O Tempora, O Mores! (April 2009)
American Renaissance, April 2009
The Obama ‘Fan Base’
Sgt. Rodney Hicok, a 27-year veteran of the Iowa State Police, had a sterling service record until earlier this year. From his home computer, Sgt. Hicok forwarded by e-mail a collage of mug shots of 15 people who were wearing Obama T-shirts when they were arrested. The forwarded message also noted that Mr. Obama had “quite a fan base.” Sgt. Hicok’s superiors found out and put him on administrative leave.
An investigation concluded that Sgt. Hicok’s e-mail was not “racist” — a few of the mug shots were of white people — but that the message was a “political statement” that violated Iowa Department of Public Safety (DPS) professional standards. The department suspended Sgt. Hicok for 30 days, put a letter of reprimand in his file, and ordered him to take a class in department policies and procedures. Sgt. Hicok also had to grovel. “I am deeply sorry for my actions,” he wrote. “I apologize to anyone this e-mail may have offended, as well as my family, citizens in my community and Iowa taxpayers.” [Iowa Trooper Suspended for Obama Email, KETV-TV (Omaha), Feb. 9, 2009.]
Following its shellacking at the hands of Barack Obama, the Republican Party decided to play if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em by electing a black man, former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele, as its party chairman. The GOP, Mr. Steele asserts, needs to change, or it will be dismissed as the party of the Old South. “We need messengers to really capture . . . [the] young, Hispanic, black, a cross section,” he said. He added that the party must “stand on principles” but “we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings. We need to up tick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.” So far, no word of outrage from one-armed midgets.
On February 28, Mr. Steele joined Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Lani Guinier, and other luminaries at the annual State of Black America forum, where he did his best to explain that Republican opposition to President Obama’s policies does not mean Republicans oppose Mr. Obama himself. He also repeated his pledge to get more blacks — 95 percent of whom voted for Barack Obama — to vote GOP. “I’m about taking this party into your neighborhood — every corner, every community center, every church. I know some of you don’t want me there, I know some of you are going to yell at me, but I’m coming anyway.” He was not enthusiastically received.
Who might the Republicans have chosen instead? Mr. Steele’s closest rival was conservative South Carolina state GOP chairman Katon Dawson. Mr. Dawson’s chances were probably never much greater than zero because of his longtime membership in an exclusive country club in Columbia. Republicans feared headlines like: “RNC Chair Was Member of Whites-Only Country Club.”
It is a pity the RNC made the safe choice, since Mr. Dawson appears to have sound views. In 2003, he told a South Carolina student group why he got into politics. He explained that when he was a high school student the government closed down the high schools blacks were attending and bused them to formerly all-white schools, including his:
“The end of that story was, I was standing in a bathroom in public school . . . This scar over here [pointing to his forehead] was from a baseball bat. I will tell you it was a pretty harsh environment. Government reached into my life and grabbed me and shook me at the age of fifteen. I remember how blatant it was that government just thought that they knew better, that government just thought they knew better what to do in my school. And I can’t say it was so much racial. I can say that people had a lot of stuff thrust on them because politicians thought they knew better.”
This kind of straight talk scares what the late Sam Francis called the stupid party. Before the vote for party chairman, opponents were circulating these remarks and wondering if the GOP would be prepared to stand behind the man who had made them. [Nia-Malika Henderson, Steele Pledges to Fight for Black Vote, Politico.com, Feb. 28, 2009. Ralph Z. Hallow, Steele: GOP Needs ‘Hip-Hop’ Makeover, Washington Times, Feb. 19, 2009. J. Peter Freire, Katon Dawson and His GOP Mission, American Spectator blog, Jan. 26, 2009. Greg Sargent, Candidate for RNC Chair Was Member of Whites-Only Country Club, TalkingPointsMemo.com, Nov. 24, 2008.]
Caveat Emptor
Something called the US Coin Network sells what it calls “engraved” Barack Obama coins made by the United States Mint. It even hired black television talk show host Montel Williams to hawk them in television ads. Before our readers rush out to buy sets for their grandchildren they should realize that these are ordinary US coins with color pictures of Barack Obama glued onto them. The US Coin Network promises a money-back guarantee, but unhappy customers say they are being stiffed. The US Mint is investigating. [Laura Gunderson, Portlander Finds ‘Obama Coins’ Not All That Mint, Oregonian, Feb. 13, 2009.]
Nation of Cowards
Speaking to an audience of Justice Department employees during ceremonies marking Black History Month, Eric Holder, the nation’s first black attorney general, said that “though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” He went on to explain that “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.” Mr. Holder also chided Americans for living in “race-protected cocoons” after work and on the weekends. “Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago.” [Devlin Barrett, Holder: US a Nation of Cowards on Racial Matters, AP, Feb. 18, 2009.]
Of course, Mr. Holder is right: We are a nation of cowards. At least whites are. Whites do not talk honestly about race because they know they will be called racists. The accepted views on race can be easily summed up: “Diversity is our greatest strength” and “White racism explains all the failures of blacks and Hispanics.” Anything else is heresy, and we can be sure Mr. Holder doesn’t want to hear it.
Legion of Foreigners
Eager to find soldiers to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2002, the Bush administration offered green card holders a virtual guarantee of citizenship if they would serve in the military. Permanent residents who enlist can apply to become citizens on the first day of service, and can be naturalized in as little as six months. About 8,000 foreigners join up each year, according to the Pentagon, and about 29,000 foreign-born soldiers are not US citizens.
Now the Pentagon wants to offer the same deal to foreigners on student and temporary work visas — groups that are not now allowed even to enlist. The Army wants foreigners who speak odd languages or who have medical training. The idea is to recruit 1,000 foreigners the first year, and eventually go up to as many as 14,000 a year.
The doors will open first in New York City, where recruiters hope to bag 550 temporary immigrants who speak any of more than 35 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Igbo, Kurdish, Nepalese, Pashto, Russian and Tamil, but not Spanish — not exotic enough. The Army also thinks it can get 300 foreign medics.
Recruits will have to prove they have lived in the United States for two years, and that they have not been out of the country for longer than 90 days. They will also have to pass an English test and a background check. [Julia Preston, US Military Will Offer Path to Citizenship, New York Times, Feb. 15, 2009.] No one knows how many spies, terrorists, and psychopaths will get through.
Real Gall
Theodore Ricks is a 24-year-old black New Yorker with a colorful driving record: nearly two dozen suspensions or revocations since 2005. On Valentine’s Day, Mr. Ricks was driving a 1993 Mercedes — without a license — along Cebra Avenue in Staten Island with passenger, William Knight, who was carrying marijuana. He saw a police car in his rearview mirror and panicked. He floored the accelerator, ran a red light and plowed into a taxi, killing the driver and his wife. Mr. Ricks and Mr. Knight fled on foot but were caught. When the arresting officers told Mr. Ricks he had killed two people in the taxi he said they should have been wearing seat belts.
Mr. Ricks now faces many charges, including manslaughter, but his lawyer, Manuel Ortega, is angling to get him off. At his first court appearance, Mr. Ortega accused the police of racial profiling. “They were doing nothing wrong,” he said. “They were just driving on the road. It raises a serious question why two black men in a Mercedes were stopped.” [Sam Goldsmith and Alison Gendar, Racial Profiling Alleged in Trial of Staten Island Hit-and-Run Suspect, New York Daily News, Feb. 16, 2009.]
Recently the Census Bureau advanced the date by which the United States would become majority non-white, to 2042 from 2050. The reason is simple; the number of non-whites increased much more rapidly that the bureau anticipated. The US will reach another important milestone in 2023, just 14 years from now, when non-whites will become the majority of American children. The group driving the change is Hispanics. One of out every five children in public school is already Hispanic; among kindergartners, one in four. Hispanic children already outnumber whites in the Southwest. They make up 54 percent of the students in New Mexico, 47 percent in California, 44 percent in Texas and 40 percent in Arizona. Nationwide, forty percent of children under 18 are non-white, double the percentage from 30 years ago. [Percentage of Hispanics in US Schools Rising, AP, March 4, 2009.]
Preserving the West
Over the weekend of February 6, about 60 race realists met in Baltimore to participate in the first “Preserving Western Civilization” (PWC) conference, organized by Professor Michael Hart, occasional AR contributor and author of Understanding Human History. The conference was modeled on AR conferences, and included speakers familiar to AR readers: Prof. J. Philippe Rushton, Lawrence Auster, Prof. Roger McGrath, and Prof. Steven Farron. Other notable speakers were Peter Brimelow of VDARE.com and Prof. Henry Harpending, co-author of the deeply subversive new book, The 10,000 Year Explosion. The stated aim of the conference was to defend “America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity.” In the “Extremism” section of its web page, the ADL headlined its write up, “Racists Gather in Maryland to ‘Preserve’ Western Civilization.” There is more about PWC at PreservingWesternCiv.com.
Monkey See, Monkey Do
In February, the New York Post took a drubbing when it ran a political cartoon that evoked a mauling attack on a Connecticut women by a chimpanzee. Owner Rupert Murdoch apologized after readers said the cartoon was “racist.” [Rupert Murdoch Apologizes for Chimp Cartoon, CNN, Feb. 24, 2009.]
Monkey see, monkey do. A few days later on Sunday, February 22, the Washington Post Magazine ran a column making fun of a study reported in the New York Times that said women were aroused by watching videos of apes having sex. The story, entitled “Monkey Business,” was accompanied by a cartoon and the following pre-emptive apology: “The headline, illustration and text of ‘Below the Beltway,’ a column in The Washington Post Magazine today, may cause offense to readers. The magazine was printed before a widely publicized incident last week in which a chimpanzee attacked and badly mauled a woman in Stamford, Conn. In addition, the image and text inadvertently may conjure racial stereotypes that The Post does not countenance. We regret the lapse.” [Editor’s Note, Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2009. Gene Weingarten, Monkey Business, Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2009.]
Not You, Whitey
If you are a high school senior with a grade point average of at least 3.0 you can apply for a National Youth Award and win up to $8,000 in scholarship money and a new laptop computer — if you are Hispanic. Hispanic Heritage Youth Awards are sponsored by the Subway sandwich chain as well as ExxonMobil, Southwest Airlines, UPS, the US Army, and a small army of Hispanic organizations. The contest does make one surprising concession to legality and good taste: you have to be a US citizen or legal resident. And you will be considered “Hispanic” with just one parent from South of the border. For more information, please go to HispanicHeritage.org.
Restless Natives
Guadeloupe and Martinique are French “overseas departments” in the Caribbean. Each island sends deputies to the French National Assembly and is considered part of France. French is the official language, but many residents also speak Antillean Creole. Seventy percent of the population of Guadeloupe and 90 percent of Martinique are black or mulatto descendants of slaves. Whites are 11 percent and 5 percent, respectively, but control 90 percent of the economy. Racial tensions have been simmering for decades.
In January, blacks began peacefully protesting high prices and low wages. In early February, a wealthy white landowner, Alain Huyghues-Despointes, stirred things up when he publicly criticized mixed-race marriages, saying he preferred to “preserve his race.” The protests turned to rioting, with hundreds of blacks roaming the streets of the Guadeloupe capital of Point-a-Pitre, looting shops and restaurants, burning cars, and vandalizing public buildings. According to French media, the violence became a “virtual civil war,” with mobs of angry blacks targeting “all whites.” Dozens of policemen and rioters were hurt in numerous clashes, and one protester died when he was caught in the crossfire between armed rioters and police.
Authorities in Paris quickly dispatched 300 riot police to the islands, as panicked white tourists, mostly from France, Britain and the United States, headed for home. A spokesman for the Paris-based Association of Tour Operators says that while no tourists were hurt, “there is the threat of violence in the air and staying there no longer feels comfortable. People are scared.” The chief of the local tourism authority, Madeleine de Grandmaison, said 10,000 tourists had already canceled trips to the islands.
Guadeloupe’s socialist opposition leader Malikh Boutih says the islands are tinder. “All the same elements of the riots on mainland France in 2005 are present here. We don’t have the same concrete buildings, there are palm trees instead, but it’s the same dead-end, the same ‘no future’ for young people, with joblessness and a feeling of isolation.” And the racial dynamic is the same: “It is shocking to watch a police force which is almost 100 per cent white confront a population which is 100 per cent black.” [Britons Flee French Island of Guadeloupe as Rioters Turn on White Families, Daily Mail (London), Feb. 19, 2009.]
Austria Update
AR’s December cover story was about the rise of the nationalist right in Austria. At the time, there were doubts whether the Alliance for the Future of Austria, the smaller of the two “right-wing” parties, would survive the death in a car accident of its leader, Jörg Haider, governor of the southern Austrian state of Carinthia. In its first test, regional elections held on March 1, the Alliance crushed the Social Democrats in Carinthia with 45.5 percent of vote to the SD’s 28.6. Its campaign focused on Haider’s legacy, with posters pledging, “We will look after your Carinthia.” The equally nationalist Freedom Party also did well in the Social Democrat stronghold of Salzburg, winning 13 percent of the vote. [Austrian Far Right Gains in Polls, BBC News, March 2, 2009.]
