenda. The usual welcoming ceremony was scrapped to spare the anti-Austrians the discomfort of having to appear in a social setting with members of the Freedom Party. Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres was perhaps the most extravagant in his scorn for Mr. Haider saying, “We will not accept anyone who attacks the basic principles of European civilization.” At a Feb. 28 ministerial meeting in Sintra, Portugal, André Flahaut the Belgian delegate, skipped lunch to protest the presence of Austrian Defense Minister Herbert Scheibner. “I don’t eat with fascists,” he explained.
In Lisbon, at a European Union meeting on social affairs, the French and Belgian women ministers gushed over each other while pointedly ignoring their female Austrian counterpart. Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel went so far as to say that Europe “does not need Austria.” Other Belgian ministers complained that the rules for expulsion from the EU were too vague, and called for revision of the treaties to permit punishment of members. David Johnson, American ambassador to the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, complained about “a party whose leader has made statements that are interpreted in Austria and abroad as expressing sympathy for the Nazis and minimizing, even excusing, the tragedy of the Holocaust.”
Prince Charles and pop musician Lou Reed canceled trips to Austria. Designer Guglielmo Mariotto of the Italian fashion house Gattinoni exhibited a skirt emblazoned with a picture of Jörg Haider, a swastika, and the word “No” written in red. A Sudanese-born model reportedly got warm applause when she wore it down the catwalk.
There were a few hiccups in the orchestrated outrage, however. When the Argentine ambassador to Austria, Juan Kreckler, said there was too much whooping about Mr. Haider, whom he called “a democrat,” the Argentine government recalled him for a reprimand.
There were a few other signs of sanity. The Polish government refused to condemn the Freedom Party because, as Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek explained, “The Poles are particularly sensitive to the idea of any kind of outside intervention in a country, having been deprived of their sovereignty for decades.” The Swiss also kept their heads, saying they saw no reason to break with the tradition that every new Austrian chancellor should make his first foreign trip to Switzerland. Michael Steiner, an advisor to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, said Europeans needed to strengthen their ties with Austria and seek dialogue. “Basically, the German government can make only one appeal,” he said; “Go skiing in Austria.” He noted that several members of the German government were vacationing in Austria as he spoke.
Jewish groups remained implacable. Aba Dunner, secretary general of the Conference of European Rabbis was reported as saying, “A person like Jörg Haider is unacceptable to the European family of nations.” The Central Jewish Board of the Netherlands said the Dutch should cut off all ties, formal and informal. “The ideology of hate against foreigners and delusions of superiority of this party pose a threat to the dignity, the humanity and democratic character of Europe and the European Union,” it explained, noting with dismay that Queen Beatrix ignored calls to cancel her annual skiing holiday in Austria. Jewish Groups negotiating with Austria about compensation for Nazi-era forced labor said they would swallow their disgust and soldier on with the talks.
The big surprise, though, was Mr. Haider’s Feb. 28 announcement that he was stepping down as party leader, to be replaced by his trusted second-in-command, Vice Chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer. The Belgians, French, and British all said this would change nothing, and that the real problem was that the Freedom Party was still in government. Some days after the resignation, the city of Brussels withdrew an invitation to Austria to attend a major tourism exposition. In general, the reaction was — as it always is in situations like this — that the resignation was a sign outside pressure was working and that, if anything, it should be stepped up.
Mr. Haider’s resignation is difficult to read. Opponents claim it is a tactic by which to get the world better used to the Freedom Party in anticipation of the day when Mr. Haider swoops into the chancellor’s office. Wolfgang Schuessel, the current chancellor and leader of the Freedom Party’s coalition partner, the People’s Party, said he believed Mr. Haider was making a sincere attempt to blunt international criticism. Perhaps both views are correct. We will continue to report as events unfold.
More White Corpses
There have been so many gruesome black-on-white killings lately that the country has been forced to notice — though our rulers insist on playing down the racial angle. Outside Detroit, a black six-year-old, Dedrick Owens, brought a 32-caliber pistol to school and killed a white 1st-grade classmate he argued with the day before. He was known for fighting, and once stabbed a girl with a pencil. He told classmates he was going to kill the girl and later tried to hide the gun. But because he lives in a crack house with weapons lying around, has no mother and a father in prison, and is black, he is the object of as much pity as the parents of the girl he killed. “This kid is as much a victim, in my opinion, as the little girl,” says County Prosecutor Arthur Busch. “It is very sad — we need to put our arms around him.” Kayla Rolland, the victim, was one of only eight whites in her class of 25. (School Boy Killer Lived Amid Poverty, Guns and Drugs, AP, March 2, 2000. Victoria Newton, Young Killer, Sun (London), March 3, 2000.)
At Wilkinsburg, near Philadelphia, 39-year-old Ronald Taylor killed three men and wounded two others in a rampage in which he targeted only whites. At one point, he pushed a black woman out of his way, saying “Not you, sister,” and later was reported to have said, “I’m not going to hurt any black people. I’m just out to kill all white people.” He also aimed a gun at a white woman’s head, uttered what news reports call “a racial epithet,” grabbed her wrist, and then said, “No, I think I’ll terrorize you for a while.” He did not shoot her. Police found anti-white diatribes in his apartment, which he had tried to burn down. We are not, however to leap to conclusions about Mr. Taylor’s motives. As the town’s police chief soothingly explained, “There’s a lot of anger and hostility in this individual, so I think it’s a little premature to simply define this as a racist event.” Of course. (Todd Spangler, Pa. Cops Cite Anti-White Writings, AP, March 2, 2000. Tim Molloy, Cops; Suspect’s Anger Was Simmering, AP, March 4, 2000.)
Ronald Taylor was unusual in getting a little national attention. The country ignored his co-racialist, Obie Weathers, who ran amok in San Antonio, Texas, on February 3. He attacked but did not manage to kill two elderly white men. Later he found 82-year-old Norma Petrash in her home and beat her to death. All three whites — attacked within 24 hours — lived within a six-block radius, and the killer does not appear to have known them. One detective said Mr. Weathers told him, “I hate all white people.” Authorities were considering calling the attacks hate crimes. (Black Man May Face Hate Crime Charge, UPI, Feb. 15, 2000.)
And then there was the February 22 case of the black car jacker in Independence, Missouri, who made off with a white woman’s car despite the fact that her son was caught in the seat belt. Six-year-old Jake Robel was dragged to death. White motorists saw what was happening, boxed the car in at a stop light, and held Kim Davis until police came. But of course, the dragging death was all an unfortunate mistake. (Margaret Stafford, “That’s My Baby, That’s My Son,” Mother Yells at Thief, Toronto Star, Feb. 24, 2000.)
Julie Laible grew up on a farm in an almost all-white part of Illinois. She majored in Spanish at the University of Illinois and was greatly influenced by a black teaching assistant, who opened her eyes to racial injustice in America. At her mentor’s suggestion, she attended graduate school at the University of Austin, where she could learn firsthand about Hispanics. For her Ph.D. dissertation, she studied heavily Hispanic high schools in the hope of finding ways to make Hispanic students more successful. She also went to Monterrey, Mexico, to give education courses to elementary school teachers. In 1995, Miss Laible joined the faculty of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, where she did research hunting for ways to improve the performance of black high school students. She got a federal grant to study ways to help Albertville, Alabama, handle its increasing Hispanic population. She was the leader of the church-related Anti-Racism Covenant Community in Tuscaloosa. A teacher who taught Miss Laible in the fourth grade and kept in touch with her says, “She found her calling to help Hispanic people. It brought a sense of meaning to her life.”
Last year, the 32-year-old Miss Laible spent spring break visiting her parents near Naples, Florida. As she drove down Interstate 75 in Manatee County, a 22-pound rock crashed through her windshield, killing her instantly. Juan Cardenas, 19-year-old child of Mexican immigrants, has been charged with second-degree murder for throwing the rock off an overpass. He and a group of other Hispanic teenagers had been throwing rocks at traffic for some time, starting with smaller ones, and working up to rocks so big they had to lift them with two hands. Mr. Cardenas and one of his friends, 17-year-old Jesus Dominguez, will go on trial in April.
The University of Alabama is trying to raise $100,000 to start the Julie Laible Memorial Lecture Series on Anti-Racist Scholarship, Education and Social Activism. Those wishing to contribute can call (205) 348-6881. (Twila Decker, What Would Julie Say? St. Petersburg Times, Jan. 30, 2000, p. 1F.)
Villain to Victim in Hours
Avery Haines used to be an anchor-woman on the Canadian network CTV NewsNet. On Jan. 16, she stumbled over her words as she was taping an introduction to a news story, and stopped the taping so she could do it over. During a chat with others on the set during the break, she poked fun at herself, saying:
I kind of like the stuttering thing. It’s like equal opportunity, right? We’ve got a stuttering newscaster. We’ve got the black, we’ve got the Asian, we’ve got the woman. I could be a lesbian, folk-dancing, black, woman stutterer.
She then smoothly repeated the introduction. However, due to circumstances still being investigated, the program went out over the air with the original stuttering introduction and Miss Haines’ joke. Two days later, CTV senior vice president of news Henry Kowalski fired her, explaining that “the public must know that CTV takes this kind of behavior as absolutely unacceptable.” Moy Tam, executive director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation thinks CTV did as it should have — but only because the comments were broadcast. She wants that kind of talk punished, even if it’s only in private, and wonders, “If the remarks were made off the air, would she have stayed on?” (Alan Findlay, Loose Lips Sink NewsNet Anchor, Toronto Sun, Jan. 18, 2000.)
Miss Haines’ remarks and her firing were huge news in Canada, and not a few voices have risen in her defense. As she wrote later, “I have gone from being portrayed as a racist, sexist homophobe one day to a victim of political correctness the next. From villain to victim in a matter of hours.” When asked whether the PC climate in Canada is different from that of the US, she replies, “Marv Albert has a job. I don’t.” Mr. Albert is an American sportscaster who was convicted of creative forms of sexual assault in 1997, and now works on-air for NBC. (Avery Haines, Marv Albert Has a Job. I Don’t. National Post, Jan. 19, 2000.)
Our Next Icon?
Hispanics in California are pushing a bill that would make March 31, the birthday of labor organizer Cesar Chavez, a state holiday. At a news conference to promote “Cesar Chavez Day,” Hispanic leaders, politicians and religious figures sang the praises of the Mexican-American co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union. “We should really recognize those leaders who really promote diversity and economic justice, and for me Cesar was one of them,” said San Jose City Councilman Manny Diaz. Mr. Chavez is best known for leading strikes, boycotts, and fasts in the 1960s and 70s to improve wages and conditions for migrant farmworkers. California could be the first step in making “Cesar Chavez Day” a national holiday. (Edwin Garcia, Groups Push for Chavez Holiday, San Jose Mercury News, January 26, 2000.)
Biter Bit
Jayme Dias earned $68,000 a year as the affirmative action officer for the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts. One of his jobs was to prevent sexual harassment. In January, the town fired him after three women filed sexual harassment charges. One claims Mr. Dias pestered her for years, following her home, making suggestive comments, calling her when he knew her husband wasn’t home, and once forcibly kissing her on the lips at work. After she filed charges last summer, two other women came forward with complaints. Mr. Diaz denies the charges. (John Ellement, Falmouth Official Dismissed, Boston Globe, January 28, 2000, p. B8.)
Adjust Your Sets
The NAACP and other minority drum-beaters have been bullying the networks into promises to establish minority-recruitment programs, hire more minority writers, and buy more from non-white suppliers. However, as a recent article in The New Republic points out, there is now so much minority-targeted programing and advertising — especially on smaller networks like WB, UPN, BET, and Univision — that the networks have to stay mainly-white just to get white viewers. The article claims advertisers are the real villains pushing segregated television. Ads are now “peddling blatant stereotypes now deemed unacceptable in almost every other realm of American life.” For example:
Many spots created for black and Hispanic media involve singing and dancing and, in the case of black ads, more explicit sexual content. Hispanics, the industry’s conventional wisdom goes, are more emotional than other consumers, African Americans more given to conspicuous consumption. Hispanic women are said to be . . . more preoccupied with romance, and less interested in pursuing careers.
Having crafted spots for specific audiences, advertisers want segregated viewers, so programming has to have an explicit, racial appeal. Since the smaller networks have the blacks and Hispanics sewed up with blatantly segregated programming, the big three have to put lots of whites on the screen or white audiences might read books. The New Republic argues that salt-and-pepper shows won’t attract non-whites to the networks and may irritate whites. (Tamar Jacoby, Meet the Power Behind Segregated Television, The New Republic, Jan. 24, 1999.)
Wrong Cultural Context
An American University study finds that some racial and income groups exercise more than others. Eighty-two percent of whites do some kind of physical activity in their time off, as opposed to 65 percent of blacks 60 and percent of Mexicans. There are similar differences by education and income bracket. Seventy-four percent of college graduates get some kind of exercise but only 63 percent of high school dropouts do. Racial differences in activity level remain even when education and income are held constant. Carlos Crespo who headed the study suspects that “exercise simply has not been put into a cultural context that appeals to them [minorities].” (Ira Dreyfuss, Study Made of Who Exercises, AP, Jan. 23, 2000.)
Better Stop This
The Danes have found a world-trade sector to dominate: frozen human sperm. Every country in the world has plenty of local sperm, but Denmark has a big lead in this rapidly-growing $100 million market. The major exporting company, Cyros, is known for careful screening and a high-quality product — at least from a biological point of view. It markets three grades of sperm, including “Extra,” which has twice as many sperm as the standard grade and the highest levels of motility. The more frantic the sperm, the more likely they are to nail an egg. It turns out Danes have yet another advantage: lots of blond, blue-eyed donors, which is the kind in highest demand. “There’s a very big shortage of blue-eyed donors,” explains the boss of a British fertility clinic as he puts in an order for more Danish sperm. (Pascal Zachary, A Most Unlikely Industry Finds It Can’t Resist Globalization’s Call, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 6, 2000, p. B1.)
Sensible People
In 1995, nine European Union countries agreed to do away with all border controls between their countries. This year, Belgium and Luxembourg have brought them back. Too many illegal immigrants have been slipping into the other EU countries, and the Belgians and the Luxembourgers are tired of having to kick out Gypsies, Nigerians, and other riffraff. Travelers were unhappy with the return to delays at the borders, but Belgian Interior Minister Antoine Duquesne said he would strictly enforce immigration controls at every port of entry. (Belgium Restores Border Controls to Keep Out Illegal Immigrants, AP, Jan. 11, 2000.)
Violence at Sea
Chinese immigrant smugglers, known as “snakeheads,” are doing a booming business in human cargo. Many Chinese are prepared to pay as much as $30,000 to come to Canada or the United States, and unscrupulous operators bring them over by the boatload. The U.S. Coast Guard has turned back dozens of ships, generally without incident, but Chinese are increasingly willing to get violent when the authorities intervene.
In December, 1999, a Coast Guard cutter on drug interdiction patrol discovered a suspicious-looking freight-er on the high seas and sent over a boat to have a look. The crew claimed they were hauling rice and plywood, and refused to allow an inspection. The next day the cutter sent over a helicopter and found hundreds of people on deck. The Americans returned a few hours later with a boarding party of 25 and discovered the smugglers had opened the freighter’s sea valves and were readying a small boat for a getaway. They were prepared to send the ship to the bottom with 250 people on board.
The Americans repaired the ship and tried to locate the smugglers, who were blending in with the cargo. Guard officers picked out a dozen or so men who were better-dressed and -fed than the rest and kept an eye on them. However, when the cutter brought over a load of food, the smugglers started a riot and set two fires below decks. The Americans eventually caught and subdued the smugglers but had to use pepper spray and whack them with batons. In one struggle, a smuggler grabbed a coast guardsman’s pistol and sent a round into a bulkhead before he was sufficiently whacked. Some of the Chinese threw human feces at the Americans.
With the smuggler-crew in cuffs, the cutter had to take the freighter in tow and bring its cargo in for processing. In the course of the voyage, some of the Chinese tore down tarpaulins put up to keep off the blistering sun, and put on all the clothes they had. They had seen the Americans take off an injured man and thought heat stroke would be a ticket off the freighter. Several of the men fainted. An American medic put an intravenous line into one of them in full view of the others. “They didn’t seem too anxious to get stuck with a big needle and went back to behaving themselves,” recalls an officer. Eventually, U.S. authorities sent 249 Chinese back to China, and kept four smugglers to face criminal charges.
As incidents like these pile up, Coast Guard officials now say it is more dangerous to stop people smugglers than drug smugglers. (Roberto Suro, Smuggling Patrols Face Violence at Sea, Washington Post, Jan. 27, 2000, p. A1.)
Cooking the Books
Ever since the 1989 Supreme Court ruling in City of Richmond v. Croson, state and local government set-aside programs have been required to show they are correcting past discrimination against minority contractors. States and cities had to prove discrimination against non-whites in the past if they wanted to continue discriminating against whites in the present. Naturally, plenty of local governments hired expensive consultants to rake through the records and hunt for what looked like discrimination so they could continue to load the dice against whites. A study commissioned by the city of Atlanta went all the way back to the Civil War!
In 1995, the Supreme Court decided the federal government had to meet the same test. The Justice and Commerce Departments duly started beating the bushes for federal wickedness so as to justify current discrimination, and issued a “report” in the summer of 1998 to “prove” that even in the middle of the Clinton administration the feds were discriminating viciously against non-white contractors. The document, which amounts to a 12-page press release, doesn’t quite bring itself to say that, but does insist that even then, for some reason whites were getting too much of the business, so set-asides have to continue.
In a recent article in Public Interest, George La Noue of the University of Maryland points out that when the “study” was released, scholars and contractors asked to see the underlying data about bidding and contract awards. The feds refused! The Justice Department won’t even release it to white contractors who are suing to overturn set-asides. In effect, the feds are saying, “We won’t tell you how we know, but trust us, there was discrimination that must be made up for by set-asides.” Even from the information that is available, Prof. La Noue concludes that the “report” is a fraud and that its methodology is nothing but book-cooking. In the meantime, the government plans to expand the number of non-white companies eligible for sweetheart deals. (George R. La Noue, To the “Disadvantaged” Go the Spoils? Public Interest, Winter 2000, p. 91.)
Rainbow Coalition
The town of Trenton, North Carolina, is going through a messy annexation. Blacks in the area have been pushing for the mostly-black communities of Haiti, Monktown and Spicey-Quinn to be incorporated into Trenton. Whites, at least initially, opposed annexation. The NAACP is promoting union and even filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to force the town to absorb the black areas. Joffree Leggett, the white former mayor of Trenton, opposed annexation and said blacks are incapable of governing. He resigned under fire, and a black woman, Sylvia Willis, won the next election for mayor.
Her husband, activist Daniel Willis, recently came up with a plan for whom to annex and why. He thinks five white residents who live on the edge of Haiti should be left out, because in local elections, “they’re going to vote for whites.” Blacks would “have that many more votes to overcome. The less whites [we] have in town, the better [our] chances are to be put on the town board.” “We don’t have to include the corner [of Haiti],” he points out. “If they were in the center we’d have to include them.” Mayor Willis defended her husband against charges of racism. “He was trying to make his point. It’s not any more than he’s already said,” she explained. “Some people have different thoughts about racism.” (Activist: Annexation Should Exclude Whites, Charlotte Observer, December 1, 1999, p. 3C.)
The Disease Worsens
The city council of Birmingham, England, ordered schools to stop teaching the nursery rhyme “Baa Baa, Black Sheep, Have You Any Wool?” It was acting on the advice of a schools advisory panel that warned, “the history of the rhyme is very negative and also very offensive to black people due to the fact it originates from slavery.” The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes says the song is believed to have been written in protest at a wool tax imposed in 1275. The city council eventually rescinded its foolish ban, but the Working Group on Racism in Children’s Resources is sticking to its guns: “Whenever the word black is attached to another word it creates a negative meaning which can make children feel embarrassed and confused about their identity.” Presumably we should no longer say that a profitable company is “in the black.” (Nursery Rhyme Bar Leaves UK School Feeling Sheepish, Reuters, Jan. 13, 2000.)
Quaint Local Customs
International business is nothing if not adaptive. India has no tradition of consumer debt, and now that finance companies are springing up offering credit at as much as 36 percent a year, they face the question of what to do about defaulters. Even British and American banks have hired collection agencies that use unorthodox techniques. One agency under contract with Citibank tried to get a borrower to remove and sell a kidney to cover a $750 credit card bill. The same agency threatened to kidnap and hold another borrower until he paid his debts.
However, the most colorful Indian collection technique is to use transvestite eunuchs called hijiras to frighten and humiliate debtors. Most hijiras are transsexuals who have had their genitals removed voluntarily. The operation is usually performed outdoors, where an amateur surgeon slices everything off with a single stroke. The mortality rate is surprisingly low, but what’s left behind is not pretty. The hijira collection technique is to show up at a debtor’s home or workplace and threaten to display what’s under the sari. Most deadbeats pay up promptly. (Julian West, Pay Up — Or We’ll Send the Eunuchs to See You, London Telegraph, Aug. 22, 1999.)
Truth in Surprising Places
It was the standard shakedown story: blacks — doctors this time — claiming they get the shaft and wanting handouts. In January, the National Medical Association, which represents black doctors, held a press conference to denounce managed health care plans for discriminating against them. No fewer than 13 black doctors took turns beefing, but conceded they had only anecdotal evidence. As it turns out, a study published in the March 4, 1998, Journal of the American Medical Association found that non-white doctors are no more likely than white doctors to be denied jobs or have contracts terminated. In fact, JAMA reported, non-white doctors are more likely than white doctors to work for HMOs.
What made this ho-hum story interesting was one of the arguments made by the blacks and accepted by the HMO industry. Past president of the black association Gary Dennis, who led the beefing chorus, said: “This practice [of refusing to hire black doctors] is not only racist but ultimately compromises patient care. Patients feel more involved in their health-care decisions when they receive care from doctors of a similar race.” Later, Charles M. Cutler, chief medical officer of the American Association of Health Plans, pointed out that this is one reason discrimination is unthinkable: “We need a diverse network of providers because people want doctors who can relate well to them.” Quite so — even though we are not supposed to say so. Which will be the first HMO to guarantee “treatment by doctors and nurses of you own race”? (Paul Shepard, HMOs Dispute Black Doctors’ Charges, AP, Jan. 25, 2000.)
A trial under way in Puerto Rico confirms that the San Juan AIDS Institute, funded with millions in federal tax money, was largely a slush fund for its managers. Last year, the institute’s director Yamil Kouri and two other officials were convicted of stealing $2.2 million in institute money, which they used to shower gifts on the island’s most prominent politicians. According to testimony in the current trial, one plan was to pay San Juan’s former mayor and its health director $5,000 each every month for political favors. One director paid his house maid through the institute payroll. The trial has elicited a chorus of denials from top politicians, right up to Puerto Rico’s governor, Pedro Rossello. The whole island has been rocked by the scandal, which has received almost no attention in the United States. (Vilma Perez, Trial Opens in Puerto Rico, AP, Jan. 12, 2000.)
| LETTERS FROM READERS |
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Sir — In the February issue there is a survey on diversity in which you express some surprise at the results. Why? I hate diversity but would never say so in public. In my almost entirely WASP, gated community near Houston there are people who whisper how they feel but never say it out loud because:
1. They could be ostracized.
2. Their husbands could get fired.
3. Their families could be branded as racists.
4. It might hurt their children.
Do you need a better example of what happens than John Rocker? To be pro-white is to be psychologically unbalanced. You need a head shrink if you don’t like to see your country filling up with foreigners.
Name Withheld, Houston, Tex.
Sir — In your last issue you mentioned that President Clinton praised diversity again. He claimed that all races share 99.9 percent of their genes, suggesting there are no important racial differences. We also share 98.9 percent of our genes with Chimpanzees. The 0.1 percent difference should be multiplied by the number of decisive genes, which give hundreds of thousands of possible variations. We know that such group differences have been generated over thousands of generations and we see the importance of those differences every day.
Dr. H.F. Matare, Malibu, Cal.
Sir — Once again the GOP is telling us via Shawn Mercer’s February article: “We should not support Pat Buchanan.” Instead of voting our own interests Mr. Mercer wants us to have faith that somewhere down the pike the Republicans will hear us out.
This is not the first time they said this. Remember Bob Dole? The GOP screamed at us that Buchanan had no chance of winning in 1996 and that we should support Mr. Dole. Some of us voted for him even though he did not understand the immigration issue, and at one point his campaign degenerated into telling children not to use drugs. Well, I’ve learned a lesson. Never vote against your own best interests and never vote for candidates who lack commitment to those interests.
I’ve been burned before. It’s Buchanan or nothing.
Robert Simmons, San Rafael, Cal.
Sir — I cannot help being amused by the dispute over whether to support Patrick Buchanan or the Republicans. The issues are not complex and can be summarized as follows: (1) Though neither party cares about our race, it is better for us to have Republicans rather than Democrats in office. (2) Patrick Buchanan cannot win even if he does get the Reform Party nomination and the $13 million. (3) A vote for Mr. Buchanan is a vote taken away from a Republican and increases our chances of being governed by the people who will do us the most harm. Therefore, if you care deeply about who rules us, vote for the Republicans and not for Patrick Buchanan.
However, you may view the election as a huge opinion poll rather than a choice of rulers. Even if you know Mr. Buchanan cannot win and even if you know that voting for him makes a Democratic administration more likely, you might vote for him because that sends the country a message.
But what message? The people who tell us what to think have called Mr. Buchanan a Nazi so many times that if he gets 20 percent of the vote, logically they should tell us that 20 percent of Americans are Nazis. But they won’t. They will say people voted for him because of his stand on abortion, trade, or foreign policy. They will get away with this partly because it is true but also because Mr. Buchanan does not consistently carry the banner of our race. If you could cast your protest vote for David Duke or Jared Taylor or Michael Levin that would send a clear message — but you can’t.
Our choice is unpleasantly simple: Vote for a Republican because you know Mr. Buchanan cannot be elected, or cast a protest vote that may be dismissed as an anti-feminist assault on abortion. I do not believe there is any other way to view our options.
Ira Halberg, Philadelphia, Pa.
Sir — Sam Francis gets to the heart of the racial issue in his review of David Horowitz’s Hating Whitey. I have read the book and agree with Dr. Francis’ analysis. Mr. Horowitz does a great job chronicling the racism and obvious double-standards used against whites today but he has a blind spot. Does he really believe griping and appealing to “the best angels” of blacks will stop them from “hating whitey”?
Kevin Farmer, Columbus, Ohio
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