American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 14, No. 4	April 2003

CONTENTS

Fade to Brown
A King Among Men
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

Fade to Brown

Immigration and the end of white America.

by Stephen Webster

Of all the unfortunate legislation to emerge from the so-called Civil Rights Era, none has been more harmful than the 1965 Immigration Act (technically, the amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, or the Hart-Celler Act of 1965). In 1960, whites were approximately 90 percent of a population of 178.5 million. By 2000, they were only 69.1 percent of a population of 281.4 million, and if current immigration trends continue, by 2050 or 2060 they will be a minority of a population of 430 million or more. This will be a decline from overwhelming majority to minority in little more than a lifetime. Thanks to the 1965 Act, which brought about a radical departure from traditional patterns of immigration, white children born today will enter middle age as minorities in their own country.

Early Immigration Policies

The post-1965 changes would shock the architects of America’s earlier immigration policies, which were intended to keep America white and culturally cohesive. The young nation’s very first naturalization law, passed in 1790, required that new citizens be “free white persons.” Most immigrants coming to the United States during the republic’s first 60 years were Northwestern European Protestants, mainly from Britain and Germany. They differed very little — ethnically or religiously — from the pioneers who settled colonial America, and they helped establish traditional American culture.

The first substantial change to that pattern was the result of the Irish potato famine of 1845 and political turmoil in Europe around 1848, which fueled a rapid influx of Irish and continental Catholics. The first immigration reform movement, the so-called Know-Nothings or members of the secret Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, was established in 1849 in response to these new immigrants. The Know-Nothings — who got their nickname because they were pledged to say they “knew nothing” if asked about the order by outsiders — were cultural nationalists who thought Catholicism was incompatible with America’s liberal, democratic political values. They wanted to bar the foreign-born from voting or holding public office, and called for a 21-year residency requirement for citizenship and the establishment of mandatory public schools to mold newcomers into proper Americans.

The order soon gave rise to a mass movement known as the American Party, which won hundreds of local, state and federal elections. The Congress that met in 1855 had no fewer than 43 avowed Know-Nothing members, and the American Party even ran former president Millard Fillmore in a bid for the White House in 1856, in which he won 21.5 percent of the popular vote. Its growing success was stopped short when the party split over slavery. As the Civil War approached, many northern Know-Nothings joined the new Republican Party, while Southerners defected to the Democrats. The movement faded, but its insistence that immigrants should assimilate became part of the American identity and is its lasting legacy.

Some states took immigration policy into their own hands. In 1855, California levied a fine of $55 per person on Chinese immigrants. Three years later, when it was clear the fine had not stopped the flow, the state passed an outright ban on all people of “Mongolian” descent, except in cases of shipwreck or accident. Survivors were expelled as soon as they recovered. The city of San Francisco passed its own laws, taxing Chinese laundries and door-to-door vegetable peddlers. Perhaps most imaginative was a “queue” ordinance, which required a mandatory haircut for anyone convicted of a crime. This was aimed at Chinese, for whom it was a great disgrace to lose the pigtail.

From 1854 to 1874, Chinese could not testify against whites in California courts. The legislature declared that Chinese “have never adapted themselves to our habits, modes of dress, or our educational system . . . Impregnable to all the influences of our Anglo-Saxon life, they remain the same stolid Asiatics that have floated on the rivers and slaved in the fields of China for thirty centuries of time.”

In 1875 the US Supreme Court declared immigration a federal, not a state responsibility, but the US government picked up where California and other states left off. Beginning in 1882, it passed a series of laws barring Asians. The first Chinese exclusion act, in force for 10 years, was renewed in 1892 and 1902. In 1904 Congress made the ban permanent, and it was in effect until 1943, when China was our ally in the war against Japan, and a total ban seemed unfriendly.

Japanese and Koreans tried to immigrate later than the Chinese, but got the same treatment. The Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, founded in 1905 in San Francisco, whipped up so much anti-Asian sentiment that Teddy Roosevelt persuaded the Japanese government in 1907 to withhold passports from anyone who wanted to emigrate to America — the so-called Gentleman’s Agreement. The Immigration Act of 1917 created an “Asiatic Barred Zone” that virtually eliminated all Asian immigration, and also required literacy tests for European immigrants.

During this period, there was another round of European immigration, known as the Great Wave. Unlike earlier European arrivals, Great Wave immigrants were mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, and differed far more significantly — culturally, religiously, linguistically and ethnically — from native stock than had the Irish and German Catholic immigrants of the 1840s. It was a far larger wave, which peaked in 1907 with 1.3 million foreigners, but continued to roll along until the First World War. In the decade between 1900 and 1910, nearly nine million immigrants arrived, a number not exceeded until the 1990s.

Immigration resumed after the war. More than 800,000 came in 1920 alone, and the Commissioner of Immigration predicted the number would soon rise to two million a year. Worried that this flood threatened the Anglo-Saxon majority, Congress acted in 1921 to protect the demographic balance.

Albert Johnson, chairman of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization and who gave his name to the new law, put it this way: “The United States of America, a nation great in all things, is ours today. To whom will it belong tomorrow? . . . The United States is our land. If it was not the land of our fathers, at least it may be, and it should be, the land of our children. We intend to maintain it so. The day of unalloyed welcome to all people, the day of indiscriminate acceptance of all races, has definitely ended.”

The Johnson Quota Act of 1921 was the first to put numerical restrictions on immigrants. It set an annual ceiling of 357,000 Eastern Hemisphere immigrants — this meant Europeans — but there was no limit on Western Hemisphere immigration because aside from a few white Canadians, no one was coming from the Americas. The law also established an annual quota for all national groups of three percent of its representation in the 1910 census — a provision clearly intended to keep the ethnic balance exactly as it was. The 1921 Quota Act was provisional, and was replaced in 1924 by the Johnson-Reid Immigration Act, which further reduced immigration. It cut Eastern Hemisphere arrivals to just over 160,000, and lowered the quota for different nationalities to two percent of that nationality’s representation in the earlier census of 1890.

By using population figures from before the massive post-1900 immigration surge, the drafters of the act tried to undo some of the demographic change wrought by the Great Wave. The quotas ensured that 70 percent of all immigrants would be from Great Britain and Germany — the countries that provided nearly all of the founding stock — and Ireland. Business leaders had opposed the quotas, and wanted to import crowds of cheap foreign workers, but when Calvin Coolidge signed the 1924 act, he noted that maintaining a common national culture was more important then whatever economic benefits more immigrants might bring.

This meant an unmistakable preference for the old Americans over Italians, Czechs, Poles, etc. and even at the time there was much complaining about “discrimination.” Colorado Congressman William N. Vaile replied to these charges during the debate on the 1924 Quota Act: “That people from Southern and Eastern Europe did not begin to come in large numbers until after 1890 certainly proves that those who came before them had built up a country desirable enough to attract these latecomers. Shall the countries which furnished these earlier arrivals be discriminated against for the very reason, forsooth, that they are represented here by from 2 to 10 generations of American citizens, whereas the others are represented by people who have not been here long enough to become citizens? If there is a charge of ‘discrimination,’ the charge necessarily involves the idea that the proposed quota varies from some standard which is supposed to be not ‘discriminatory.’ What is that standard?”

Already we see the signs of eventual capitulation. Congressman Vaile was suggesting that the quotas were not discriminatory, or if they were, it was because they violated an impossible standard. Vaile would have served subsequent generations better if he had been more straightforward: Certainly the quotas were discriminatory, but Old Americans had every right to discriminate in favor of themselves, and in favor of cultural and ethnic continuity. To concede that discrimination was wrong, but that national quotas were somehow not discriminatory was to concede a moral position that could only lead to defeat.

Already in 1927, immigrants from Eastern Europe succeeded in getting Congress to change the quota baseline from the 1890 to the 1920 census, thereby opening up more slots for themselves. In exchange, Congress slightly reduced the annual Eastern Hemisphere quota to 154,227 — a figure that remained in effect until 1965. There was still no quota on immigration from the Americas, because no quota was needed.

The next major change in immigration law was the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-Walter Act). This act eliminated the ban on Asians — each Asian country was allotted a token 100 immigrant visas — and established a preference system within the national origin quotas favoring immigrants with special skills or family ties to citizens. The act did not alter either the basic quota system or the annual ceiling on immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere.

The immigration reforms of the 1920s were a great success. They ended Great Wave immigration (from 1930 to 1970, annual net immigration averaged 185,000), and gave non-traditional immigrants time to assimilate. America in 1960 was still the white nation its founders intended, but by then, the racial and cultural consensus that produced the quota system had begun to break down.

Quota Opponents

There were opponents to McCarran-Walter, including President Harry Truman. The law had to be passed over his veto, and he complained about “the cruelty of carrying over into this year of 1952 the isolationist limitations of our 1924 law.” “In no other realm of our national life,” he added “are we so hampered and stultified by the dead hand of the past, as we are in this field of immigration.” Truman was hardly a multi-racialist. He was a firm segregationist (despite integrating the army), and once wrote, “I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.” His real objection to national quotas was that they gave the Soviet Union a reason to tell Third World people America was “racist.” Despite the Cold War, the quota system was overwhelmingly popular. The House of Representatives voted 278-113 to override the veto, and the Senate voted 57-26.

Truman was not alone, however, in worrying that immigration quotas were a liability in the Cold War. Novelist Pat Frank, in Alas, Babylon!, a story of nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States published in 1959, has the lead character, a Southern liberal, lament that “nativists” were “losing” Asia. This belief is one of the main reasons McCarran-Walter set up token quotas for Asians. President Dwight Eisenhower wanted to double immigration at the very least, and to bring in thousands of East European and Asian refugees from Communism, but Congress stood firm.

Popular opposition to quotas came mainly from people who thought the system discriminated against their group. After the Second World War, quotas from Britain and Germany largely went unfilled, and there was no provision to let other countries take their slots. In 1965, 250,000 Italians competed for 5,666 quota slots. Italian ethnic lobbyists and Southern and Eastern Europeans desperately wanted to change the quotas, but did not have enough political power.

Most ethnics worked only to get more of their own people into the country, but Jews consistently lobbied for more immigration from everywhere. American Jews have always favored liberal immigration policies, in the belief that Jews are more secure in a culturally diverse country without a strong racial, cultural, or religious identity. Throughout the 19th century, American Jews fought all exclusionary immigration laws, even those aimed at Asians. They were particularly opposed to the quota acts, which they saw as an anti-Semitic reaction to the recent arrival of large numbers of Jewish immigrants.

Groups like the American Jewish Committee funded and directed much of the anti-restrictionist activity. During the 1930s when Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler were barred from entry, Jews were almost the only segment of American society pressing for more immigration, and Jewish organizations poured enormous amounts of money and effort into helping pass the 1965 Immigration Act.

However, if there is one man who can take the most credit for the 1965 act, it is John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seems to have inherited the resentment his father Joseph felt as an outsider in Boston’s WASP aristocracy. He voted against the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and supported various refugee acts throughout the 1950s. In 1958 he wrote a book, A Nation of Immigrants, which attacked the quota system as illogical and without purpose, and the book served as Kennedy’s blueprint for immigration reform after he became president in 1960.

In the summer of 1963, Kennedy sent Congress a proposal calling for the elimination of the national origins quota system. He wanted immigrants admitted on the basis of family reunification and needed skills, without regard to national origin. After his assassination in November, his brother Robert took up the cause of immigration reform, calling it JFK’s legacy. In the forward to a revised edition of A Nation of Immigrants, issued in 1964 to gain support for the new law, he wrote, “I know of no cause which President Kennedy championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies.” Sold as a memorial to JFK, there was very little opposition to what became known as the Immigration Act of 1965.

Immigration as a Civil Right

The historical context of the bill was very important. Writer Lawrence Auster describes the Immigration Act of 1965 as a “civil rights bill applied to the world at large,” because although it was billed as a tribute to a fallen president, it was very much a part of the revolution in race relations of the 1960s. Congress passed it at the same time as the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and its purpose was to end the discrimination of national origins quotas. Indeed, its supporters often invoked the domestic “civil rights” bills in calling for support.

As Rep. Phillip Burton of California put it: “Just as we sought to eliminate discrimination in our land through the Civil Rights Act, today we seek by phasing out the national origins quota system to eliminate discrimination in immigration to this nation composed of the descendants of immigrants.” Another Democratic congressman, Robert Sweeney of Ohio, said: “I would consider the amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act to be as important as the landmark legislation of this Congress relating to the Civil Rights Act. The central purpose of the administration’s immigration bill is to once again undo discrimination and to revise the standards by which we choose potential Americans in order to be fairer to them and which will certainly be more beneficial to us.” Immigration reform was a moral crusade, and like so many other moral crusades, it was sold on the pretense that it would actually be “more beneficial to us.”

Supporters of the 1965 Immigration Act made another questionable argument: that it was really only a symbolic gesture that would not produce much real change. At the signing ceremony, President Johnson declared, “This bill we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not restructure the shape of our daily lives.”

Senator Edward Kennedy, who guided the bill through Congress, reassured Americans that “our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same . . . Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset . . . Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia . . . In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.”

Illinois Democratic Congressman Sidney Yates added, “I am aware that this bill is more concerned with the equality of immigrants than with their numbers. It is obvious in any event that the great days of immigration have long since run their course.”

Rhode Island Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell agreed: “Contrary to the opinions of some of the misinformed, this legislation does not open the floodgates.”

Some saw writing on the wall. Barry Goldwater’s running mate in the 1964 presidential campaign, Rep. William Miller of New York, warned “We estimate that if the President gets his way, and the current immigration laws are repealed, the number of immigrants next year will increase threefold and in subsequent years will increase even more . . .

During debate on the act, Florida Democratic Senator Spessard Holland told his colleagues, “What I object to is imposing no limitation insofar as areas of the earth are concerned, but saying that we are throwing the doors open and equally inviting people from the Orient, from the islands of the Pacific, from the subcontinent of Asia, from the Near East, from all of Africa, all of Europe, and all of the Western Hemisphere on exactly the same basis. I am inviting attention to the fact that this is a complete and radical departure from what have always heretofore been regarded as sound principles of immigration.”

As “conservatives” almost always do, opponents of the 1965 act could not bring themselves to defend their positions honestly and clearly. Senator Holland evoked “sound principles of immigration” but did not explain why they were sound. There is no record in the congressional debate of anyone pointing out that European civilization can be carried forward only by Europeans, that Third-World immigrants bring the Third-World with them, and that whites have every right to keep their country white. These arguments would not necessarily have prevailed, but they would have been straightforward, coherent statements of racial common sense rather than wooly appeals to “what have always heretofore been regarded as sound principles.”

On Oct. 3, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the act at a ceremony at the base of the Statue of Liberty. What were its provisions? Most significantly, it abolished the national origins quota system and gave all foreigners an equal chance. It slightly increased the quota for the Eastern Hemisphere — which now meant not just Europe but Asia and Africa as well — to 170,000, and established a ceiling of 120,000 for Western Hemisphere immigrants.

Just as significant was an important shift in preferences. Before 1965, skilled professionals were at the top of the list, and family unification got little emphasis. The new law reversed this, meaning that the Third-Worlders who could now come were not being chosen for what they could do but because they were related to someone who was already here.

Until 1965, people admitted to the country legally had no automatic right to bring their families; skilled professionals came before wives and children. The new law gave the top preference to unmarried adult children of US citizens but the very next preference category was spouses, minor children and unmarried adult children of immigrants. This was a huge change. Under the old law, only citizens had the right to sponsor immigrants. Now, as soon as he got here, any newcomer could send for his family. This is what produced the chain migration that has emptied entire Mexican villages.

The allocation of hemispheric quotas was another dangerous precedent. No country in the Eastern Hemisphere could send more than 20,000 people a year, but the 120,000 Western Hemisphere quota had no per-country limits at all. This set the stage for a single country — Mexico — to dominate immigration.

And, indeed, the 1965 Immigration Act and its sequelae have restructured the shape of our daily lives. Our cities are being flooded with a million immigrants annually, and the ethnic mix of our country has been upset. The year after the 1965 act, 323,040 immigrants arrived. During the 1970s, the numbers averaged 450,000 a year. In the 1980s the average yearly intake rose to 740,000, and by the 1990s, the figures reached 900,000. These were only the legal immigrants, and we now have an estimated seven to thirteen million illegals living among us — the equivalent of eight to fourteen years worth of legal immigration. Some 350,000 to 500,000 break into the country every year.

If illegals are included, between 1970 and 1980, the number of foreigners living in the US rose by 47 percent (4.5 million). Between 1980 and 1990, the number rose by another 40 percent (5.7 million), and during the 1990s, increased by a staggering 57 percent (11.3 million, the largest single-decade increase ever). This meant that in 2002, 33.1 million immigrants were living in America — 11.5 percent of the total population. Immigration drives US population growth. Since 1965, immigration and the children of immigrants have accounted for 70 percent of the increase, giving the United States population growth rates like those of Third-World countries.

Nearly 90 percent of recent immigrants are non-whites, and most are from Latin America or Asia. Pace Senator Kennedy, we are indeed being inundated with immigrants from one country — Mexico. There are now no fewer than 20.6 million Mexicans in this country, of whom 9.7 million are first-generation immigrants. Mexico alone accounts for 29.8 percent of all current legal immigrants and the majority of illegals.

Whites have been largely pushed out of the immigrant stream. Seventy percent of foreign-born residents come from Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia. Of the top ten countries sending immigrants to the US, only one — Canada at number nine — has a majority white population, and probably for not much longer. America’s traditional sources of immigrants are far down the list. Germany ranks 11th and Britain is 12th. Ireland is not even in the top 25. Whites are a majority in only six of the top 25 source countries, and by no means all of the immigrants they send are white.

Bad as it was, the 1965 act cannot take all the blame for the rising tide of color. That law could theoretically have held immigration at 300,000 every year. Since then, Congress has yanked up the quotas while doing little to screen immigrants for useful skills. In 2000, for example, the country accepted 849,807 immigrants, nearly three times as many as envisaged in 1965. Of that number, 41 percent were immediate family members of US citizens and 28 percent were relatives of non-citizens, meaning that no fewer than 69 percent were let in because of family ties. Another eight percent were refugees — this is how we get Somalis, Nicaraguans, etc. — 13 percent received employment preferences, six percent came on “diversity” visas chosen by lottery for people who don’t have family connections, and four percent got into the country one way or another and had their status adjusted to get permanent residency.

Of course, one of the most breathtakingly stupid things Congress did — and this includes the 1965 act — was the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). This was a law passed in 1986 that granted amnesty to illegals who had been in the country since before 1982 and had kept their noses reasonably clean. This was supposed to be a once-and-for-all, never-again amnesty to be combined with tough policies to keep out any more illegals. The Border Patrol was supposed to be beefed up, and there was to be fierce punishment for employers who hired any more illegals that came in. In the end, no fewer than 2.6 million law-breakers got amnesty, very few of them white, and the illegals just kept on coming. “Employer sanctions” were a joke, and the IRS soon gave up anything but token enforcement. It was back to business as usual: Anyone who could make it across the border had little to fear from la Migra.

The surge in immigration initiated by the 1965 act shows no sign of slowing. Neither the foundering economy nor the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have discouraged newcomers: More than 3.3 million legal and illegal immigrants have arrived since 2000. Immigration boosters say this is a natural phenomenon over which we have no control, a byproduct of the global economy. Of course, it is no more uncontrollable than the Great Wave of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which was stopped by the quota acts of the 1920s.

Now that immigration is destroying the unity and cultural coherence of the country, it has become fashionable to describe vice as a virtue, to claim that ethnic enclaves, schools full of children who speak no English, increasing racial conflict, voodoo cults, bilingual ballots, Mexican irredentism, interpreters in hospitals and courtrooms, and countless “discrimination” cases are all evidence of wonderful enrichment and “diversity.” No one can point to just how diversity is actually benefiting the country but everyone is convinced it is a great thing.

Jews, in particular, continue to think they are better off in a rag-bag country with no majority. As Charles Silberman has written, “American Jews are committed to cultural tolerance because of their belief — one firmly rooted in history — that Jews are safe only in a society acceptant of a wide range of attitudes and behaviors, as well as a diversity of religious and ethnic groups.” The Hebrew Immigration Aid Society (HAIS) has traditionally worked to increase Jewish immigration to the United States, but now that fewer Jews are coming, it has opened an office in Nairobi, of all places — explicitly to encourage non-Jewish immigration. As HAIS president Leonard Glickman recently explained to the Jewish paper Forward, “The more diverse American society is the safer [Jews] are.” Earl Raab, president of Brandeis University, has argued that only when whites are reduced to a minority will the United States no longer be capable of establishing an anti-Semitic, Nazi-like regime.

Recently a few Jews have begun to wonder if massive Third-World immigration is not quite so good for them after all. Stephen Steinlight, a former executive of the American Jewish Committee wrote a paper in 2001 in which he argued that Hispanics and Asians are not sufficiently sensitive to Jewish interests, and that Muslim immigrants are a clear threat. Some individual Jews have spoken out strongly against Third-World immigration, but Jewish organizations overwhelmingly favor it. Gentile whites generally resist “diversity” arguments, and large majorities consistently tell pollsters they want fewer immigrants.

The arguments of the supporters of the quota system — that it was necessary to maintain cultural cohesion — are now more obviously true than ever. In the 1920s and as late as the 1950s, whites still had enough unspoken racial consciousness to pass laws in their own interests. They failed, however, to put the case in clear, racial terms, and as racial consciousness diminished, whites in the 1960s were even less capable of making racial arguments, and found themselves disarmed in the face of appeals to “equality” and “non-discrimination.”

Our nation achieved character and greatness precisely because of discrimination. Our ancestors understood that people and races are not interchangeable, and that failure to discriminate would produce a warring mix of incompetents and unassimilables. If we are not to lose our country, it is up to us once again to make racial principles an explicit part of the national debate. Unless “conservatism” is rescued from the capitulationist spirit of compromise piled on top of compromise, our grandchildren will not have a country worth conserving. If our generation fails to save the country it will be too late.

BOOK REVIEW

A King Among Men

The mind of the great scientist.

Frank Miele, Intelligence, Race & Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen, Westview Press, 2002, 243 pp., $26.00

reviewed by Jared Taylor

Probably no man in the 20th century has contributed more to the study of human intelligence than Arthur Jensen — and probably no scientist has been more hated for it. Were his contributions in any other field, Prof. Jensen, emeritus of U.C. Berkeley, would have received every scientific award and honor. Instead, by demonstrating the unitary and hereditary nature of intelligence and the genetic origins of racial differences in mental ability, he has been viciously attacked by the ignorant, while earning the mostly private admiration of specialists. Ever the detached scientist, Prof. Jensen has never let personal or political considerations affect his work, and has rarely revealed much about his private life. This collection of conversations with journalist Frank Miele clearly summarizes his most important scientific ideas, but for readers who are generally familiar with recent findings on intelligence, the best part of this book is the glimpse it offers of Arthur Jensen himself.

Prof. Jensen’s paternal grandparents were Danes who immigrated from Copenhagen. His maternal grandfather was a German, who dismayed his family by marrying a Polish Jew. Born in California in 1923, Arthur Jensen grew up as a quiet boy, who read a great deal and showed no interest in team sports. He was a precociously accomplished student of the clarinet, and played with the San Diego Symphony for a year when he was only 17. He graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1945, and worked as a high school biology teacher and orchestra conductor before going on to Columbia in 1952 to study educational and clinical psychology. He liked to audit courses outside his field, and remembers Margaret Mead’s energy and “boundless enthusiasm:” “Her lectures were immensely colorful and entertaining,” he says, “and it was clear that she thoroughly enjoyed her showmanship.” Even then, he recalls, many were skeptical of her zeal for the “blank slate” view of human nature (see last month’s review of The Blank Slate), and his psychology professors warned him that she knew nothing about psychology.

After earning his Ph.D., the young scholar spent the years 1956 to 1958 working in Hans Eysenck’s laboratory in London. This was his first exposure to the London School of psychology, in which Prof. Eysenck carried on the empirical tradition of the great British pioneers, Francis Galton and Charles Spearman. It was a turning point in Prof. Jensen’s career: “Eysenck was a kind of genius,” he says, “or at least a person of very unusual talents, and the only person of that unusual caliber that I have come across in the field of psychology. I got perhaps as much as 90 percent of my attitudes about psychology and science from Eysenck. The three years I spent in his department have been a lasting source of inspiration.”

Eysenck was among the first post-war psychologists to study racial differences in IQ. In London, Prof. Jensen also attended a lecture by Sir Cyril Burt, on his pioneering work on the heritability of intelligence and the genetic origins of group differences. He says Burt’s “was the best lecture I had ever attended,” and found Burt “a brilliant and impressive man.”

Still, Prof. Jensen did not abandon his conventional beliefs in the power of environment to raise or lower intelligence, and went on to publish 30 papers and build a non-controversial reputation before he finally concluded that Eysenck and Burt were right. In 1969 he shocked the country with his famous Harvard Educational Review article, “How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?” This 123-page paper, which demolished the view that proper instruction could raise children’s IQs, may have been the most sensational scholarly article ever published in America. Although only five percent of it was about racial differences in intelligence — which Prof. Jensen concluded had a substantial genetic component — it was enough to make him a pariah and a household name.

Frank Miele’s book does not dwell on the insults, death threats, and mob actions that “Jensenism” provoked, and the target of this hostility is admirably philosophical about it. Mr. Miele says Prof. Jensen bears no grudges, and there seem to be two sources of his equanimity in the face of attacks that would have silenced lesser men. One is the capacity to endure what Prof. Jensen calls “strong disapproval.” “I myself don’t like it,” he says, “but I sometimes wonder why I seem to tolerate it. I believe one has to have relatively little need to be liked. I suppose it’s a kind of eccentricity to be willing to risk strong disapproval.”

The other source of Prof. Jensen’s calm appears to be the inspiration he finds in his chief role model. “Mahatma Gandhi has been my number-one hero since I was 14 years old,” he says, adding that Gandhi was “one of the few people I know of who lived nearly his whole adult life by principle, entirely by principle . . . He is the one who first comes to mind whenever I feel puzzled as to the right course of action.”

The right course has been a stance not unlike that of Thomas Jefferson, who is quoted under the American Renaissance nameplate. As Prof. Jensen puts it: “One of the tenets of my own philosophy is to be as open as possible and to strive for a perfect consistency between my thoughts, both spoken and published, in their private and public expression. This is essentially a Gandhian principle, one that I have long considered worth striving to live by.”

The trouble with Prof. Jensen’s admirable public/private consistency is that he has reached such unfashionable conclusions. He refuses to think something just because others do. “If anything, my attitudes are based on a rather lifelong antipathy to believing anything without evidence,” he says, noting that he was “more or less kicked out of Sunday school” because he did not see enough evidence for the things he was told to believe. His life would have been vastly easier if he had, like many scientists, shaded his findings or simply stayed away from race, but this was not his way. “I have only contempt for people who let their politics or religion influence their science,” he says. Group differences are an important aspect of the study of intelligence, and to dodge the race question would have been, for him, an act of intellectual cowardice.

Now, after nearly 35 years of research following the Harvard Educational Review article, Prof. Jensen’s position is stronger than ever. He says that since the appearance of his famous article, he has become even more convinced that education and social milieu have little effect on IQ, and that it is almost misleading to talk about “environmental” influences on intelligence:

I prefer the terms ‘genetic influences’ and ‘nongenetic influences’ because so many people think environment means just the psychological, social, and cultural milieu in which a person grows up. These nongenetic influences begin virtually at the moment of conception. They have direct effects on the brain’s development and are probably the most important of all environmental effects on g [general cognitive ability — see below]. They include intrauterine conditions related to the mother’s age, health, and blood type; incompatibility between mother and fetus; nutrition; certain medications; and substance abuse. Then there are perinatal conditions such as anoxia, birth trauma, and extreme prematurity. And also post-natal conditions — mainly early nutrition and the various childhood diseases.”

Elsewhere, Prof. Jensen refers to these as the “biological microenvironment,” adding that “these microenvironmental effects may contribute as much as 20 to 25 percent of the total variance in IQ in the population.” Prof. Jensen suspects that improvements in health, nutrition, and child delivery explain a good part of what is known as the Lynn-Flynn effect: “The reduced occurrence of . . . unfavorable microenvironmental elements in the industrialized countries is probably one of the causes of the gradual rise in mental test scores in these countries during the last 60 or 70 years.”

In Prof. Jensen’s view, the home or social environment may influence what field a person may enter, and what he does with his intelligence, but they have little effect on intelligence itself. He points out that the IQ correlation between adopted children reared together is a modest 0.3, but that the correlation drops to nearly zero by late adolescence. After the early years, shared home and parents seem to have no effect.

Intelligence can now be determined by direct physiological assessment of the brain. People differ in the rates at which their brains consume glucose, and in the complexity and shape of their brain waves. Tests of this kind are as good as written IQ tests, and it is hard to imagine how the social environment could influence such things as glucose uptake rates.

People who believe in the power of environment over intelligence should expect a deaf child, who has heard nothing his entire life, to be severely afflicted. In fact, children born deaf perform normally on non-verbal intelligence tests.

Another fashionable notion Prof. Jensen dismisses is the idea that race is a “social construct.” He points out that although there are very few instances of genetic variations unique to a particular population, strong group tendencies at many different genetic locations add up to consistent racial differences. These differences are more than skin deep: “Given the fact that as many as 50 percent of the genes in the human genome are involved with the structural and functional aspects of the brain, it would be surprising indeed if populations that differ in a great many visible characteristics and in various genetic polymorphisms [different forms of the same gene] did not also differ in some characteristics associated with the brain, the primary organ of behavior.”

As Prof. Jensen points out, in nature, when animals differ in form and appearance, they differ in behavior, and there is no reason to think humans are any different. He notes that Robert Plomin of England has already identified four genes, or DNA segments, that affect IQ. As more are discovered, it is extremely unlikely that the different forms of these genes will be distributed equally among all races.

Although some psychometricians still argue that environment accounts for racial differences in IQ, there is essentially unanimity on the view that a person’s intelligence is largely fixed at birth. “The fact that g is more strongly genetic than most other psychological variables is not really controversial among empirical researchers in this field,” says Prof. Jensen. “It is highly controversial only in the popular media. Just try to find any real controversy among the experts who know the research on this issue.”

Indeed, on Nov. 26, 1998, Intelligence, the premier journal in the field of IQ research, published an entire issue of tributes to Prof. Jensen under the general title: “A King Among Men: Arthur Jensen.” Even when it comes to racial differences, he can find no one in the field willing to debate him seriously. Non-genetic arguments simply do not hold up: “The purely environmental or ‘culture-only’ theory . . . has had to fall back on a series of ad hoc hypotheses. They lack any underlying theoretical basis and are often inconsistent with each other, since each one was invented to explain some single phenomenon.”

This does not mean the “culture-only” theory is dead, only that it should be. “Undergraduate psychology textbooks are misinforming hundreds of thousands of college students on this subject every year,” says Prof. Jensen. “It almost sickens me even to thumb through most of the introductory psychology books published in recent years.”

Although he is notorious for his findings on race, what may be Prof. Jensen’s most important scientific contributions have been his work on the nature of intelligence. No one else has so carefully demonstrated the reality of a concept that earlier researchers like Charles Spearman suspected but could never prove: the unitary nature of intelligence, or the dependence of virtually all cognitive abilities on a single underlying ability known as the g factor. If we can imagine separate factories in the mind, turning out spatial or numerical or verbal or other kinds of insights, g, or the “general” factor, can be thought of as the common source of power for these factories. The different factories vary in efficiency from person to person, and people have different areas of strength and weakness, but it is differences in the level of g that best explain individual differences in mental ability. This is why, with the exception of very unusual people like idiot savants, those who are good in one subject in school are usually good in all of them.

There are theories of “multiple intelligences,” according to which there are many discreet abilities independent of each other. Liberals like this idea because they pretend to believe all people are equally gifted, but just not in exactly the same ways. As Prof. Jensen explains, the evidence for separate, unrelated intelligences is very thin: “Even though many attempts have been made to devise tests of mental ability that have zero or negative correlations with each other, no one yet has succeeded. It appears that zero and nonpositive correlations among ability tests are the psychometric equivalent of perpetual motion in physics — you can imagine them but you can never demonstrate them in the real world.”

Politics

In an age when anyone who can manage to get to a microphone seems to think he is competent to spout opinions on anything, Prof. Jensen is unusually humble: “I myself don’t feel inclined or properly qualified to think through what others may consider the ‘politics’ of my work.” Elsewhere, he adds, “My aim in this is to produce good science, as best I can, not to change the world or push any social or political program.” Also: “The acquisition of factual knowledge should stand apart from policy. But to be effective, policy making must take into account our best factual knowledge about the alternatives under consideration.”

The problem, of course, is that most policy-makers ignore facts that run counter to prevailing orthodoxy, and will not take positions that displease the media. As Prof. Jensen puts it: “Too many politicians take research results less seriously than purely political considerations. The popular media seldom help either, as they are also more politically than scientifically oriented.”

He credits his opponents with good intentions, but points out that “good intentions must be backed up by evidence that the prescribed means for achieving them actually work.” Many scholars know perfectly well that uplift programs will not work, but they remain silent. Prof. Jensen is too much a gentleman to call anyone a coward, but he does say this: “Most academicians, of course speak up on controversial issues only after they are no longer controversial. If it weren’t so disheartening, it would be amusing to see so many of them run for cover when threatened by ideological criticism.”

Not surprisingly, on any controversial subject, the number of people willing to take a position is much less important than the scientific findings: “The idea of consensus is not very meaningful or important in science, especially at the frontiers of knowledge. At first, a consensus is nearly always opposed to any innovation.” For Prof. Jensen, good science always comes first: “Whether I’m right or wrong in any particular instance isn’t the really important thing. What is important is that scientific research on these matters should be encouraged and allowed to advance unfettered.” Needless to say, on a host of topics, not just scientific but historical, we have nothing like “unfettered” research.

Prof. Jensen reports that no fewer than eight publishers turned down his most significant contribution to science, The g Factor. This is a book any publisher should have been delighted to sponsor, but fear of prevailing taboos nearly kept it from being published at all.

Despite his general unwillingness to discuss “politics,” interviewer Frank Miele did manage to draw out Prof. Jensen on a few controversial subjects:

‘The growth of populations world wide,’ he argues, ‘especially in the Third World, is by far the most serious problem we have to face.’ Of the one-child policy in China, he says: ‘The totalitarian conditions that are apparently needed to accomplish this goal seem tolerable if one considers the eventual consequences of ignoring the problem. It seems the lesser of two evils, considering the consequences of overpopulation.’

He notes that among all races, the more intelligent are having fewer children than the less intelligent. At the same time: “[T]here is a greater disparity in birthrates between poorly educated and well-educated Blacks than is true for Whites. If this trend continues over a number of generations, the Black and White populations will be pulled increasingly further apart in average IQ . . . Reducing population seems more urgent to me than eugenics per se. But unless people in the upper half of the bell curve for g have at least as many offspring as those of the lower half, there will inevitably result a dysgenic trend in the overall ability level and the educability of the population as a whole.”

Perhaps most controversially, he takes a position that could serve as the central platform of any movement that seeks to maintain European civilization on this continent: “No First World country can expect to have an open border with a Third World country without serious risk to its own economy and quality of life.” This view follows logically from an understanding of group differences in ability, but politicians who refuse to countenance even the possibility of these differences, will not take even the most basic steps to save our civilization.

Arthur Jensen has spent his life pursuing — and finding — truth. Instead of the honors he deserved, he has endured hatred and calumny. This book is a tribute not only to a great man and a great scientist, but to author Frank Miele, who recognizes that greatness.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Victory for ‘Our People’

The Vlaams Blok of Belgium is one of the most successful nationalist parties in Europe. It is the third largest party in Flanders, the Flemish-speaking area where 60 percent of Belgians live, and has the support of a third of the voters in Antwerp, Belgium’s second-largest city. One of its notable supporters is Anke Van dermeersch, a former Miss Belgium and now a lawyer, who often appears at party rallies. By ordinary political rules, the party’s leader, Filip Dewinter, should be mayor of Antwerp since the Blok holds 20 of the city council’s 55 seats — far more than any other party. The other parties have banded together to keep it out of power.

The Blok, whose motto is “Our People First,” wants Flemish independence from French-speaking Wallonia, would establish “a watertight immigration stop,” and send home all non-European foreigners. It would accept asylum seekers only from Europe, drastically tighten citizenship requirements, and deport all foreigners who commit crimes.

This, of course, is much too sensible for Belgium’s Human Rights League and the Leman Center on Anti-racism, which took the Blok to court in 2000 on the grounds that its platform was “racist.” The specific charges were against a 1999 pamphlet in which the Blok called for separate education for Muslims, a special tax on companies employing non-Europeans, and cuts in child support for non-European employees. The stakes in the suit were high. If the court found against the Blok it would lose about $4 million a year in state money, which is the only source of legal political funding in Belgium. Party leaders were right to call the suit “attempted murder.”

In February, a judge kicked out the case, noting that it was a political question far beyond his jurisdiction. The anti-racists are mortified. “In other European countries their laws work to prevent the rise of far-right political parties,” says their lawyer, Jos Vandervelpen; “Ours should too.” In other words, if you can’t beat “racists” at the polls, get the courts to ban them. The losers could appeal, but this would require bringing a criminal case that would be argued before a jury, and chances are the Blok would win again.

The result has been not only a court victory, but loads of excellent publicity for the Blok, and a clear demonstration of the underhanded tactics its opponents use against it. Party president Frank Vanhecke is justifiably pleased. “It’s only in banana republics that judges decide the manifestos of political parties,” he says. The victory should bring a lift at the polls. The Blok won 15 percent of the vote in the last general elections in 1999; it could win 20 percent in May. [Andrew Osborn, Belgium’s Far Right Resurgent, Guardian (London), Feb. 28, 2003.]

Immigration Roulette

Immigration to the United States is like gambling: some people die trying to cross the border, some who come legally are booted on technicalities, and at least one illegal recently got two free heart-lung transplants. Everyone has now heard of Jesica Santillan, the 17-year-old Mexican girl who died on Feb. 23. Not so many people know that three years ago her parents paid a coyote $5,000 to smuggle her across the border in the hope she could get help for a heart condition that could not be treated in Mexico. If the first procedure at Duke University Hospital had not been bungled and then followed by a second heart-lung transplant that failed, virtually no one would know that illegal aliens sometimes get even the most complex and costly treatments. In her case, a North Carolina businessman, Mack Mahoney, founded a private charity to raise money for the operations, but illegals have gotten new organs and even sex-change operations, all on the public tab.

Miss Santillan’s parents have already promised to sue the hospital over her death. However, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, in 2002, 5,542 Americans died waiting for an organ transplant, which means two American probably died because Miss Santillan got the organs they didn’t. Now that the parents are widely known to be here illegally, will the feds do their job and show them the door? [Michelle Malkin, Rolling Up the Medical Welcome Mat, WorldNetDaily.com, Feb. 21, 2003. Rob Stein, Teenage Girl in Botched Organ Transplant Dies, Washington Post, Feb. 23, 2003, p. A1.]

The contrast to the case of Ernst Zundel could not be greater. Mr. Zundel is a German citizen, married to an American. He is notorious in Canada, where he used to live, because he claims the Nazis killed far fewer than six million Jews. On Feb. 5, three INS agents and two local policemen arrested him at his house in East Tennessee. Mr. Zundel was in the United States legally, but — though the details are a little murky — he is said to have missed a hearing of some kind, and the INS says it will ban him from the United States for 20 years. For a 63-year-old man, this is close to permanent expulsion. At one point it seemed likely Mr. Zundel would be expelled to Germany, where he could face five years in prison for “inciting hatred,” something that is fortunately not yet a crime in the United States. Now, it appears he will be shipped to Canada, where he still has permanent residency rights.

With an estimated seven to thirteen million illegal aliens in the country, why is the INS expelling the legal resident spouse of an American citizen because of what appears to be a minor technicality? Although the First Amendment, for now, means we do not officially have thought crimes in this country, this kind of selective law enforcement certainly suggests our rulers believe in them in principle.

Organized Crime

Carole Joy is likely to get an organ transplant, just like Jesica Santillan. She is a convicted murderer doing time in the Nebraska pen, who destroyed her liver with alcohol and heroin. According to a 1976 US Supreme Court ruling, prisoners are eligible for transplants just like the rest of us, and Miss Joy has been conditionally approved to go on the list of 17,300 people nationwide waiting for new livers. Apparently she must lose weight and control her diabetes better in order to become the perfect candidate for the $200,000 operation. Miss Joy would not be the first yard bird to get a new organ. A 32-year old California inmate got a new heart but died last December, 11 months after the operation. In 1999, a convicted murder who had done his time got a new heart, but has since been charged with several crimes, including possession of child pornography. [Convicted Killer Still Sparks Controversy Over Transplant, AP, Feb. 22, 2003.]

African Heroes

The Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s against British rule in Kenya was one of the bloodiest uprisings against colonial rule in Africa. A Kikuyu tribesman named Dedan Kimathi led the revolt, which succeeded in killing 32 white settlers and 100 British soldiers. Kimathi and 500 followers managed to elude capture for more than a year before the British finally caught and executed him.

Kimathi had no mercy for blacks who would not join his uprising, and killed far more Africans than whites. Once his men cut in half the young son of a chief who would not join, and drank his blood. Then they threw the two halves of his body at the boy’s mother and killed her. They hacked to death hundreds of others who would not fight the British.

The Mau Mau specialized in horrible initiation rites. Recruits were made to drink human blood, semen or urine, and in some cases were ordered to eat human brains, sometimes of their own relatives. Others had to eat the flesh of murdered babies.

Mau Mau fighters were best known in the West for murdering whites, especially after they attacked a doctor who ran a clinic for Africans, and hacked her to death along with her husband and six-year-old son. Gray Leakey, great-uncle of the white Kenyan politician and conservationist Richard Leakey, was another victim. His captors buried him alive after eating some of his (unspecified) extremities. His own supporters finally had enough of Kimathi’s torture and murder of fellow Africans, and betrayed him to the British. A black African jury convicted him, and he was buried in a mass grave with other Mau Mau leaders.

The new Kenyan government of Mwai Kibaki that won power in December has announced it will exhume Kimathi’s body and give him a state funeral. It also plans to honor other Mau Mau “heroes” whom it considers freedom fighters. White Kenyans asked the British government to denounce these plans, but that was silly. “We wouldn’t take a stand one way or another,” says a British High Commission spokesman. [Adrian Blomfield, Honour for Mau Mau Leader Who Ate Victims, Telegraph (London), Feb. 13, 2003.]

Eenie, meenie, minie, dough

Two years ago, Grace Fuller and Louise Sawyer, both black, were about to fly out of Las Vegas on Southwest Airlines, when a flight attendant got on the intercom to ask passengers to sit down. “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe; pick a seat, we gotta go,” said Jennifer Cundiff, who is white. The second line is usually “catch a tiger by the toe,” but Miss Fuller and Miss Sawyer said the rhyme was directed at them, since an older version was “catch a nigger by the toe.” They say passengers laughed — they think at them — as if blacks were too stupid to find a seat.

The women have sued for damages in the US District Court in Kansas City, where Judge Kathryn Vratil has, amazingly, granted a trial date in March. “The court agrees with plaintiffs that because of its history, the phrase ‘eenie, meenie, minie, moe’ could reasonably be viewed as objectively racist and offensive,” she wrote. Miss Cundiff, who was 22 at the time she recited the lines, says she had never heard the “nigger” version, and that she learned the rhyme from a co-worker who used it to encourage passengers to find seats, since Southwest does not have assigned seating. Besides money, the women want Southwest to promise never to use the rhyme again, and to train their employees in racial sensitivity. [Trial Set in Southwest Racist Rhyme Suit, AP, Feb. 10, 2003.]

Family Affair

Last August, a woman from Mastic, New York, showed up at the Poospatuck Indian reservation, also in Mastic, looking for crack cocaine. She had with her only a pair of stolen boxer shorts and her 15-year-old granddaughter. The woman, whose name was withheld and race not specified, found a drug dealer known as “Jo-Jo,” and asked if he would take the shorts for some crack. He said no. She asked for credit and again he said no, but said he thought the granddaughter looked “cute.” The woman agreed to rent her granddaughter out, and after getting the crack, shoved her towards Jo-Jo and told her to “give him a kiss.” Jo-Jo took her about ten yards away, and raped and sodomized her, as she screamed for help. Afterwards, her grandmother made her urinate, in the hope of washing away DNA evidence of the rape, and took her home and scrubbed her in the shower. The woman has a long history of theft and drug problems, and had just moved in with her daughter and granddaughter. She has been arrested and could face 25 years in prison. [Andrew Smith, Girl Raped in Drug Deal, New York Post, Feb. 1, 2003.]

Respecting the Natives

Australian Aborigines have their own rules for conjugal relations that white courts used to ignore but are now respecting as multiculturalism requires. For example, it is common for older Abos to pay for future delivery of young girls as soon as they are born. This practice recently came to light when Jackie Jamilmira claimed a 15-year-old girl on whom he had been making regular payments, took her home and raped her.

He was tried and sentenced for unlawful sexual intercourse, but an appeals judge said Aboriginal custom should prevail, and reduced the sentence to one day. As Mr. Jamilmira’s lawyer explained, “The behavior complained of by the white community is not recognized in this community as unlawful conduct. Rather it is viewed as appropriate and morally correct.” Aborigines do not recognize underage sex or marital rape as crimes.

Judge John Gallop agreed that Mr. Jamilmira was simply exercising conjugal rights Abos have recognized for centuries, that the girl “knew what was expected of her,” and did not need the protection of the white man’s law. The girl herself may think otherwise. She said Mr. Jamilmira beat her, and that when she tried to escape he fired a shotgun into the air. She is now in hiding. [Kathy Marks, Aborigine Insists Tribal Law Gives Right to Underage Sex, Independent (London), Feb. 22, 2003.]

Another Hoax

Nicholas and Tracey Gatlin are a black couple who used to live in a house in Timber Valley in Harris County, Texas. They set fire to the house in December to collect $120,000 in insurance money, painted insulting graffiti on the ruins, and blamed “racists.” Arson inspectors were immediately suspicious when they found the Gatlins had moved all their possessions out of the house before the fire, but included them in the insurance claim. The couple face up to life in prison if they are convicted of insurance fraud and arson. [Darren Lyn, Couple Allegedly Torch Their Home, Then Say it Was Hate Crime, ABC13 Eyewitness News (Houston, Texas), Jan. 30, 2003.]

The ‘Ugly’ Truth

AR editor Jared Taylor appeared on MSNBC’s Phil Donahue program Jan. 22 and Feb. 10, to talk about race. An old-style 1970s liberal, Mr. Donahue appeared shocked that a person like Mr. Taylor could even exist, much less articulate and defend white interests. His “anti-racist” arguments were clichés.

There were the usual attempts to ambush Mr. Taylor with “racist” quotations from American Renaissance, all but one of which Mr. Taylor defended and endorsed. The one exception was the following, which Mr. Donahue read as an example of AR’s mean-spiritedness. “Ugly Mexicans and ugly Haitians come here to live permanently, but we are supposed to be endlessly sensitive to their peculiarities . . .”

Mr. Taylor replied that he did not recall calling immigrants “ugly,” but if that was what was in AR, it must have been what he wrote. In fact, the context gives the sentence a very different meaning:

There used to be much talk about ‘ugly Americans,’ who traveled overseas expecting to find hamburgers and English-speakers, and who ignorantly deprecated the quaint customs of the natives. We were supposed to be deeply ashamed of them — and they were only tourists! ‘Ugly Mexicans’ and ‘ugly Haitians’ come here to live permanently, but we are supposed to be endlessly sensitive to their peculiarities, and revel in the diversity of toadying to their ethnic demands. (AR, June 1996.)

The quotation marks around “ugly Mexicans” and “ugly Haitians” were, of course, inaudible when Mr. Donahue read the passage, and it is hard to think this was anything other than an attempt to give a false impression. Mr. Taylor has published at least a million words, but liberals apparently have to distort them to find something shocking or unreasonable.

For the Feb. 10 appearance, Mr. Taylor was the only guest for the entire hour. Afterwards, the producers said Mr. Taylor had attracted a large number of viewers, and an unusual amount of viewer response — much of it positive. The Donahue staff was frankly surprised by the strong support for Mr. Taylor. AR itself has been swamped with enthusiastic reactions and comments. We have had a sharp rise in subscriptions, and can hardly keep up with the e-mail. The response is proof, once again, that many whites have healthy, common-sense views about race, and are only waiting for leadership.

Incorrigible liberal though he is, we were sorry to learn that MSNBC discontinued Mr. Donahue’s program on Feb. 22. Although Mr. Taylor has been on many television programs, he never before had a national audience for a full hour. This may have been only a desperate attempt to boost Mr. Donahue’s ratings and save a struggling program, but whatever the motive, it was an excellent opportunity.

Sink or Swim

Because the city of North Miami, Florida, is close to the Atlantic, its police department requires that new recruits be proficient swimmers. City Councilman Jacques Despinosse thinks this is unfair to blacks. “We can’t swim,” complains the Haitian councilman; “Most of us didn’t come here on the Mayflower; we came on slave ships,” as if that explained anything. He says the requirement also keeps black officers from other departments from joining the North Miami police. Police Chief Gwendolyn Boyd-Savage, who is also black, has no plans to change the requirement. She says most rejects fail written exams or background checks, and that the department will arrange lessons for otherwise promising recruits who cannot swim. [David Ovalle, Swimming Requirement Called Unfair, Herald (Miami), Feb. 17, 2003, p. 3B.]

Relocation Echoes

During an appearance on a Greensboro radio program on Feb. 3, Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC) said he did not think it was necessary to round up Arabs in the wake of the Sept 11 attacks, but said he agreed with President Roosevelt’s Japanese relocation program. “We were at war,” he said; “Some probably were intent on doing harm to us.” He also said the camps kept Japanese away from angry Americans who might have attacked them.

Japanese and Arab activists are in a dither. Ed Nakawatase of Asian Americans United, who was born in a relocation camp, says Mr. Coble is falsifying history. The Japanese American Citizens League wants Mr. Coble to apologize, and resign as chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security. Tawfik Barqawi, head of the Burlington County, New Jersey, human relations committee, says Mr. Coble owes both Japanese and Arabs an apology. [Remarks by 2 NC Lawmakers Upset Arabs, Japanese, AP, Feb. 7, 2003]

Rep. Michael M. Honda (D-CA), who lived in a relocation center during the war, wants Republican leaders to condemn the remarks, and calls their silence “outrageous.” Mr. Coble’s spokesman Missy Branson says the congressman is sorry if he offended anybody, but stands fast on his original view on relocation. [Wendy Thermos, Honda Seeks GOP Action over Remarks on Internment, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16, 2003.]

Other Democrats are calling for an annual National Day of Remembrance to commemorate the victims of relocation. Rep. Jay Inslee of Washington says America needs a new holiday “because we as a nation temporarily forgot the values of liberty and succumbed to the power of fear.” [Inslee Disputes Claim that WWII Internment Was ‘A Good Idea,’ The Sun (Bremerton, Wash.), Feb. 11, 2003.]

Shortly after Mr. Coble’s remarks were first reported, AR sent his office a copy of the article on relocation that appeared in our January issue. The congressman read the article, and telephoned personally to tell us how useful he had found it.

Snipe Hunt

For more than 30 years American universities have been trying to foster “diversity,” but as a recent article in the New York Times concedes, race relations have not improved: “Decades after colleges and universities across the country began actively recruiting minority students, many campuses are more diverse than ever. But that does not mean that students connect across racial and ethnic lines.”

By the 1980s, colleges had begun to lay on deans for diversity, ethnic studies courses, and even racial and ethnic “affinity houses” where non-whites could bask in homogeneity, and take a break from whites. But still the races don’t mix, and non-whites invariably claim they are “devalued” on campus.

What to do? At Dartmouth, in New Hampshire, the answer is to spend millions of dollars trying to get students to “connect.” Freshman orientation used to mean hiking up mountains or camping on the Appalachian Trail. Now it means a series of diversity pep talks, beginning with the welcoming address by university president, James Wright. Dartmouth requires all non-teaching staff to take diversity training, and recommends it for students and faculty. According to the Times, “Training for staff members includes workshops in which they are asked to think of Dartmouth in terms of classism, racism and sexism, and then to make recommendations for improvements. They are also told to find ways to incorporate those suggestions into their own lives.” Students are subjected to lectures from non-whites who tell them all the things to which whites should be sensitive.

Even the Times recognizes all this could be a wild goose chase: “No one has a formula for success; there is not even a consensus about what success would look like. Experts say that diversity programs on college campuses amount to a constantly evolving experiment, which in some cases in the past may have done more harm than good.”

Predictably, it takes a non-white to point out just how much rubbish this all is. “Racial diversity, which has been an obsession of the administration, has been misguided,” said Chien Wen Kung, 21, a junior from Singapore. “My opinion is that Dartmouth should be focusing on intellectual diversity.” [Sara Rimer, Colleges Find Diversity Is Not Just Numbers, New York Times, Nov. 12, 2002.]

Bad Substitute

David Franklin, 21, used to be a substitute teacher at Horizons Alternative School, a special middle school for refractory children in Fort Worth, Texas. According to police, on Jan. 23, Mr. Franklin, who is black, walked into his classroom and found two boys playing with a 14-year-old girl “in a sexual manner.” Rather than stop the boys, Mr. Franklin reportedly turned off the lights and computer monitors and raped the girl, while six boys watched. Two boys also assaulted the girl. “It was so incredible, we really had to make ourselves try to believe the details,” says Fort Worth Police Sgt. Dave Stamp. “Not only did he not stop the action that was going on, he basically joined in.” Police arrested Mr. Franklin on Jan. 31, and released him on a $75,000 bond. His mother says he told her he’s innocent. The two boys will also be charged. [Teacher Accused of Raping Girl in Class, AP, Feb. 2, 2003. MSNBC.com, Teacher In Custody Accused Of School Rape, January 31, 2003.]

UNAACP

The United Nations is getting ready to recognize the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as an official non-governmental agency (NGO). Once so designated the NAACP gains “consultative status” with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UNESCO), which would let it propose agenda items and make presentations at UN meetings. Under the leadership of former congressman Kweisi Mfume, the NAACP has emphasized international concerns. It monitored the recent elections in Zimbabwe, and is planning a conference on the Caribbean and the Americas later this year. Mr. Mfume recently met Fidel Castro of Cuba to promote human rights and trade. Percy Hintzen, chairman of the African American studies department at the University of California at Berkeley, says the NAACP may be shifting its focus to international affairs in order to remain “relevant.” [Deborah Kong, NAACP Aspires to Global Role, AP, Feb. 1, 2003.]

INS RIP

On March 1, 2003, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service ceased to exist. Taking its place within the new Department of Homeland security are two new federal agencies: the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, which will enforce immigration law, and the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, which will issue visas and naturalize new citizens.

One man who will fortunately not be part of the new INS is Kenneth Elwood, former chief of the Philadelphia district, who retired on Jan. 3. Mr. Elwood is all too typical of the people who are supposed to be guarding our border. He began his career in the enforcement arm, but soon moved to services. “Enforcement . . . hardens you,” he says. “You begin to think they’re [illegals] all law-breakers, but most people are doing it for good reasons. Out of a half-million illegals every year, very few are here to do something bad.”

“People all over the world can look to America and see themselves,” he adds. “Somebody from every nationality, whether Somali or French or Russian, can see images of themselves in America. That’s such a great advantage for the United States.” After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mr. Elwood opposed the government’s efforts to detain Muslims. “I pulled everybody together and said I’m not going down in history like the person who locked up all the Japanese after Pearl Harbor,” he says. Mr. Elwood thinks red tape and xenophobic politics made the old INS fail in its mission, which he believes is to bring in more workers. “The economy is the 900-pound gorilla; it’s going to get what it wants, no matter what we do.” [Thomas Ginsberg, Departing INS Chief Leery of Changes Facing Agency, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 5, 2003.]

Cable News for Blacks

Black-owned Atlanta-based Major Broadcasting Cable Network (MBC), known for televising sports at black colleges, plans to launch a 24-hour cable news network for blacks. MBC News: The Urban Voice will be modeled on CNN’s Headline News, and MBC has hired black former CNN anchor Gordon Graham as a host. The decision comes after Black Entertainment Television (BET) decided to cut back public affairs programming. Last December, BET cancelled the interview show “BET Tonight,” on which Sen. Trent Lott apologized for praising Strom Thurmond. BET also cancelled its Sunday morning news, and a program for teenagers.

BET president Debra Lee doubts an all-news cable channel for blacks will succeed. She says blacks say they like news programs, but don’t necessarily watch them. She also doubts MBC has enough money to succeed. Fewer than a quarter of American households get MBC. It is unavailable in New York, but is in Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Houston and Los Angeles. [David Bauder, Black News Channel in the Works, AP, Feb. 12, 2003.]

‘Call to Arms!’

Chris Simcox a former Los Angeles schoolteacher, is now editor and publisher of the Tombstone, Arizona, Tumbleweed. On a vacation in the Arizona desert after the Sept. 11 attacks, he says he came across five separate organized paramilitary groups running drugs. “These were highly organized groups,” he says; “three vehicles, with the camouflage-wearing troops escorting the vehicles on both sides in columns and carrying automatic weapons — AKs, mini-14s, the whole works.”

Mr. Simcox called the Border Patrol, only to be told that they knew all about it, but could do nothing. He also learned that the Park Service has listed the area — Organ Pipe National Monument — as the most dangerous national park because of Mexican smugglers. “That,” he explains, “was when I realized something was really wrong. We’re under attack but we leave the borders wide open. People are coming across in thousands, even as organized military units, and there’s nothing we can do about it — there’s no way of knowing if these people illegally crossing our borders are terrorists. That’s when it occurred to me that I own a paper, and I thought, ‘Wow, if the rest of the country won’t print what is going on out here, at least I can.’”

In October 2002, Mr. Simcox ran a now-famous headline: “Enough is Enough! A Public Call to Arms! Citizens Border Patrol Militia Now Forming!” When responses poured in, he established the Civil Homeland Defense, to run regular patrols: “We are merely putting bodies on the border, acting as a presence, trying to create a deterrent to those who are trying to cross the border illegally. Off the record, the U.S. Border Patrol — the guys on the ground — will tell you that they appreciate our help.” Members of the militia are not required to carry weapons, but must have a concealed carry permit, which means they have passed a background check.

2002 AR Conference speaker Glenn Spencer also runs a civilian border watch. His group, American Border Patrol, uses high-tech surveillance equipment to locate and monitor “suspected border intruders” (SBIs). He posts the information on his website, www.americanborderpatrol.com: “All any American has to do is log on to our website to see what is happening along this border in real time,” he says; “People will be amazed.” “When we find a group of SBIs we tell them this is the United States of America, they have been reported to the Border Patrol and please wait here. They usually just sit down. If they take off we do not attempt to stop them. If they run, they run.”

Americans living along the border say the region is increasingly violent. They say drug smugglers have threatened them and their families, and they will not walk their property unarmed. They want troops on the border.

Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) is the most outspoken politician backing military patrols, but his is a lonely voice. Homeland Security Secretary Thomas Ridge says “cultural and political reasons” prevent use of troops. As a result, says Rep. Tancredo, “Something very ugly is going to happen down there . . . We don’t even fight fires at night in some places down there because of the fear of the drug smugglers. It sounds unbelievable, but it is true, so the cynicism about elected officials not wanting to do anything about the illegal-alien problem is totally warranted.” [Kelly Patricia O’Meara, Civilians Patrolling the Border, Insight, Jan. 20, 2003.]

Armando Lopez Nogales, governor of the Mexican state of Sonora, wants Arizona Governor Jane Hull to put down the Citizens Border Patrol Militia, and says he will ask the US government to stop other militias from “hunting” illegal Mexicans. “We want to address respect for the rights of our countrymen,” he says. [Mexico Governor to Ask US to Stop Vigilantes ‘Hunting’ Immigrants, TheNewsMexico.com, Nov. 20, 2002.]

Madness in Malawi

We reproduce the following newspaper story verbatim and in toto:

MALAWI — Horrifying stories of vampires attacking villagers in the dead of night and sucking their blood have forced Malawi’s government to wage a massive public relations blitz to calm the public. Last week, frightened villagers beat to death a man suspected of being a vampire, attacked and nearly lynched three visiting priests and destroyed an aid group’s encampment they feared was the vampires’ headquarters. [Villagers Suddenly Afraid of Vampires, Santa Barbara News-Press, Dec. 23, 2002.]

Straw Man

Jack Straw, the foreign secretary in Tony Blair’s Labour government, says many of today’s worst international problems are Britain’s fault. “A lot of the problems that we are having to deal with now — I have to deal with now — are a consequence of our colonial past,” he says. In an interview given to New Statesman, he says that in India and Pakistan “we made some quite serious mistakes; bad story for us . . . The consequences [disputes between the two countries] are still there.” In Afghanistan, Britain “played less than a glorious role over a century and a half.” Iraq is a problem partly because “the odd lines for Iraq’s borders were drawn by Brits.” Britain’s role in bringing about the Arab-Israeli dispute was “not entirely an honorable one.” As for Zimbabwe, he says his “huge arguments” with Robert Mugabe are over democracy and good governance. Presumably killing whites and running them off the land is all right, because “when any Zimbabwean, any African, says to me land is a key issue . . . the early colonizers were all about taking land.” In reply to critics of Mr. Straw’s apologetics, Downing Street said the foreign secretary had given “a sensible statement of history.” [Anton La Guardia, Straw Blames Crises on Britain’s Colonial Past, Telegraph (London), Nov. 15, 2002.]

Cooking Up Trouble

In February, Republican students at the University of California at Los Angeles put on an “Affirmative Action Bake Sale,” to show what they think of racial preferences. The cookies were all the same, but they charged different prices according to race and sex: 25 cents for black, Hispanic, and American Indian women, 50 cents for the men, $1.00 for white women, and $2.00 for white men and all Asians. They also wore badges that said such things as “White Oppressor,” “Self-Hating Hispanic Race Traitor,” and “Uncle Tom.”

Chairman of the California Democratic Party Art Torres pronounced himself “deeply saddened and disheartened” by the bake sale, and said, idiotically, that the Republicans must have been emboldened by Sen. Trent Lott’s recent remarks about Strom Thurmond — which cost him his job. Other supporters of racial preferences screeched, too, but as Walter Williams asks in a column, “Why be offended by a money version of racial preferences?” [Walter Williams, Bake Sale of Ideas, Washington Times, March 2, 2003, p. B4.]

Biting the (White) Hand

On October 29, 200 Haitians in a rickety freighter showed up off the Miami coast, jumped into the water and swam for shore. Television cameras whirred, as authorities quickly rounded up the would-be immigrants, who were put in detention to wait asylum hearings. The Haitian Secretary of State for Communications, Mario Dupuy, says the entire incident is America’s fault. The US and other donors held up $500 million in economic aid after the government rigged legislative elections in May 2000. Mr. Dupuy says the resulting hardship has forced Haitians to take desperate steps. Needless to say, he acknowledges no misbehavior on the government’s part, calling the aid holdup “economic sanctions.”

The per capita income of Haiti is $250, which puts it on the same level as the poorer countries of Africa. Last year, the US Coast Guard intercepted 1,400 Haitians on their way to America. Many were foundering and would have drowned if Americans had not rescued them. [Michael Diebert, Haiti Blames Foreign Aid Freeze for Boat People, Reuters, Oct. 30, 2002.

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — Thank you for last month’s article by Arthur Kemp on the decline of South African Airways. When I was in college in the 1980s, the lefties built shantytowns on the school commons, railed against the evils of Apartheid, and demanded that the college sell stock in companies that did business in South Africa. I had a friend who was an exchange student from Johannesburg (she lives in New Zealand now), who knew better. Did they really think, she used to ask, that Bantus could run a modern economy? Mr. Kemp’s article proves they cannot. And if the airline — which black officials offer as a model of the “new” South Africa — is so bad, what about the rest of the economy? And what are South African hospitals like these days?

Aside from reports on the AIDS crisis and an occasional story about crime, we don’t get much news about South Africa. If things were great, the media would be crowing about it. I hope Mr. Kemp will write more articles about the “new” South Africa. I’d be like to know how things are for ordinary South African whites who, unlike my friend, are still in the country.

Richard Franklin, Evanston, Ill.

Sir — In your February issue, you reported that the Pope and the president of Estonia are calling on their countrymen to make more babies and reverse declining birth rates. Indeed, too many whites have swallowed the view that children are an expensive burden. Yes, children cost money but so do the big houses, high-definition televisions and SUVs that whites seem to be able to afford. And the greatest cost — the cost of being displaced by non-whites — comes from not having children. We are in a demographic war, and must make material sacrifices in order to win it. What is more, the sacrifices are nothing compared to the happiness children bring. My two sons and two daughters are sources of great joy.

The Pope says government should help pay to rear children, but that wouldn’t work here. It would only mean more black and brown babies. We must increase our numbers without government help. That’s how we became a majority in the first place.

Dorothy Henner, Rhinelander, Wis.

Sir — I subscribe to 20 publications, and the best proposal I have ever seen in a letter to the editor was written by Sean Alan Price in the January issue of AR [in which he proposes that any Church or other group planning to bring in refugees should file a “cultural impact statement” describing the social costs]. In fact, I have offered Mr. Price’s proposal to the Portland, Maine, City Council as well as to the mayor of Lewiston. Giving taxpayers a real voice in determining who lives in their communities is entirely consistent with the democratic process.

Warren L. Brown, Portland, Me.

Sir — At 68, I am old enough to remember quite a bit about the Second World War, and I particularly enjoyed your January article on the Japanese relocation camps. I’ve written on the subject a few times, citing the same major points, but never had access to so much detail. I would add only one more argument made at the time for relocation: If there had been a Japanese landing on the West Coast, resident Japanese-Americans who were not loyal to the emperor would have been mistreated by the Japanese invaders. Japan’s policy was that all ethnic Japanese owed loyalty to the homeland, and it was in the interests of Japanese who considered themselves Americans to move them to safety.

Jerry Prater, Cross City, Fla.

Sir — Life in New York City provides daily, if not hourly, reminders of the multiracial mess our country has become. Yet recently there appeared a small respite in, of all places, a tunnel of the New York City subway system. The transit authority commissioned someone to bedeck the tunnel between the 5th and 6th Ave. entrances to the subway along 42nd Street in Manhattan with tiling, and a smattering of quotations. I spotted the first quote, from Goethe, as I entered the tunnel from the 5th Ave. side. I braced myself for what was sure to follow: Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, Gandhi. But much to my surprise, the remaining four quotes were from Ovid, Mother Goose, James Joyce and Carl Jung. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I am now waiting for a member of the City Council to protest.

David Wilson, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Sir — Although I do not always agree with your racial views, I enjoy reading your articles because they are well documented and intelligently written. And I also am concerned about the direction our country has taken. I believe legal immigration should be slowed and illegal immigration halted completely. We must protect our borders.

However, I do believe that rather than harping on the racial makeup of our country — after all, it is mainly whites who are selling us out — it would be better to emphasize Western cultural ideas. By being strictly racialist, I do not think we have a chance to prevail. Many whites who have tried to take up the race issue in recent years go way overboard, and I do not like them at all. This is unfortunate, since I sympathize with your cause in many ways. We need a new, not-explicitly-racial approach if we are to make headway. White people must appear fair above all.

Elaine Abbate, Paterson, N. J.

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