July 1994
| American Renaissance magazine | |
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| Vol 5, No. 7 | July 1994 |
| CONTENTS |
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Atlanta Conference is a Great Success
Open Letter to a Former French Resistance Fighter
The Long Retreat
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers
| COVER STORY |
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Atlanta Conference is a Great Success
AR readers meet for frank discussions about race.
by Jared Taylor
More than 160 people, many of them subscribers to American Renaissance, met in Atlanta over Memorial Day weekend for a conference on the theme, “Race and American Civilization.” This was probably the first time in decades that academics, clergymen, authors, and journalists have met before a public audience to discuss the legitimate concerns of the white majority. Participants came from as far away as France, Canada, California, and Alaska.
Bold Speakers
Ten speakers, including some of America’s boldest and most outspoken thinkers on racial questions, treated conference participants to a variety of inspiring and illuminating talks. Some were analyses of the problems we face. Others were accounts of how current trends were set in motion. Yet others were ringing statements of the essential rights of European-Americans. The final session was a panel discussion with all the speakers, in which the audience proposed ways to forestall dispossession. The entire three-day conference took place in the comfortable elegance of the four-star Atlanta Airport Hilton hotel.
The program began on the evening of May 28th with remarks by Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance. After welcoming the participants, he described the dire consequences of permitting current trends to continue. Most whites know very well that it would be a catastrophe if non-white immigration and differential birth-rates reduce whites to a minority. However, their resistance is private rather than public, and takes the form of flight to the suburbs and private education for children. Mr. Taylor pointed out that these measures only buy time, and he ended his remarks with a call for public and political recognition of the racial realities by which most whites lead their private lives.
After Mr. Taylor’s remarks were met with a standing ovation — an honor the audience accorded to nearly every speaker — conference participants gathered for a reception. The convivial atmosphere continued afterwards in a hospitality suite reserved by a delegation of Atlanta participants. Discussion lasted late into the evening, beneath the national and battle flags of the Confederate States of America.
The first speaker on May 29th was Prof. Michael Levin of City College of New York. He concisely outlined the evidence for racial differences in such traits as average intelligence, aggressiveness, and the willingness to sacrifice today for benefits tomorrow. He pointed out that recognition of these differences — which have implications for nearly every aspect of our daily lives — is crucial to any attempt to solve America’s most pressing problems. He concluded with a bold survey of the ways in which employment, education, and law enforcement policies should recognize the biology that underlies the divergent ways in the which the races behave.
Samuel Francis, syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times, followed Professor Levin. Marshaling his arguments with the force and tenacity that have earned him the sobriquet, “the Clausewitz of the right,” he left no doubt about the fate that awaits the Anglo-European majority if it fails to act in its own interests. Drawing on his perspective from within the Washington Beltway, Mr. Francis made it clear what little effect the struggle between Democrats and Republicans has on the real issues facing the country. He concluded with a strong appeal for a popular movement that will force politicians to meet the demands of the majority.
Lawrence Auster, author of The Path to National Suicide, spoke eloquently on how massive, non-white immigration has led to an across-the-board assault on the legitimacy of the white, majority culture. Third world immigrants, who leave behind unsatisfactory societies of their own, soon begin to blame white America for the fact that they repeat in their new country the same failures they left behind. Mr. Auster analyzed the liberal psychology that accepts this preposterous misplacement of blame, and set forth a series of principles that would have to be accepted by all races in order to live side by side peacefully. Otherwise, he concluded, different peoples might be obliged to go separate ways.
After lunch, Joseph Sobran gave a witty and erudite exposition of how pervasive government intrusion into our daily lives was one of the very things the Founders deliberately designed the Constitution to prevent. Pointing out that “the Constitution is no threat to our present form of government,” Mr. Sobran argued that federal “civil rights” laws are no more legally justifiable than federal mandates on where citizens may smoke. He explained that race relations, like virtually everything else that touches our lives, are likely to sort themselves out in accordance with popular desire and national good health only if decisions are left to the people.
Fr. Ronald Tacelli of Boston College followed Mr. Sobran with a moving appeal to the ancient values that have governed European societies and that we cast aside at our peril. As he explained, the affinity for people like oneself is part of natural law. Fr. Tacelli gently chided American Renaissance for sometimes dwelling on the shortcomings of other groups rather than emphasizing the beauty of the traditions to which we are heirs. He proved to be not merely a learned and articulate speaker but a very amusing one. His good humor was a delightful leaven to the seriousness of his message.
The day’s official program concluded with a talk by Wayne Lutton, one of the leading critics of American immigration policy. He explained the development of immigration law over the past 50 years, noting successes as well as failures. The present era is one of spectacular failure, but Dr. Lutton held out hope that such obvious disasters as amnesty for illegal aliens and the tremendous strain that third world populations put on local social services are mobilizing strong resistance. He ended with an encouraging account of the grass roots anti-immigration movements that have recently sprung up, especially in California.
Following Dr. Lutton’s remarks, Gordon Baum made a brief appeal to the audience to consider joining his organization, the Council of Conservative Citizens. C of CC, with chapters throughout the country, does practical political work for the benefit of the white majority. Conference participants then visited literature tables, where a variety of materials were offered by activist organizations.
The next event was the banquet, where the mystery guest was to speak. There had been considerable speculation about his identity, all of it wrong. It would have taken nothing short of clairvoyance to know that he was Mayer Schiller, an orthodox rabbi who teaches Talmudic studies at Yeshiva University High School.
Rabbi Schiller opened his remarks with a moving description of some of the characteristics that in his view make Western Civilization uniquely beautiful: a firm sense of duty, honor, heroism, and fair play; a distinctive conception of romance; and a compassionate sense of the plight of others. This civilization was sure to survive, he maintained, come what may. Even if his preferred solution — racial partition of the United States — did not come about, there would be an in-gathering of the white diaspora to its European home. But even then, even in a white-minority North America, Rabbi Schiller confidently predicted the survival of Western Civilization, a quiet burning of the flame that would emerge again to light the world.
The program for May 30th began with philosophy professor Eugene Valberg’s fascinating account of the observations he has made about race during his many years in Africa. He argued that unless black Africans are taught liberal nonsense by whites, they are completely at ease with the notion of racial differences in intelligence. Furthermore, years of contact with black South Africans have led him to believe that the majority fully understand that white rule is far preferable to black rule. Dr. Valberg also described the pressures brought to bear on ordinary Africans that led them to vote for a black government that will benefit only the elite that is in power, and that will slowly destroy the only modern economy south of the Sahara.
The concluding speaker was Sam Dickson, an Atlanta lawyer and long-time activist in conservative causes. He gave an inspired and entertaining account of the liberal mind, explaining why liberals persist in manic activism despite the failure of every one of their programs. Integration of schools, of which we are celebrating the 40th anniversary, has been a breath-taking failure, as has been that crowning liberal stupidity — the belief that the laws of genetics do not apply to man. Mr. Dickson concluded with a stirring call for optimism, noting that a life of majority activism is not only rewarding but great fun.
The final session of the conference was a panel discussion, with much audience participation, about how European-American interests can be promoted. In addition to lively exchanges about the merits of different strategies, the audience raised the subject of the prominence of Jews in liberal, anti-white causes. The Jewish panelists responded in turn, acknowledging the traditional role of Jews and explaining why they expected this role to change. The conference concluded on a note of uplift and enthusiastic expectations for future American Renaissance conferences.
It is difficult to imagine how this gathering could have been a greater success. The speakers — all first-rate to begin with — were in top form, and had the benefit of a thoughtful, well-informed audience that agreed and disagreed with equal good humor. We have taken the first of many steps to present our vital interests to a wider audience and to secure the broad support that leads to success.
| ARTICLE |
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Open Letter to a Former French Resistance Fighter
A young Frenchman addresses the older generation.
by Colorado
First of all, I hope you were not one of those who waited until every German had fled before putting on the insignia of the French Forces of the Interior [the resistance movement]. If you really fought the Germans I respect you because I oppose all occupation forces. I can well imagine how those grey-green uniforms, that accent from beyond the Rhine, and those virile marching songs would have been intolerable to you. You may well even tell me that you despise the music of Wagner, that you hate sauerkraut and everything about German culture. You did what you felt you had to do to resist the imposition of an alien presence and an alien culture.
But you, who resisted the other because he was German, who refused the “enrichment” of Teutonic ideas, who fought and suffered so that France would remain French, tell me this: How can you accept the waves of Africans and Asians now washing up on our shores? They leave their spray-paint spoor on our walls and on our trains and buses. Where they have become the majority, their habits make life intolerable for Frenchmen — Frenchmen who watch their neighborhoods decay and then flee.
With the help of their collaborators in the government and the media, these newcomers are trying to impose their culture on us. Today we see mosques rising everywhere and instead of the German music of your era, we hear such tropical brayings as rap, the Lambada, and Saga Africa. You — who shaved the heads of French women who succumbed to the charms of German soldiers — what do you think today when you see white women walking hand in hand with blacks and Arabs?
Every day you are harangued by radio and television about the joys of racial mixing. You hear the government-sponsored calls to childless French couples to adopt third-world children. And all the while, your taxes rise because you must pay your part of a 240 billion [French Francs] social welfare budget that is really the annual cost of occupation.
You risked your life to rid France of German culture, but I ask you candidly: Was it worth the trouble? What have we gained, now that those field-grey uniforms have been replaced with saris, djellabahs [the costume of Morocco] and boubous [traditional African costume]?
You were lucky in a way. If today’s “anti-racist” laws had been in effect in July, 1940, you could have been indicted and imprisoned for “inciting hatred against Germans” with the very first tract you handed out.
What Was the Point?
What was the point of killing so many people only to get where we are now? It could all have been avoided. Around 1942, François Mitterand [former resistance leader, now President of France] could have said “The Germans are at home in our homes,” [a phrase commonly used today about immigrants] and Pierre Laval [vice-premier of the Vichy government, later executed for treason] would have agreed. If you and Mitterand hadn’t been so intolerant and Germanophobic we could have easily assimilated the million or so Germans who were camping on our soil.
Couldn’t they have been naturalized, given the vote, and made into good little Frenchmen like you and me? Wouldn’t that have been an earlier version of the “cultural enrichment,” “tolerance,” and “openness to others,” about which we hear so much these days? You may not like to admit it, but I know you prefer Bavarian polkas to that execrable rap “music.”
Poor old boy, the people who sent you off to the wars in 1940 have certainly made a monkey out of you. Since then, neither Gaullists nor Communists have done much to preserve our people or our culture, have they? Your silence is the silence of a cuckold, but I feel your quiet rage at having been so cruelly deceived.
At your age perhaps we cannot expect to find you at our sides in the fight against this generation’s occupation. But surely you will not be displeased to see the rising power of the anti-immigration movement and of those who wish to preserve the France for which you fought. For it is we who now fight to justify your sacrifice, whose victory will ensure that the comrades you left upon the field of honor did not die in vain.
This is a translation of an article that appeared in issue No. 19 of the French periodical, l’Empire Invisible.
| BOOK REVIEW |
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The Long Retreat
Strom Thurmond’s political career and the capitulation of the South.
Strom Thurmond, by Nadine Cohodas, Simon & Schuster, 1993, 574 pp., $27.50.
reviewed by Thomas Jackson
Usually, we take it for granted that knowledge and wisdom come with experience. We expect someone who lives in the forest to know more about trees than someone who lives in the desert, and a mother of six to know more about child rearing than a bachelor. Race is an exception to this rule. Whites who have never met a black person think they can give lessons in race relations to whites who have lived among blacks all their lives.
The ideal background in race relations is therefore to have lived one’s life exclusively among whites. This is why Sweden and Norway — both enthusiastic supporters of Nelson Mandela — had the moral credentials to scold white South Africans about apartheid. Likewise, during what is called the “civil rights era,” Northern whites felt qualified to tell Southerners they had got it all wrong and should abandon customs that were centuries old.
Curiously, the whites who have the most experience with blacks invariably bow to the pressures of whites who know nothing about blacks. They warn that the new order will be a disaster, but they comply. Decades later, their predictions are borne out, but by then all whites are so deluded and demoralized they cannot recognize the obvious: that the new order is, in every respect, a disaster.
The career of Strom Thurmond, who was once a strong segregationist but now votes for “civil rights” bills, is a portrait in miniature of this strange and tragic process. This biography, by Nadine Cohodas, is a carefully researched account of his political career, but because Miss Cohodas takes liberalism for granted, she never wonders why Sen. Thurmond’s views changed. Aside from this silence about a question that is, for her, not a question, she has written a fair, readable, and very instructive book.
Strom Thurmond was born in Edgefield, South Carolina in 1902. His family was of upper middle-class Southern stock, and he was reared to the good manners and generous spirit of his class. His father, William Thurmond, always had a kind word or an extra dollar for townspeople, black or white, who were down on their luck.
William Thurmond was a small-time politician in his own right. At one time he even served as campaign manager for “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, the fiery, segregationist South Carolina governor and senator who vowed that when he got to Washington he would use a pitchfork to stick President Cleveland — “an old bag of beef — in his old fat ribs.” As a small boy, already interested in politics, Strom Thurmond never forgot Tillman’s advice on the importance of a firm handshake.
The young Mr. Thurmond attended Clemson College, where he was an athlete in five sports and an active club member. He practiced law for a few years, but soon turned to politics, his one true love. At the age of 26 he won his first campaign and was elected Edgefield County Superintendent. The career that then followed was typical: Elections as school superintendent, town attorney, state judge, state legislator.
In his early campaigns, race was not an issue, since virtually no one criticized the prevailing racial stratification. Like his father, Mr. Thurmond simply took segregation for granted. He was cordial to all people, and he represented blacks in his law practice. If anything, he prided himself on the concern he showed for blacks, and in 1940, as a judge, decried Ku Klux Klan violence against blacks as “the most abominable type of lawlessness.” He was also vocally opposed to large-scale immigration to the United States.
In 1942, Judge Thurmond volunteered for combat duty and flew into France with the 82nd Airborne on D-day. As a sitting judge and almost 40 years old, he could easily have been exempted from service, but in those days he was a fighter.
The year after the war he was elected governor of South Carolina. Once again, the contest had no racial overtones, and he was, if anything, a progressive. In his inaugural address, he called for more education for Negroes, equal pay for women, and the right for women to serve on juries. As governor he was proud of his work to improve the lot of blacks and spoke of harmony and cooperation between the races, though always within the traditions of the South.
By the 1940s, however, South Carolina was stirring. Although blacks could vote in general elections, they could not vote in primary elections. In a state dominated by the Democratic Party, the primary was the only election that mattered, and Northern activists were stirring up black demands. As early as 1944, the state legislature had seen the need to adopt a resolution demanding that “henceforth the damned agitators of the North leave the South alone.” They went on to say, “We indignantly and vehemently denounce the intentions of all organizations seeking the amalgamation of the white and negro races by co-mingling of the races . . . .” and pledged “our lives and our sacred honor to maintaining it [white supremacy] whatever the cost, in war and peace.”
The most palpable threat came from the single most powerful Northern agitator of all, the President of the United States. In 1948, Harry Truman integrated the armed forces by executive order, and announced a major civil rights program, including abolition of state poll taxes, integration of interstate transport, federal anti-lynching laws, and a permanent commission to enforce non-racial hiring. That same year, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that racially restrictive property covenants could not be enforced.
Southern politicians and newspapers were virtually unanimous in opposing Truman. Gov. Thurmond, like many Southerners, opposed lynching and poll taxes but thought that these were concerns of the states and not of Congress. Federal meddling in hiring decisions, was an intrusion into private matters over which even a state’s jurisdiction was uncertain. Overnight, Southerners became constitutional scholars, quoting the 10th Amendment and the doctrine of enumerated powers.
The result was a strong call for revolt against Truman’s Democratic Party. For years, the party had been the unquestioned symbol of resistance against Republican Reconstruction, but “civil rights” were an outrage. Incumbent Southern congressmen and senators were, of course, the least inclined to bolt because it would have meant giving up seniority.
The ‘Dixiecrat’ Campaign
1948 was an election year, and many Southerners resolved no longer to support a party that encouraged integration. They formed the States’ Rights Democratic Party — quickly dubbed the “Dixiecrats” — and chose Gov. Thurmond as their presidential candidate. “As the governor of a sovereign state,” he said in his acceptance speech, “I do not intend that the rights of my people shall be sacrificed on the block of blind party loyalty.”
He was also crystal clear about the principles that would not be sacrificed: “There are not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.” Even Miss Cohodas concedes that his position was one of principled opposition to federal tyranny, not racial animus.
The campaign was an exercise in pure principle. Gov. Thurmond had no chance of becoming President, but he could neither support a Democratic Party that had betrayed the South nor a Republican Party that had conquered it. The Dixiecrat ticket carried only four states — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina — but by majorities that show just how divided the nation was. Gov. Thurmond got an overwhelming 87.2 percent of the vote in Mississippi and 79.8 percent in Alabama, and invariably received the largest number of white votes in areas with the largest black populations.
After the campaign the governor resumed his duties at the state house in Columbia, but continued to show that he was anything but doctrinaire. He appointed the first woman to the South Carolina Industrial Commission and the first black since Reconstruction to a state advisory council.
Meanwhile, it was the courts that were doing away with segregation in ways that democratically elected officials would not. As a deliberate counterpoint to Mr. Thurmond’s life, Miss Cohodas tells the reader a good deal about Judge J. Waties Waring, a South Carolinian who was an early integrationist. He came from the same stock as the Thurmonds, and described his childhood thus:
Most of the Negroes I knew were ex-slaves and you loved them, were good to them. We didn’t give them any rights, but they never asked for any rights, and I didn’t question it.
Judge Waring was only in part an exception to the rule that it was only inexperienced outsiders who told Southern whites how to behave; he was deeply influenced by his Yankee wife. Once she publicly aired her views in a speech to Charleston’s black YWCA, saying, “you are in the springtime of your growth when great achievements are attained.” Southern whites were, by comparison, “a sick, confused and decadent people . . . full of pride and complacency, introverted, morally weak and low.”
Nourished at home by thoughts such as these, Judge Waring consistently ruled to break down Southern traditions. In 1947, for example, he ruled that the Democratic Party was not a private club and that it must let blacks register and vote in primaries. He ordered South Carolina either to admit blacks to white schools or build black schools that really were equal. (Under instructions like these, there was a period during which the state spent less than $2 million building white schools but more than $5.5 million to build black schools.) Judge Waring also required jurors of different races to eat meals together by explaining — falsely — that separation of jurors was a violation of law.
Judge Waring was significant for two reasons. He was one of that small band of judicial activists who overthrew generations of Southern tradition despite the massive disapproval of whites. And, unlike Strom Thurmond, he was an integrationist when it took courage to be an integrationist. Eventually, he was completely shut out of Charleston society and left with his wife to live in New York City — but not before enduring icy opprobrium of a kind that Strom Thurmond has never faced.
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court threw the South into turmoil with its famous school desegregation ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. South Carolina had anticipated a decision of this kind, and in 1952, voters repealed a provision in the state constitution requiring public education. The plan was to privatize all schools, if the alternative were integrated public schools.
Judges of the Waring stripe ensured that this evasive tactic would fail, but they benefited from disunion even in the South. The resolve of whites who lived among the largest concentrations of blacks was invariably undercut by the concessions of whites who lived among few blacks. It was school districts with only a handful of blacks that set precedents for integration. Also, it was the mostly-white mountain counties of South Carolina that first allowed blacks to register as Democrats. As always, those who would suffer the least from the new order were the first to submit to it.
Power in Washington
By 1955, Strom Thurmond was in the U.S. Senate, where he remains today. At that time he was still a strong fighter for the rights of states, and in 1956 he joined 18 other Southern senators in signing a manifesto that called the [M]Brown decision “a clear abuse of judicial power” and vowed a fight to the end against forced integration.
In 1957, Sen. Thurmond called the U.S. Supreme Court “the greatest enemy of the American people,” saying it was “nine puppets of the NAACP.” That same year, he added to his reputation as the South’s staunchest defender, when he set the record for a single-handed filibuster on the Senate floor — 24 hours and 18 minutes — in opposition to a voting rights bill. He could get no other Southern senator to join him, but his determination won a flood of supporting calls and telegrams.
The very next year, Eisenhower used federal troops forcibly to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. In fact, this was not quite as high-handed a federal maneuver as it appeared, because Arkansas Governor, Orval Faubus, had quietly agreed to integration, and the federal troops faced angry citizens rather than state troopers or the Arkansas national guard. The outcome of that confrontation might have been very different if the state governor had been a man who could spend 24 hours at a stretch on the Senate floor.
During the 1960s, Sen. Thurmond still had much of his old fire. He called the epoch-making Civil Rights Bill of 1964, “the worst, most unreasonable and unconstitutional legislation that has ever been considered by the Congress.” He opposed Thurgood Marshall’s nomination in 1967 as Supreme Court justice, pointing out that to credit him with legal victories was nonsense: “. . . a majority of the members on the Court would have so ruled [in favor of Marshall] regardless of who had been the attorney in the case.” It was in those years that one aide used to reply, when asked if he worked for the government, “No, I work against the government.”
The 1960s also saw the senator’s final divorce from the Democratic Party. He had despised John Kennedy’s platform — which he thought was pure socialism — but had too much loyalty to bolt. It was in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson picked the extreme liberal, Hubert Humphrey, as his running mate that the senator finally became a Republican. He campaigned vigorously for Barry Goldwater who, with the senator’s help, carried five Southern States.
The next presidential campaign was a turning point in the senator’s life. In 1968, he worked tirelessly for Richard Nixon, thereby badly blunting George Wallace’s third-party campaign. Why did he oppose a segregationist fellow Southerner who was largely repeating the “Dixiecrat” campaign of 20 years previously?
Miss Cohodas does not even ask the question and suggests no answers. In any case, the very next year, he hired his first black staffer, and started openly courting black voters. As so many politicians do, he appears to have put survival in office before all else.
By the early 1970s, he was explaining himself thus: “When I was governor, the laws said the races should be separated. But now the law is different, customs are different, public opinion has changed, and it’s an entirely different situation.” By 1978, he was winning campaign endorsements from South Carolina’s black mayors.
From about this point on, Sen. Thurmond’s career has been one of steady retreat. From 1980 to 1986 he was chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, but did not wield power with anything like his old single-mindedness. (To his credit, he cut one million dollars from the committee’s annual budget, shearing away much of the bloat that his predecessor, Ted Kennedy, had encouraged.)
The new chairman started favoring voting-rights acts that would have given him apoplexy in the past. In 1982 he supported a bill that forbids even the appearance of discrimination, thereby outlawing at-large voting in many jurisdictions. He began to boast that in his state, 62 percent of blacks were registered to vote, whereas only 50 percent of whites were registered.
In 1983, he voted to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday, and was happy to be named “legislator of the year” by South Carolina’s 14 black mayors. His support for U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork, was only tepid even though this was the first nominee in a generation who might have understood his old views on the Constitution.
Senator Thurmond went on to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which is an artfully disguised racial quota bill. The vote in the Senate was 93-5, and he was proud to be among the ninety-three. Here was a truly changed man, but not a man prepared to admit that he had changed. As he now explains, “I don’t think I’ve sacrificed any principle throughout my career, but times change.”
Indeed, times do change, and so do people. But can even Sen. Thurmond forget the predictions he made of what federal arrogance, forced integration, and intrusive government would bring — predictions that have largely come true? Of course, for nearly 40 years, he has been on the payroll of a body he used to call tyrannical. For nearly as long, he has faced a press that heaps abuse on all his old principles and praises every step towards abandoning them. He has also grown old. Age, money and respectability are powerful forces, sometimes powerful enough to blind a man to the wisdom of his ancestors.
| IN THE NEWS |
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O Tempora, O Mores!
Separate but Dependent
A University of Chicago political scientist has found that 62 percent of a polling sample of blacks think the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan is “a positive viewpoint within the black community.” Fifty-six percent of blacks also support the idea of an exclusively black political party. They seek rights but not responsibilities. Eighty-six were opposed to the idea of an independent black nation. [Survey finds growing support for a black political party, SF Chron, 4/15/94.]
Too White
According to the New York Times, the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce has trouble persuading businesses to move to the city because it is too white. Some corporate leaders claim they do not want to set up shop in a city that does not have enough “diversity.” Michael Reagan, president of the Chamber of Commerce says, “We have a lot going for us: a growing economy, a highly educated work force. But the image of homogeneity hurts us.” [Dirk Johnson, White Communities: a corporate deterrent, NYT, 4/18/94, p. A8.]
Only in America
A Los Angeles striptease club called the Odd Ball Cabaret has something called the shower display, in which a naked woman bathes in view of customers. The Los Angeles Disabled Access Commission voted unanimously to force the club to make the display area accessible by nude dancers in wheel chairs. [Scott McConnell, Why is this man whining?, NY Post, 5/20/94, p. 21.]
Chasing a Mirage
An Atlanta-area black bar association recently held a meeting to discuss the subject, “Disbarment: How to Combat the Trend Among African-American Attorneys.” The audience learned that although blacks are only three percent of the Georgia bar, they accounted for 21 percent of disbarments between January 1991 and September 1993. The association’s newsletter reported that “The presentation caused a flurry of activity and a mirage of questions.” [“September Meeting,” Gate City Bar Association Newsletter, 10/12/93.]
Hillaryland
Mrs. Bill Clinton has a personal staff of 13 people. All but one are women. Her chief of staff, Margaret Williams, is black. [WSJ, 4/12/94, p. 1.]
Magic Runs Out for Babyface
Richard “Babyface” Jameswhite of Brooklyn, wanted for 15 murders, three rapes, and untold shootings, was finally run to ground in Stone Mountain, Georgia. The 20-year-old Mr. Jameswhite is only 5’ 5” tall, but was notoriously dangerous. As The New York Amsterdam News put it, “even some who consorted with Jameswhite breathed a sigh of relief at news of his arrest because of his unpredictable nature. He was known to shoot at the slightest provocation.” [Lester Hinds, Jamaican “obeah’ could not protect notorious baby-faced killer forever, Amst. News, 5/7/94, p. 5.] That seems to have been his problem in Georgia. Someone accidentally backed his car into Mr. Jameswhite’s, and was promptly shot to death. Police made a quick arrest.
Mr. Jameswhite is said to have regularly shipped his clothes to Jamaica, to have them treated with “obeah” magic. He believed this made him impervious to bullets and invisible to the police.
Mixed Marriages Still Rare
In 1990 only about two percent of all married couples in America were inter-racial, though about four percent of all marriages that year were inter-racial. Whites and blacks are the least likely to marry outside their racial group, with American Indians the most likely to do so.
Of all white people who are married, only 0.01 percent of men and 0.03 percent of women have married a black. If marriages were random with respect to race, there would be 20 times as many white woman-black man unions and about 50 times as many white man-black woman unions. Whites are more likely to marry Hispanics than blacks. If marriages were random by race, there would be only five times as many white-Hispanic marriage as there are now. Sixty-eight percent of Asians and Hispanics marry without their own groups. [Interracial marriages increase, but still rare, WSJ, 5/9/94.]
Rough Justice
On May 30th, a dissident Black Muslim cleric named James Bess tried to assassinate Kahlid Abdul Muhammad, a close associate of Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Bess fired repeatedly at Mr. Muhammad, wounding him and five other people. He was subdued and then beaten to within an inch of his life by Mr. Muhammad’s supporters, who are said to be among the best disciplined, most restrained blacks in America. If he had not been rescued by police officers with drawn guns, Mr. Bess would probably have been beaten to death. No charges have been filed in what could reasonably be called the attempted murder of Mr. Bess. [Seth Mydans, Suspect Linked to Muslim Fringe Group, NYT, 5/31/94, p. A10. Joe Shea, Shooter was booted from “nation,’ NY Post, 5/31/94, p. 5.]
Colin Ferguson was likewise subdued after he went on an anti-white shooting rampage in a Long Island Rail Road car. He was more successful than Mr. Bess, killing six commuters and wounding 19 others. However, he had the good fortune to be subdued by whites. He was not injured.
One cannot help noting the contrast with a similar case in Mexico. Luis Colosio, a presidential candidate, was assassinated at a political rally. His assassin, too, was beaten nearly to death and probably would have died without the intervention of security guards.
Revealing Comments
Louis Farrakhan and Khalid Muhammad have been making edifying accusations about whites. During an appearance on the Phil Donahue Show (about two weeks before the attempt on his life), Mr. Muhammad maintained that the election of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa was “a sham,” and that Mr. Mandela is the front man for white supremacists who still control the country. “No man can walk out of prison after 27 years and become the President,” he said. Of course, if the races were reversed, it would be impossible. Blacks would never give up power, so Mr. Muhammad cannot believe that whites are doing so. Like many other blacks, Mr. Muhammad refuses to take at face value the self-destructive policies pursued by whites and cannot help but seek motives that are plausible to blacks. [Neil Graves, Khalid calls Mandela pawn of supremacists, NY Post, 5/13/94.]
Earlier in May, at the University of Toledo in Ohio, Minister Farrakhan told a black audience that whites deliberately refrain from stopping blacks from killing each other because the cadavers are a rich source of organs. When a rich white man needs a kidney or a heart, says Minister Farrakhan, he says “get us a nigger.” “When you’re killing each other they can’t wait for you to die,” he added; “you’ve become good for parts.” [Farrakhan links race to transplants, NYT, 5/2/94.] Minister Farrakhan appears not to know that organ transplants ordinarily work best when donor and recipient are the same race. Like Mr. Muhammad, he seems to be imputing to others motives that he, himself, would understand.
Fox Guards Henhouse
In April, 1993, the head of the Smithsonian Institution appointed a task force to investigate how responsive the museums are to Hispanics. The report, just published, lambastes the Smithsonian for failing to devote an entire museum to Hispanics, for not hiring enough of them, for “insensitive” displays, for “willful neglect,” etc., etc. Who led the task force? None other than Raoul Yzaguirre, president of the racialist Hispanic organization La Raza (which means “the race”). [Steven Holmes, Report criticizes Smithsonian on Hispanic focus and hiring, NYT, 5/3/94.] No doubt there are Hispanic activists who refuse to believe that whites would voluntarily let such a man run the task force, and that he must be the pawn of clever white supremacists.
Blackmailing the Feds
The May 1994 issue of Government Executive magazine has an excellent article on how the threat of bias complaints makes it impossible for many white bureaucrats to discipline non-white subordinates. Federal workers file twelve times as many discrimination complaints, per capita, as civilian employees — eight for every 1,000 workers every year — but only 1.4 percent of these complaints — half as many as in the civilian workforce — result in findings of discrimination.
These odds do not make complaints any less effective, because it is a bad mark on a white manager’s record to have provoked a bias complaint, no matter how frivolous. Furthermore, during the year or two it takes to process a complaint, the employee must be handled with kid gloves because anything less may be called retaliation. These are some of the reasons why, in confidential surveys, government managers admit that they give unsatisfactory performance ratings to only one tenth of the employees who deserve them.
Since the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the balance of power has shifted even further towards people who scream “bias.” Government agencies are now liable for up to $300,000 in damages if they are found to have discriminated, whereas in the past they were liable only for adjustments in pay. The Department of Agriculture has announced the defeatist policy that it will always settle discrimination claims rather than fight them to the end. This means that a non-white employee can virtually count on some kind of payoff, no matter how preposterous his complaint.
Government Executive concludes: “[I]f the process cannot be reconfigured to eliminate opportunist complaints swiftly, managers will increasingly duck their disciplinary duties, and the government will increasingly be run by the least competent but the most noisy.” [Leslie Kaufman, Bias or Blackmail?, Government Executive, May 1994, pp. 22ff.]
Federal Tyranny
Hulond Humphries, the principal of Randolph County High School in Alabama, recently made news because of his opposition to miscegenation. He said he would cancel the school’s prom if any inter-racial couples planned to attend and called a mixed-race student a “mistake” by her parents. Mr. Humphries was temporarily suspended by his local school board, but was reinstated. The prom took place, and inter-racial couples were allowed to attend. Now, in an unprecedented action, the federal government has filed a civil rights suit to have Mr. Humphries fired. Never before has the Justice Department tried to take away a private citizen’s job because of something he said. [Thomas Hargrove, Nothing like suit to oust educator, Washington Times, 5/21/94.]
Dunning Denny’s
The Denny’s restaurant chain has agreed to pay $54 million to settle cases brought against it by blacks who claim they were either turned away from restaurants or were given bad service. Lawyers will get $8.7 million for their services, and black customers will share $46 million. The firm that handled the case, Saperstein, Mayeda & Goldstein, is a specialist in shaking down large companies in cases of this kind, and its partners have become very rich. [Stephen Labaton, Denny’s Restaurants to pay $54 million in race bias suits, NYT, 5/15/94, p. A1. Benjamin Holden, Denny’s chain settles suits by minorities, WSJ, 5/24/94, p. A3.]
It is clear that Denny’s had no discrimination policy, and decisions to turn away blacks or make large parties of blacks pay in advance were taken by individual restaurant managers. In a free society, that would be their right. In a society ruled by racial hysteria, this is a crime for which the parent company must pay more than $40 million.
Integration Fails
In a celebrated school integration case in the mid-1980s, a federal judge ordered Kansas City to raise property taxes and build the most lavish public school system in the nation. The theory was that white students would venture out of the suburbs to take advantage of fencing classes, computers, Olympic-size pools, and professional-quality broadcast studios.
Whites have once again shown that race matters more than money. Kansas City’s schools are less integrated now than when the super-magnet-school program began. Furthermore, the test scores of the mostly-black students who attend these luxurious schools are slightly worse than the scores at regular schools. So far, the price tag for this exercise has been $1.3 billion. [John McCormick, “Separate but equal’ again?, Newsweek, no date.]
Marion Barry, the former mayor of Washington, DC who was jailed in 1992 for smoking crack cocaine, has announced his candidacy for this year’s mayoral election. His political comeback began in 1992 when he was elected to the City Council. His campaign theme is “Lessons from the past, visions for the future.” Mr. Barry, who calls himself “a seasoned leader,” claims that “Washington must have a strong and visionary leader who knows how to energize our people and guide the city to recovery.” [Jonathan Moore, Barry targets crime, despair, Wash Times, 5/21/94. Tom Knott, I’ve seen the tape and I’m not hopeful, Wash Times, 5/19/94, p. C2.]
The Rewards of Ingenuity
A Brooklyn woman, race unspecified, has emerged as the champion welfare cheat. Using as many as 15 different aliases and claiming to have 73 children, she has collected almost $450,000 in welfare over the last seven years. Authorities are still not sure what her real name is or whether she really has any children. Jane Doe, as she is called for legal purposes, was finally caught when she applied for several passports. [Cheryl Wetzstein, Brooklyn welfare queen’s scam sets record for aliases, ‘kids,’ cash stolen, Wash Times, p. A1.]
Many black parents have decided that black boys should be taught in separate classes by themselves. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Organization of Women (NOW) have launched suits to prevent this, but blacks are holding firm. As Jawanza Kunjufu, a Baltimore consultant and separatist puts it, “The ACLU and the NOW organization think they can decide that [how children are taught]. I think black parents need to make that decision.” [Janny Scott, Boys-Only Classrooms: separate but equal?, LA Times, 1/15/94, p. A1.] Perhaps white parents need to make the same decisions about their children’s educations.
Taming the Savage
An experiment in San Francisco has shown that it is possible to run an orderly housing project — but only under extra-Constitutional conditions. Three years ago, the 576-unit Geneva Towers were ungovernable. Whenever police responded to killings and shootings, they were pinned down by sniper fire and assaulted with debris thrown from windows. They dodged television sets, an automobile transmission, and even a dead body. The grounds of the complex were as much as a foot deep in broken glass, the stairwells and elevators were privies, the underground garage was filled with abandoned cars, and nearly two-thirds of the windows had been smashed and boarded up.
In 1991, the department of Housing and Urban Development turned Geneva Towers over to a private security firm. It hired 60 beefy, armed guards who swarmed through the building, ejecting about 70 miscreant tenants. They also set up surveillance cameras, forced residents to enter through one well-controlled entrance, and took to frisking anyone who looked suspicious. They also enter apartments without a warrant to search for contraband and criminals.
Ordinarily none of this is legal. Private law enforcement and tenant consent forms do not necessarily make it legal. But it is effective. Not one major crime report was filed from Geneva Towers in all of 1993, and residents profess to be much happier. It is also expensive. Guards and security alone have cost $3.5 million in just over two years. [Jim Carlton, The Trade-Off, WSJ, 4/26/94, p. 1.]
This may be a first step towards a multi-tiered system of legal rights. All-white areas will continue to operate according the norms of Anglo-European civility; other areas are already operating differently and the law may come to recognize this.
Fairness in Broadcasting
Since 1978, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has had two ways of ensuring that non-whites have better-than-equal chances to acquire radio and television stations. If a white owner sells a station to a non-white, he may defer capital gains. This can amount to a very considerable saving for the seller, so a non-white can pay less for the station than a white. Since 1978, 275 television and radio stations, and 20 cable systems have been sold to non-whites under this scheme.
The other method applies to whites who, for whatever reason, have lost their licenses. They have the option of either simply going out of business or selling the station to a non-white. The selling price is likely to be well below market, but a low price is better than nothing at all. Thirty-eight stations have been transferred this way.
The FCC also uses statistical methods to determine whether broadcasters employ enough non-whites. Under the Clinton administration, the commission has just increased the maximum fine it can levy against “offenders” from $20,000 to $250,000. [Geraldine Fabrikant, Slow Gains by Minority Broadcasters, NYT, 5/31/94, p. D1.]
For All Tastes
There is a new crop of magazines catering to interracial couples. One, called New People, styles itself “the journal for the human race.” At the bottom of its masthead there is a notice that reads:
The use of the term ‘race’ and terms of racial classification (e.g. white, black, interracial, etc.) does not mean that we acknowledge any biological validity to these terms. We continue to use them only to challenge conventional notions of racial classification, separation and inequality.
A competitor to New People is called Interrace. A recent cover advertised articles entitled “Top 10 Interracial Turn-ons,” “The ‘Racially Ambiguous’ Woman,” and “What Color Hate?” It, too, has a masthead notice, which reads, with no apparent sense of contradiction: “Our purpose is to dispel negative stereotypes; to ‘accentuate the positive’; to offer a wide open forum for differing views . . .”
The newest offering in the genre is Biracial Child, “your guide to raising happy, healthy multicultural children.” It is said to be “for parents of biracial and multiracial children, transracial adoptive parents and interracial families and stepfamilies.”
| LETTERS FROM READERS |
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Sir — I commend you for a very accurate description of the extraordinary transformation of Miami over the last 30 years. I am one of those Gringos who live in one of the remaining lovely and insulated neighborhoods you describe. Perhaps the great natural beauty here seduces one into believing all is well.
Recently, I took the elevated Metro Rail into Miami. At the Downtown Station, watching trains unloading their human cargoes, it was clear that Miami is no longer a European-American city. I stood with associates on the elevated platform (more than three stories high), and asked them to gaze out to the West and North. As far as the eye can see, Western Civilization has been replaced with something else.
The populations of these dreadful and blighted areas continue to grow, and before long there will be too many people to support. Already, illegal shacks of plywood and sheet metal are springing up in areas that have begun to look like Rio, Caracas, or Guayaquil.
How any white American cannot reel at the prospect of the third-world future of what was once a splendid American community is beyond my comprehension. Yet, the media and churches continue to blow the trumpets of diversity with ever greater intensity. Of course, the only group that must practice diversity is the dwindling white portion of the population. All of the non-whites zealously promote their own cultures and races.
Having lived through the changes of the last 30 years, I can say with authority that I have seen the future and it is not good.
Frank Phillips, Coral Gables, Fla.
Sir — I strongly object to your referring to Mexican and Central American Indians as “Hispanics.” That is an insult to the people from Spain and Portugal. These Indians have scarcely any Hispanic blood. Why is it that as soon as a Mexican crosses the border into the United States he becomes a Hispanic? You should call these people what they are: Indians.
R. “Clyde” Pryor, Venice, Cal.
Sir — In the June article, “The Color of Crime,” you correctly reveal that the crimes of Hispanics are included in “white” statistics. You also mention that although Hispanics are not a perpetrator category they are a victim category. The Justice Department has even issued special reports called Black Victims and Hispanic Victims. Of course, there are no special reports on white victims.
The article was somewhat vague on Hispanic crime rates. According to the Department of Justice, Hispanics are four times more likely than whites to commit violent crimes (while blacks are ten times more likely).
Robert Grooms, Michigan City, Ind.
Sir — I read with great interest your article on race and crime. Although black criminals are certainly a terrible problem in this country, the potential for mayhem among Hispanics may be just as bad. Consider the nation of Columbia. It has a murder rate of 82 per 100,000 (as opposed to an American rate of 9.3 per 100,000 and a rate among American blacks of 43.3 per 100,000). Imagine an entire country with twice as many murders per capita as American blacks!
Every year, only three to five percent of homicides are solved, making murder about as lightly punished in Columbia as under-age drinking is here. Since the police cannot control the streets, Columbians hire gunmen to do it for them. This elimination of beggars, junkies, muggers, and other refuse is called “social cleansing” and is now taken for granted as the only way to keep a city habitable. If immigration continues, the United States will adopt third-world habits along with a third-world population.
Susan Miller, San Antonio, Texas
Sir — Rather than concentrate on the IQ deficiencies of blacks and the cultural deficiencies of Hispanics, AR should discuss the deficient integrity of whites. If the members of the Davidian cult in Waco had been black, other blacks — whatever their IQs — would certainly not have sat idly by while they were attacked. Never mind intelligence, it is whites who are failing the test by refusing to defend themselves.
Those who will not fight deserve their servitude. As Edmund Burke put it:
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Charles Wiggin, Fortson, Georgia
Sir — I have been in jail for the last 17 years, so I cannot attend the conference in Atlanta. However, I wish with all my heart that I could be there. I am heartened to see that there are people who have the strength to say what must be said. Would that they had the strength and wisdom to do what must be done.
S.M. Corbett, Lawrenceville, Va.
