January 1999
| American Renaissance magazine | |
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| Vol. 10, No. 1 | January 1999 |
| CONTENTS |
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Straight Talk on the Airways?
Race and the American Identity (Part II)
The Galton Report
Unlucky to be White
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers
| COVER STORY |
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Straight talk on the airways?
What talk-radio hosts think about race and immigration.
by James P. Lubinskas
In a culture dominated by liberal assumptions, Americans have to look hard for the truth about race and immigration. They can find it on the internet, on some cable-access channels, occasionally on C-Span, and sometimes on talk radio. Of these, radio is by far the most popular medium and has the greatest impact.
The current reach of talk radio is relatively recent. Although some hosts, like David Brudnoy in Boston, have had devoted followings for years, talk radio began in earnest in the late 1980s, and by 1993 Rush Limbaugh could claim over 20 million listeners. Mr. Limbaugh’s success drew many imitators, and by the mid-90s other conservatives such as Oliver North and Gordon Liddy had programs. Talk radio reflects America. Although broadcasters are constrained to some degree by liberal taboos, they hire hosts who can win audiences, so programming is generally conservative. National Public Radio, which goes to Congress and its listeners rather than the market for support, is relentlessly leftist but in commercial radio, liberals like Jerry Brown and Mario Cuomo have failed to develop sizable audiences.
Because there is so little straight talk about race in the mainstream media, talk radio is a good gauge of how Americans feel about it. And since hosts reflect their listeners, they themselves are considerably more representative of popular opinion than are the editorial pages of the New York Times or even the New York Post.
What do some of the major personalities in the business think about the issues that most affect the country’s future? AR asked seven well-known talk-radio hosts about their views on race and immigration: David Brudnoy, Larry Elder, Bob Grant, Ken Hamblin, Michael Medved, Al Rantel and Michael Reagan. They are all on the right but range from standard “Reaganite” conservative, to libertarian, to views close to those of AR. Mr. Hamblin and Mr. Elder are black. We asked to interview Rush Limbaugh and Gordon Liddy but they declined.
All the hosts agree that talk radio is important because it is so open to dissent. Ken Hamblin calls it “the unfiltered voice of the American people,” who are tired of writing letters to their local newspapers that are altered or ignored. Al Rantel says radio offers “the most opportunity to the average person who cannot get on television or in the newspapers.” Larry Elder points to the number of dissident magazines and Internet sites and says that “talk radio is only a part of the move away from liberal dominance of the media.”
Mr. Grant, however, discovered the limits of talk radio’s openness in 1996 when he mentioned the AR conference that was to be held later that year in Louisville. “These are outstanding speakers,” he said, “and if I can, I’m going to take my microphone down there and tune in.” This infuriated a lefty group called Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), which took out an ad in the New York Times accusing Mr. Grant of “bigotry” and of promoting “white supremacy.” WABC, which had just been bought by the Walt Disney Company, soon fired Mr. Grant even though he had the highest ratings at the station. He quickly landed a job at another New York broadcaster, WOR, and his program is as popular as ever.
All the hosts criticize affirmative action and most get hate mail when they do so. David Brudnoy, for example, is a favorite target of Harvard’s white liberals, but Mr. Elder has had what may be the worst experience with hate mail — probably because he is black. A Los Angeles group called Talking Drum Community Forum stirred up an intense campaign against him and distributed scurrilous fliers to sponsors. The fliers claimed, among other things, that Mr. Elder thinks it appropriate to refer to blacks as “niggers.” At the height of the campaign he even got death threats. Mr. Elder invited representatives of the group to appear on his program to debate the fliers, but they refused. Several sponsors withdrew support and the broadcaster cut his air-time from four to two hours a day. However, replacements failed to match Mr. Elder’s ratings, and he is now back to four hours.
All of these program hosts are critical of American immigration policy. Mr. Brudnoy and Mr. Medved both brought up the 1965 immigration act, which they blamed for opening the door to Third World immigration. Mr. Brudnoy calls the act “a catastrophe” and says we now need a moratorium for at least 10 years. Mr. Medved says the 1965 act boiled down to the question of, “Should Anglo-Saxon culture be dissipated or should it be respected?” He believes the act was a badly mistaken attempt at “social engineering.”
Mr. Rantel says our current immigration policy is “out of control” and points to the disastrous Mariel boatlift from Cuba that filled Miami with criminals and mental defectives from Fidel Castro’s jails. Mr. Hamblin has actually accompanied INS agents patrolling the border and has seen Mexicans crawling up through sewers in San Diego and even shooting at agents.
Mr. Reagan says legal immigration is as much a problem as illegal immigration, and notes that terrorists have been let in legally. He also decries widespread unwillingness to assimilate, pointing out that if he went to live in Mexico, he would think it only proper to learn Spanish and adopt Mexican culture. Of those non-whites who do not assimilate he wonders, “why did they come here in the first place? We will go to hell in a hand basket if we become multicultural.”
Even Mr. Elder, who calls himself a libertarian, criticizes immigration policy because many people come for welfare rather than to work.
White Minority
How will America change if whites become a minority? The majority of the hosts said it will change for the worse. Mr. Grant said that “our European customs will eventually be supplanted.” Mr. Brudnoy also predicts that Third World values will push aside Western civilization. Mr. Reagan, who lives in California, has already seen the effect of “group rights trumping individual liberty.” Mr. Hamblin says he has been to places like Haiti and Puerto Rico and wants none of it. He notes that many Haitian and Puerto Rican neighborhoods in the U.S. resemble Haiti and Puerto Rico.
Mr. Rantel and Mr. Elder say we will change but not necessarily for the worse. Mr. Rantel says that “as a universal nation, America is always evolving. As long as we maintain good values it will be O.K.” Mr. Elder claims that whites need not worry about becoming a minority so long as government does not overtax or over-regulate. If private property is respected and the police offer whites the same protection they do to all other groups there should be no problems. He is not concerned about the quality of new citizens but does worry that Mexicans tend to vote heavily Democratic.
Mr. Medved says racial numbers-counting is “stupidity,” and claims that Hispanics are primarily white. “This is the heart of our confusion over race;” he says “this idea of a non-white majority is a mistaken notion.” He thinks current immigrants, particularly Hispanics, will assimilate if we just treat them like the European ethnics who came at the turn of the century.
The hosts are split on whether it is legitimate for whites to develop racial consciousness. Mr. Hamblin believes whites have no choice but to do so in the face of Asian, Hispanic, and black consciousness: “Whites really do not know about the extent of anti-white racism . . . Whites should take it seriously,” he explains. Mr. Brudnoy thinks growing white racial consciousness is inevitable. “People are reactive. Why should we glorify the Third World and not us? Whites will not roll over and play dead.”
Mr. Grant and Mr. Reagan see a double standard at work with regard to racial consciousness. “We have been given a great legacy,” says Mr. Grant, “but those who want to preserve it are[called] ‘racist.’” He says we should not hesitate to defend our culture but that “as long as we are afraid, it won’t happen.” Mr. Reagan stops short of advocating white solidarity, but observes that “only whites are blamed for having racial consciousness.”
Mr. Elder disdains all racial consciousness, saying that people should concentrate on living responsible lives. “It is not in anyone’s best interest to think of himself as a racial group member.”
How much importance do these men give to their own racial identities? Most say it is a part of who they are but does not define them. Mr. Rantel and Mr. Reagan both say they recognize themselves as white, but that they are primarily American. Mr. Grant says he is proud of his European heritage because “my ancestors have contributed as much, if not more, to world civilization as any other group.” Mr. Elder says “I am just Larry Elder,” and that being black is only one of many things that make him who he is.
Mr. Medved describes himself as “an American of Jewish ancestry and Jewish faith.” Mr. Brudnoy says he usually thinks of himself as white when he faces racial harassment or hostility.
The Importance of Race
None of the hosts disputed the fact that there are racial differences in IQ but most doubt there is a genetic basis for the differences. Mr. Grant says “I know too many smart black people and too many dumb white people.” He believes academic achievement is “definitely a cultural thing,” and thinks Asian children are academically successful because their parents value education and hard work.
Mr. Hamblin thinks affirmative action and the acceptance of illegitimacy and immorality in the ghetto make blacks less competitive. He points out that Jews and Asians have faced discrimination but do not demand quotas, and believes that if blacks knew they had to compete to succeed, they would work harder and do better.
Mr. Reagan is not sure whether IQ differences are genetic, but he marvels at the academic success of poor Asian immigrants who barely speak English. He worries that a genetic argument could play into the hands of the left: “They can say that without quotas, minorities will not be able to compete.”
Mr. Brudnoy is the best informed about IQ and heredity. He thinks there is a strong genetic component to intelligence and that heredity explains at least part of the racial differences. “IQ tests have been validated and they do demonstrate ‘g.’” He defends intelligence testing for entry into universities and dismisses claims of “test bias” against blacks. “SAT scores actually over-predict black performance,” he says. He doubts that IQ scores can be altered by manipulating the environment and he assigns The Bell Curve to his students at Boston University, where he teaches a course on the media.
Mr. Medved declined to speculate on whether IQ differences have a genetic origin, saying, “The issue is too complex for the few lines you are going to quote me on.”
Charting the Future
Do these talk radio personalities see more or less racial conflict in the future? The optimists slightly outnumbered the pessimists. Mr. Elder recommends a libertarian, pre-“civil-rights era” approach to solving racial conflict — that is, respect private property and freedom of association, and let people do business, live and go to school with whomever they wish. He adds, “I am an optimist, anyway. I just expect to be treated well by others.” Mr. Rantel does not dismiss the problem of race and says that, “as long as people are different there will be conflicts.” Still, he claims he is a “Ronald Reagan conservative,” who is naturally optimistic about the future.
Mr. Grant and Mr. Reagan are mildly optimistic. They see less racial strife in the future if we end affirmative action and if new immigrants assimilate.
Mr. Medved is mildly pessimistic. “There has never been a society free from racial strife and conflict. Ethnicity will always have a part to play.” He concedes that ethnic pride is good, but if taken too far it can lead to violence. He believes there is a real American identity and that newcomers should assimilate into it.
Mr. Hamblin and Mr. Brudnoy are very pessimistic about the future. Mr. Hamblin says there is a chance of violence and bloodshed on the level of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Mr. Brudnoy is not worried about North Asians “who tend to have values similar to ours,” but says “we [whites] are the target of hostile attitudes from blacks and Hispanics.”
Although some of these conservatives have views that may seem ill-informed or naïve to AR readers, they reflect a significant departure from conventional thinking. These men are completely free of the “blame-the-white-man” mentality so common among public figures. None places Third World practices above Western civilization and none has anything but contempt for the multicultural nonsense prevalent in the media and academia. Though they have different views of the importance of race, they are refreshingly open to discussing it. It is men like these who help talk radio chip away at the rigid liberalism that has for so long set the boundaries of acceptable discourse.
| ARTICLE |
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Race and the American Identity, Part II
Americans have long taken racial nationalism for granted.
In the first part of this article Dr. Francis described some of the versions of a “universal” American identity that are now commonly promoted. He contrasted this with the thinking of the founders and with racial practices and assumptions that were widespread in both the North and the South. He concludes in this issue.
As late as 1921, Vice-President-elect Calvin Coolidge wrote an article on immigration called “Whose Country Is This?” in the popular women’s magazine Good Housekeeping. He argued that “There are racial considerations too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons. Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides. Quality of mind and body suggests that observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to a nation as immigration law.” Not only the white but the Northern European racial identity of the nation could thus be publicly affirmed by a leading national political figure in a widely read magazine as late as the 1920s.
What President Coolidge wrote then was by no means exotic or alien. Thomas Jefferson’s views of racial equality are probably well known to AR readers. In Notes on the States of Virginia, he discussed the significant natural differences between the races, and while he was, at least in principle, opposed to slavery, he was adamantly in favor of forbidding free blacks to continue to live within the United States. Nor did he favor non-European immigration into the Northwest Territory nor into the lands of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1801 he looked forward to the day “when our rapid multiplication will expand itself . . . over the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws; nor can we contemplate with satisfaction either blot or mixture on that surface.”
James Lubinskas has written an excellent article in the August 1998 American Renaissance on the American Colonization Society, a society that sought the expatriation of blacks to Africa, and which included as members Henry Clay, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, James Monroe, John Marshall, Winfield Scott, and many other of the most prominent American public leaders. They may have held different views of slavery and race, but none of them believed that free blacks should or could continue to live in the same society with whites.
Nor did Abraham Lincoln entertain egalitarian views of blacks, and his clearest statements on the subject are to be found in the course of his debates with Stephen Douglas during the Illinois senatorial campaign of 1858. While opposing the extension of slavery to new states, Lincoln repeatedly assured his audiences that he did not believe in or favor civic equality for blacks. In the debate at Charleston, Ill., on Sept. 18, Lincoln said:
I will say that I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races: that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters of the free negroes, or jurors, or of qualifying them to hold office, or to intermarry with white people. I will say in addition that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I suppose will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality, and inasmuch as they cannot so live that while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position being assigned to the white man.
He repeated this and similar ideas throughout the debates. Lincoln also was strongly in favor of expatriation for blacks and seriously explored the practicality of establishing a black settlement in Central America. Indeed, he proposed what would have become, had it passed, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution permitting federal support for the colonization of blacks outside the country. In his annual message to Congress in December, 1862, in which Lincoln made this proposal, he said:
That portion of the earth’s surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States is well adapted to be the home of one national family, and it is not well adapted for two or more. Its vast extent and its variety of climate and productions are of advantage in this age for one people, whatever they might have been in former ages. Steam, telegraphs, and intelligence have brought these to be an advantageous combination for one united people.
He obviously was thinking, as a unionist, of what he regarded as the inappropriateness of secession, but he was also thinking of the inappropriateness of a different “people” or race inhabiting the same territory, and his remarks are thus a fairly clear expression of what can only be called racial nationalism.
As for Stephen Douglas, he was even more outspoken on the issue of race than Lincoln (the following passage from his opening speech in the debates is from the edition published in 1993 by Harold Holzer, which incorporates into the text the audience responses as recorded by the newspapers of the day, in this case the Chicago Daily Times, a Democratic paper):
For one, I am opposed to negro citizenship in any form. [Cheers-Times] I believe that this government was made on the white basis. [‘Good,’-Times] I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor of confining the citizenship to white men — men of European birth and European descent, instead of conferring it upon Negroes and Indians, and other inferior races. [‘Good for you. Douglas forever,’ -Times]
Douglas, of course, won the election.
Nor, even after the end of the war, during congressional debates on the 14th Amendment — which today is considered the cornerstone of federal enforcement of egalitarian policies — even then, there was no endorsement of racial equality. Thaddeus Stevens, whom constitutional historian Raoul Berger calls the “foremost Radical” in Congress, was not in the least committed to black voting. He was mainly concerned with perpetuating the domination of the Republican Party. It suddenly began to dawn on the Radicals that with the abolition of slavery, the three-fifths clause of the Constitution, which had limited Southern representation in Congress, was no longer meaningful. The result would be that Southern representation in Congress would be vastly increased to the point that the South, just defeated in the war, would suddenly gain political dominance.
As Professor Berger writes,:
Now each voteless freedman counted as a whole person; and in the result Southern States would be entitled to increased representation and, with the help of Northern Democrats, would have, as Thaddeus Stevens pointed out at the very outset of the 39th Congress, ‘a majority in Congress and in the Electoral College.’ With equal candor he said that the Southern States ‘ought never to be recognized as valid states, until the Constitution shall be amended . . . as to secure perpetual ascendancy’ to the Republican Party.
The 14th Amendment was passed in order to grant the federal government the authority to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the meaning of the language of the amendment is clarified by the debates over the earlier law. The Civil Rights Act was mainly intended to overcome the so-called “Black Codes” imposed on blacks after the end of slavery and the war, and it gave to “the inhabitants of every race” . . . “the same right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, and shall be subject to like punishment . . . and no other.” In explaining the language of the bill to the House, Rep. James Wilson of Iowa, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was explicit about the limits of the bill:
What do these terms mean? Do they mean that in all things, civil, social, political, all citizens, without distinction of race or color, shall be equal? By no means can they be so construed . . . Nor do they mean that all citizens shall sit on juries, or that their children shall attend the same schools. These are not civil rights and immunities. Well, what is the meaning? What are civil rights? I understand civil rights to be simply the absolute rights of individuals, such as ‘The right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to acquire and enjoy property.’
Rep. James Patterson of New Hampshire, a supporter of the 14th Amendment, said much the same. He was opposed to “any law discriminating against [blacks] in the security of life, liberty, person, property and the proceeds of their labor. These civil rights all should enjoy. Beyond this I am not prepared to go, and those pretended friends who urge political and social equality . . . are . . . the worst enemies of the colored race.” Republican Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, who drafted the Civil Rights Bill, concurred. “This bill is applicable exclusively to civil rights. It does not propose to regulate political rights of individuals; it has nothing to do with the right of suffrage, or any other political right.”
What the framers of the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 and the 14th Amendment were proposing, in other words, was simply to extend to the emancipated black slaves what is generally called “equality under the law,” a concept of equality that merely recognizes the equality of citizens and does not rest on any supposition of the natural equality of human beings. Equality under the law demands that the same fundamental civil rights belong to all citizens — what are often called the “Blackstonean rights” of life, personal liberty, and property — and which were generally agreed to be the content of the “inalienable rights” mentioned in the Declaration.
But these basic civil rights were sharply distinguished from “political rights” such as voting or holding office. The Blackstonean rights are fundamental because it is not possible for an individual citizen to function without them — to live without security of being murdered or being abducted or imprisoned or enslaved or having his property stolen. If the black population were not going to be enslaved and not going to be colonized abroad, it was essential that ex-slaves possess these basic civil rights simply in order to function in society; but the Blackstonean civil rights have nothing to do with voting, holding political office, sitting on juries, racial intermarriage, getting a job or being promoted, or school integration, which is what the concept of “civil rights” has come to mean today.
It would be possible to continue with an almost inexhaustible list of quotations from prominent American statesmen and intellectual leaders well into the twentieth century abjuring any belief in the equality of the races or any belief that non-white races should or can have the same political position as whites in the United States. I will not rehearse all of them, but my purpose in what I have said so far is not to invoke all these institutions and ideas about race in American history as a model of what we should seek to restore or because I necessarily agree with all the views of race that have been expressed throughout our history (indeed, some of them are more or less contradictory), but to reinforce two points: First, we are not and never were a “universal nation” or a “proposition country” defined by the equality clause of the Declaration or the bromides of the Gettysburg Address. On the contrary we — Americans in general and our public leaders in particular — repeatedly and continuously recognized the reality and importance of race and the propriety of the white race occupying the “superior position,” and indeed it is difficult to think of any other white-majority nation in history in which recognition of the reality of race has been so deeply imbedded in its thinking and institutions as in the United States.
Second, whatever we think of that history and its recognition of race, we have to understand that the current propaganda line about being a universal nation is not only a totally false account of American history but also is a prescription for a total rejection of the American past and the national identity as we have always known it. Racial universalism is not simply an adjustment or a “reform,” let alone a continuation of the proper direction of American history, but a revolutionary reconstruction of the American identity.
In a 1996 article and a later book on Thomas Jefferson, historian Conor Cruise O’Brien demands that we eject Jefferson from our national pantheon precisely because of his views of race. O’Brien has a point that is perfectly logical if you accept his premise that America should be, even if it never has been, a universal nation. If indeed we are or should be a universal nation, then Thomas Jefferson must go. If indeed race is a meaningless “social construct” and a device for repression and exploitation as we are commanded to believe, then Jefferson was one of the main architects of and spokesmen for racial tyranny. But let us be aware that Jefferson is not the only god who has to be dethroned. If Jefferson must go, so must George Washington, and indeed, Washington’s name has already been removed from a public school in New Orleans because he was a slaveholder.
But Abraham Lincoln has to go as well, and so must Theodore Roosevelt and the leaders of the American Colonization Society and the framers of the 14th Amendment and so must virtually every other president and public leader in American history. You cannot have it both ways: either you define the American nation as the product of its past and learn to live with the reality of race and the reality of the racial particularism and racial nationalism that in part defines our national history, or you reject race as meaningful and important, as anything more than skin color and gross morphology, and demand that anyone, past or present, who believes or believed that race means anything more than that be demonized and excluded from any positive status in our history or the formation of our identity. If you reject race, then you reject America as it has really existed throughout its history, and whatever you mean by “America” has to come from something other than its real past.
That of course is exactly what President Clinton is telling us when he gloats that “we literally can live without in effect having a dominant European culture. We want to become a multiracial, multiethnic society.” And that also is what we are being told by contemporary liberalism. In 1997, the New Republic published an article by George P. Fletcher, professor at the Columbia Law School, in which Prof. Fletcher argued that “The republic created in 1789 is long gone. It died with the 600,000 Americans killed in the Civil War. That conflict decided once and forever that the People and the States do not have the power to govern their local lives apart from the nation as a whole. The People have no power either to secede as states or to abolish the national government.”
The reason the Old Republic died, according to Professor Fletcher, is that it “was grounded in a contradiction” that “glorified the freedom of some and condoned the slavery of others.” The new Constitution, he tells us, “begins to take hold in the Gettysburg Address, in which Lincoln skips over the original Constitution and reconstitutes it according to the principles of equality articulated in the Declaration of Independence.” As a matter of historical fact, Professor Fletcher is more or less correct. The Civil War did destroy the Old Republic, and the new state that arose from it is defined, at least today, as a universalist and egalitarian regime based on the equality proposition of the Declaration. What he does not tell us, however, is how the new regime can be a legitimate one, since it is, by his own admission, simply the result of victorious military power and not of consent or legal authorization by the representatives of the old regime. It is easy enough to destroy an existing constitutional order, but quite a different matter to construct one.
Nevertheless, the significance of Prof. Fletcher’s article is that it makes perfectly clear what we are facing from the contemporary supporters of universalism, whether of the left like Prof. Fletcher himself or President Clinton or of the “right” like John Miller. What we are facing and what they are advocating is in no sense a continuation of American history or the American national identity as it has existed throughout our history, but rather a revolutionary reconstruction of the nation, a reconstruction that ruthlessly follows the logic of Mr. O’Brien’s exclusion of Jefferson in excluding just about everything else characteristic of the Old Republic. The old identity and everything associated with it have to be excluded because their embrace of non-egalitarian and non-universalist institutions are simply incompatible with the new republic. Once we understand that, most of the universalists’ actions, policies, and ideas are perfectly logical. What they are aiming at is precisely what William Wiecik described in a passage I quoted earlier, “a revolutionary change in the original constitutional system, truly a new order of the ages not foreseen, anticipated, or desired by the framers.”
And not desired by most Americans today, either, at least not by those white Americans who grasp what is going on. As Peter Brimelow notes in his book on immigration, Alien Nation, Americans have never been asked whether they think it’s a good thing for their nation to undergo the transition from a white majority to a non-white majority country. They have indeed been lied to about the transition, in being told in 1965 that it wouldn’t happen, but until President Clinton embraced it last year, no president has even bothered to mention it.
If white Americans do not desire the transition, they still have a short time to prevent it and to try to salvage what is left of the Old Republic most of them still imagine they live in, and if they do wish to salvage it, they will have to reject, as clearly and firmly as the original Framers did, the universalism and egalitarianism that now threaten to destroy them and their race. Political philosophies and constitutional forms come and go, but nations — peoples and races — remain. Yet without the common blood that made us a nation in the first place, there will be no American nation, no matter what abstractions and forms we vainly invoke.
Dr. Francis is a syndicated columnist.
| SPECIAL REPORT |
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The Galton Report
A sampling of recent scientific literature.
Can Blacks be Ancestral to Modern Man?
The currently popular “Out of Africa” theory, according to which anatomically modern man is thought to have originated in Africa quite recently and then spread to the rest of the world, may be challenged by a new study of dental traits. It finds that Africans are different from all other living humans, and that they share many traits with extinct hominids and even with apes, both living and extinct. These differences are so great they suggest other races could not have evolved recently from Africans.
The author, Joel Irish of the University of New Mexico anthropology department, points out that a variety of complex dental traits found in Africans “apparently represent ancestral characters found in early hominids and early and modern non-human primates.” He further writes that “the divergence between Sub-Saharan and other modern populations may, indeed, be too great to support an African origin . . . That is, it may be felt that Sub-Saharan Africans are too different from the other modern populations to be representatives of a common ancestral morphotype.”
There is a diagnostic set of eleven dental traits that is called the Sub-Saharan African Dental Complex. These traits consist of such things as Bushman Canine, three-rooted UM2, LM2 y-groove pattern, UI1 double shoveling, and UM1 enamel extension. Even North Africans are far closer to Caucasians in these traits than to Sub-Saharans. Most different from the Sub-Saharans are the “Sinodonts,” that is, the peoples of Northeast Asia and the New World. Thus the major racial pattern of Africans and Asians being most different, with Europeans falling in between, which Professor Philippe Rushton has found for so many traits (see Race, Evolution, and Behavior, 1995), is also present in dentition. Prof. Irish further points out that the most widespread traits of the Sub-Saharan African Dental Complex are also “prevalent in the dentitions of many extinct hominids, from australopithecines through archaic Homo sapiens, as well as extinct and extant non-human primates. Thus the traits apparently represent very ancient characters.”
The finding that Africans have ancient dental traits does not disprove the “Out of Africa” theory. However, ancient traits distinctly different from those of all other modern humans are more consistent with an alternative theory of the origins of modern man, according to which an anatomically ancient proto-human left Africa substantially earlier and then evolved into modern man outside Africa, most likely on the Eurasian land mass. The primitive Sub-Saharan populations were then modernized through partially independent evolution and also by gene flow from modern humans back into Africa.
It is becoming common to point out that the first and largest genetic distinction within humans is the split between Sub-Saharan Africans and everyone else (see Whitney, “Diversity in the Human Genome,” AR, March 1997). It is therefore beginning to appear that newer morphological and genetic data are on their way to rehabilitating the theory and work of the much maligned and politically incorrect giant of physical anthropology, Carleton Coon, author of the 1962 classic The Origin of Races. [Irish, J.D. (1998), Ancestral dental traits in recent Sub-Saharan Africans and the origins of modern humans. Journal of Human Evolution, v. 34, pp. 81-98.]
Black Drivers Dangerous
It seems only common sense to suspect that being around people of lower intelligence and high impulsiveness could be dangerous, especially when they are behind the wheel of a ton or more of moving metal. A new investigation of automobile accidents has indeed found that blacks are relatively more dangerous to be around.
It is well known that elderly drivers have a higher rate of accidents per mile driven than do younger drivers. In an attempt to isolate factors that contribute to crashes among the elderly, a group (n=99) with an average age of 72 who were at fault in one or more car crashes within the previous six years was compared to people of the same age who had not had accidents.
A multivariate statistical analysis revealed four factors that were independently associated with a greater likelihood of having car crashes: (1) Poor performance on a composite test of processing visual information, which shows that slow processing speed and poor attention to visual cues increase the risk of accidents, (2) Having fallen down within the past two years, which indicates neurological and/or muscular impairment, (3) Not taking prescribed beta-blocker medication, and (4) Being black. Statistically therefore, among the elderly, race is an important predictor of bad driving, independent of other factors such as physical condition or general health. [Sims, R.V., et.al., (1998), A preliminary assessment of the medical and functional factors associated with vehicle crashes by older adults.Journal of the American Geriatric Society, v. 46 (May), pp. 556-561.]
Denying Race Reality at the Genome Project
Never underestimate the zeal of the politically correct to deny racial reality. Bureaucratic sabotage at the NHGRI (National Human Genome Research Institute) has ensured that the first collection of racial differences data in the multi-billion dollar Human Genome Project will be completely useless.
Readers who keep back issues of AR may wish to cross out “Race Genetics in the Mainstream” in the “Galton Report” for March 1998. There it was reported that the head of the Human Genome Project, Francis Collins, had called for a crash program to catalog genetic racial differences using the new technology for SNP [Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, called “snip”] detection. The importance of collecting snips from different races is that knowledge of genetic differences could contribute to effective treatment of the very large number of medical conditions that differ from one race to another.
A $30 million project was set up to characterize 100,000 snips in DNA samples from 450 people representing the races in America. This sample could have formed the basis for tremendously informative racial comparisons of all kinds, not just of medical conditions. However, according to a report in Science, the staff at NHGRI has decided to make the SNP collection useless for racial comparisons.
The program director Lisa Brooks is quoted as saying:
We’re not identifying who these individuals are [in the SNP database] by ethnicity, or sex, or anything else. We’ve gone to great pains to ensure that people who use these resources will not identify ethnicity. ‘Research on alcoholism or schizophrenia, for example, could cause offense if linked to a specific group, and NHGRI wants to avoid any ‘group stigmatization.’
In other words, the very thing the project was supposed to study — racial differences in frequency and nature of diseases — is the very thing NHGRI has now decided it must conceal so as to avoid “group stigmatization.”
Yale University geneticist Kenneth Kidd says that as far as he is concerned, the removal of population source data from the DNA sample “means the sample is useless, I won’t use it.” Prof. Kidd points out that gene markers like snips “are only valuable if they can be understood within the context of the population from which they’re drawn, and for this one must know the source.” [Marshall, E., (1998) “DNA studies challenge the meaning of race.” Science, v. 282, (October 23), pp. 654-655.]
Contributing editor Glayde Whitney is professor in psychology, psychobiology and neuroscience at Florida State University.
| BOOK REVIEW |
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Unlucky to be White
America’s forgotten war-time German internees.
Undue Process: The Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees, Arnold Krammer, Rowan & Littlefield, 1997, $27.95, 209 pp.
Since 1948, the internment and re-location policies implemented by the Roosevelt Administration during World War II have been presented by Congress, the news media, some historians, and the Japanese-American lobby as an expression of racist war hysteria against Japanese living in the United States.
This distortion of history has been used to justify financial compensation to “victims” of those policies on nine separate occasions between 1948 and 1992. It has now become part of the ideology of “white racism” and a precedent for demands by blacks for reparations because of slavery and by Hispanics because of the Mexican-American War.
In Undue Process: The Untold Story of America’s German Alien Internees, Arnold Krammer, professor of history at Texas A&M University, describes the extensive wartime policy of interning Europeans — a policy that has disappeared from history books and that gives the lie to the now orthodox view that Japanese relocation was a race-based policy. Using government documents, newspaper accounts, and interviews with former internees, Prof. Krammer has documented the officially-forgotten history of the internment of Germans and German-Americans.
It is important at the outset to distinguish between internment and relocation. Internment was literal incarceration, and was reserved primarily for enemy aliens. Relocation was the requirement that people considered to be threats to American security — some of whom were U.S. citizens — move out of the Western part of the United States. It is the relocation of Japanese, both citizens and aliens, that is now represented as a shameful example of “racism,” but Prof. Krammer’s book puts this policy in proper perspective.
Internment of Enemy Aliens
According to a 1798 law still on the books, an enemy alien is any citizen of a country at war with the United States. He need not show hostility towards the U.S. to be included in this category. While not all enemy aliens are interned, by law only enemy aliens can be interned, and internment often leads to deportation. U.S. citizens may “voluntarily” join their enemy alien spouses or parents in internment.
Prof. Krammer points out that President Roosevelt’s internment policy followed a precedent set by Woodrow Wilson, who interned approximately 6,300 enemy aliens during the First World War. This number included crewmen from German and Austro-Hungarian ships visiting U.S. ports at the time war was declared, and nationals of Germany and Austria-Hungary living in the United States. Approximately one third of the World War I internees were repatriated to Europe, and the last internees were not released until April 1920 — seventeen months after the war ended. German nationals not interned were required to register at post offices and carry a government registration card at all times. They were also forbidden to, among other things, “own guns, radios, or explosives” or “live within a half-mile of munitions factories, aircraft stations, forts, arsenals, or naval vessels.”
President Roosevelt’s internment policy during World War II was vastly greater in scope. As early as 1939 — well before America entered the war in December, 1941 — Roosevelt authorized FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to collect information on people to be interned if war broke out. Much, if not all, of the information was unsubstantiated allegations from unnamed sources, but once a person’s name was on the FBI list only death could remove it.
The United States started to intern German and Italian merchant seamen in U.S. ports in April 1941 while the country was officially neutral — a clear violation of law. By October 1941, it had formal plans for interning Germans and Italians living in the United States, and began implementing them on December 8, 1941 — three days before the U.S. was officially at war with Germany and Italy. Some Germans who were naturalized citizens were stripped of U.S. citizenship so they could be interned “legally.”
The total number of enemy aliens interned by the Roosevelt Administration was 31,275. This included 10,905 Germans, 16,849 Japanese, and 3,278 Italians. The rest consisted of Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, and others, with Europeans constituting 46 percent of the total. Among the internees were more than 6,600 Latin Americans — approximately 4,100 Germans, 2,300 Japanese, and 300 Italians — who were rounded up by Latin American governments at the request of the Roosevelt administration and sent to the United States. All Japanese enemy aliens were released from internment by June 1946, but some Germans and other Europeans were kept until August 1948.
The Roosevelt Administration also deported enemy aliens, and continued shipping German and German-Latin American internees to Germany even after the war in Europe had ended. It took Congressional legislation in 1947 finally to end deportation of Germans.
Prof. Krammer tells the stories of a number of German internees, many of whose careers and reputations were ruined by internment. Alfred Heitmann, for example, was an engineer for Standard Oil. He was interned in 1942 and released on parole in 1945, on condition that he not return to his old job at Standard Oil. For the rest of his life, this professionally-trained engineer could get work only as a grave digger, a foundry-man, and a maintenance man.
Robert Minner had been a journalist. After his release in 1946, the only job he could get was shoveling coal. Albert Krause was a physics teacher. He was also released in 1946, but never again worked as a physics teacher. His family survived on his wife’s income and the part-time and summer earnings of their three daughters.
Arthur D. Jacobs was 11 years old when, on three separate occasions, the FBI ransacked his family’s home looking for contraband or Nazi propaganda. Although the FBI found nothing, his father was interned in 1944 on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations from unnamed sources. Left without an income, the family “voluntarily” joined the father in internment. In 1946, the Jacobs were repatriated to Germany. Twenty-two months later, Arthur and Lambert, U.S. citizens by birth, managed to return, but they came alone. Their father could not forgive the U.S. government for the way it treated him, and their mother stayed with their father.
Relocation
Relocation is largely outside the scope of Prof. Krammer’s study, but this is the policy that is so frequently described as “racist.” It was not at all the same as internment. Internment was national in scope and involved incarcerating specific individuals for the purpose of deportation, whereas relocation did not begin until February 1942, and was limited to the West Coast. It authorized the Secretary of War or the appropriate military commander temporarily to exclude any or all persons — U.S. citizens, resident aliens, and enemy aliens, Germans and Italians, as well as Japanese — from all of California, the western halves of Washington and Oregon, and the southern third of Arizona. The government encouraged anyone who was excluded to resettle in the eastern halves of Washington and Oregon or in any of the other unaffected 44 states.
It is widely assumed that people excluded from the West coast were forcibly kept in “concentration camps.” This is not true. Exclusion prohibited residence in certain areas — nothing more — and anyone excluded could move anywhere else in the country. The relocation centers, which provided free housing, food, medical care, and education for children, were made available to anyone who would rather live at government expense than find another place on his own. As the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in the 1944 case of Korematsu v. United States that found exclusion Constitutional, no Japanese citizen or enemy alien was compelled “either in fact or by law” to go to a relocation center. The Court added, “We deem it unjustifiable to call them concentration camps with all the ugly connotations that term implies.” Anyone living in a relocation center was free to leave at any time so long as he did not return to the exclusion zone, and during the war, some 30,000 Japanese moved out of the centers.
It is not well known that Germans and Italians were excluded from the West Coast along with the Japanese. The relocation centers, however, were open only to Japanese. Originally only Japanese excluded from the West Coast could live in them but later, Japanese from other parts of the country were allowed in after petitioning the government.
It is true that far more Japanese than Europeans were forced out of their homes on the West coast — 112,000 as opposed to just a few hundred. It is this difference that was presumably “racist,” but in Korematsu, the Court explained that “there were disloyal members of that population [the Japanese] whose number and strength could not be precisely and quickly ascertained.” The Court also evoked the fear of a Japanese invasion.
Both reasons were legitimate. To begin with, there was a real question about the loyalty of Japanese-Americans even before the war. According to a Japanese government census, 78 percent of Japanese-Americans held dual Japanese citizenship, which indicated a less-than-total attachment to America. Once the war began, unlike German- and Italian-Americans, many Japanese-Americans were openly disloyal. For example, approximately 14,000 filed to renounce U.S. citizenship. The demand for renunciation was so great that in 1944 Congress amended the Nationality Act of 1940 to allow U.S. citizens to renounce citizenship during wartime. Of these 14,000 petitioners, 5,620 followed the process through to full renunciation, and gave up citizenship. They were then interned as enemy aliens, a consequence that probably kept many other disloyal Japanese-Americans from renouncing citizenship. Without this group of 5,620 Japanese — officially known as “renunciants” and, in effect, self-selected internees — the number of European internees would have been greater than the number of Japanese. Researchers are unaware of any case of a U.S. citizen of European origin renouncing citizenship during the war.
What other indications do we have of the Japanese attitude towards the United States? Just five weeks after the West Coast exclusion order, the government offered Japanese resident aliens naturalized U.S. citizenship if they would serve in the U.S. war effort. This was a remarkably generous offer at a time when Japanese were otherwise barred from naturalization. Virtually no one accepted.
Japanese-Americans living in relocation centers were free to join the armed forces but only six percent of those of military age did so. In most cases this was because they would not side with the United States. In fact, many wanted to go back to Japan. By 1945, more than 20,000 U.S. citizens and enemy aliens in relocation centers had filed papers with Washington to return to Japan. Eventually, over 8,000 Japanese, including Japanese-Latin Americans, were repatriated.
Another indication of the state of mind of Japanese-Americans was the refusal of hundreds of young men to register for the draft — at a time when draft evasion was virtually unheard of. Eventually 85 citizens of Japanese descent were tried and sentenced to prison in the largest mass trial of draft resisters in U.S. history. Also, approximately 20,000 Japanese-Americans who were living in Japan at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack remained in Japan and supported the war effort against the United States.
Finally, by means of MAGIC, the project that broke Japan’s diplomatic codes, the government learned of espionage rings organized by and operating out of Japan’s West Coast consulates. Both enemy aliens and U.S. citizens were among the spies.
What about the fear of Japanese attack? Unlike Germany and Italy, Japan invaded and occupied American territory: the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, and Attu and Kiska just off Alaska. On a number of occasions, particularly during the early part of the war, Japan shelled or bombed the West Coast, or sunk U.S. ships off the coast. Near the end of the war, Japan launched over 9,000 transoceanic balloon bombs against the West Coast.
Given these circumstances — open disloyalty by many Japanese-Americans and what appeared to be direct Japanese military threats against the West Coast — the exclusion order appears entirely reasonable. If there had been parallel circumstances with Germans and Italians in the eastern part of the United States, there can be little doubt there would have been an East Coast exclusion order as well. Both in its internment and exclusion policies, the American government appears to have been making strictly military decisions, which did not take race into account.
Perhaps it should have considered race. The record shows that Japanese-Americans were far more likely than German-Americans to favor their homeland over the United States — and quite naturally so. Loyalty to the US required that German-Americans turn their backs on an ethnic and cultural identity; Japanese-Americans were renouncing not just their culture but their race.
Compensation
Ironically, it is now on racial grounds that Japanese claim they were wronged. Activists succeeded in winning financial compensation from Congress on seven separate occasions — in 1948, 1951, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1972, and 1978 — before their most recent success.
In 1988, Congress issued an official apology, and awarded $20,000 to each former internee and relocated person of Japanese descent. Four years later, Congress extended eligibility for the $20,000 to non-Japanese spouses of Japanese internees who voluntarily joined their families in internment. In June, 1998, the Clinton Administration announced it would pay financial compensation to Japanese-Latin Americans interned in the United States during the war.
Note that for Japanese, internment and relocation were treated the same, but that only Japanese and no Europeans have received money or an apology. Japanese who were relocated but then returned to Japan out of loyalty to their country of origin were eligible for the $20,000 just as were Japanese who were relocated, enlisted in the U.S. army, and served the United States. The government has never awarded financial compensation, or offered an apology of any kind to the thousands of Europeans it interned, relocated, or deported during and after the war.
As Prof. Krammer concludes, America’s German and Italian internees have suffered a double tragedy. During the war, many were locked up on suspect grounds, and today, virtually no one even knows about it. It has now become virtually impossible to acknowledge the truth because this would knock an important prop out from under the now-essential ideology of “white racism.”
Mr. Fallon is a writer living in Rye, New York.
| IN THE NEWS |
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O Tempora, O Mores!
South African Farmers Face Terror Campaign
Black rule has been a nightmare for the farmers of South Africa. Since May, 1994, when Nelson Mandela’s government took power, there have been more than 2,000 attacks on farms resulting in 570 murders. During the first eight months of 1998 alone there were 590 attacks and 104 murders. Many of the victims died only after being raped and tortured for hours. A recent issue of the South African publication the Aida Parker Newsletter was entirely devoted to this campaign of terror that has gone virtually unreported in the United States.
Under white rule farmers were safe from violence, but in the changed psychological atmosphere of black rule they have become easy targets because many live in isolated areas. Farmers are now four times more likely to be killed than other South Africans — in a country whose post-apartheid crime wave has given it the highest murder and rape rates in the world.
The farmers who remain on the land are outraged by the attacks and by the government’s apparent lack of interest in stopping them. They suspect the killings may be part of a plan to drive whites off the land. As Aida Parker writes, “Is what we are seeing a coordinated, creeping land occupation, an Africanised quasi-nationalisation . . . ?”
Theft is only a secondary motive in many of the killings. Sometimes the murderers take nothing at all, and even when they do take weapons or money they kill needlessly and viciously. In the somewhat tepid words of a National Intelligence Agency report, “in almost every case, the degree of violence inflicted upon the victims . . . was completely excessive and totally out of proportion with the objectives . . . The torture and rape of victims suggests that the attackers do not merely intend to kill the victims, but to inflict pain, humiliation and suffering.” It is common for bands of blacks to attack at nightfall and torture their victims until morning. The accompanying illustration details the injuries of an Eastern Transvaal farmer who was tortured for six hours before he was finally killed.
- Hands tied behind the back with telephone wire
- Genitals burnt and kicked in
- Feet bound with a piece of clothing
- Finger and toenails extracted with hot pliers
- Ruptured spleen
- Weals on whole body — supposedly whip marks
- Burns on whole body — apparently applied with a hot poker
- Skull fractured and splintered at back
- Broken neck
- Skin burnt by hot coals on back
President Nelson Mandela says the killings are the random work of common criminals and dismisses outrage over the terror as the result of a “racist propaganda campaign.” The rest of the world seems to agree. As Miss Parker notes, “the outside world, in particular that ‘great citadel of democracy and freedom,’ the US, remains blind, deaf and dumb to what is happening here.” (SA’s Bloody Road to Ruin, Aida Parker Newsletter, Spring, 1998. Address: PO Box 91059, Auckland Park, 2006, South Africa)
Race and the Elections
The mid-term elections of last November only confirmed that as the American population changes, white voters cannot elect the candidates they want. For example, in New York, Republican Senator Alfonse D’Amato won the white vote, 51 to 48 percent, but Democrat Charles Schumer won the election with 86 percent of the black vote and 82 percent of the Hispanic vote. In the Senate race in California, Asian-American Matt Fong got two percent more of the white vote than his opponent but lost because Democrat Barbara Boxer got 85 percent of the black vote, 71 percent of the Hispanic vote and — surprisingly — 51 percent of the Asian vote.
In the Georgia governor’s race, Republican Guy Millner got more than 60 percent of the white vote but lost to Democrat Roy Barnes, who got 95 percent of the black vote. There were similar results in governors’ races in South Carolina and Alabama. GOP pollster Mark Mahe noted that “We probably got 60 percent of the white vote in the South. But if you’re getting only 7 or 8 percent of the black vote, it just makes it really, really, really difficult to move the numbers.”
Once the numbers move there is a price to pay. Alvin Holmes, a black Alabama state representative had this to say about his new Democratic governor, Donald Siegelman: “He received 97 percent of the black vote in Alabama. We don’t owe him anything. He owes us.” Mr. Holmes wants blacks appointed to at least one third of the new Cabinet posts.
There were probably many other races in which whites did not get the candidates they wanted. Nationwide, whites voted for Republicans by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent, whereas blacks voted 89 percent Democratic and 11 percent Republican. Hispanics voted 63 percent Democrat and 37 percent Republican.
Non-whites consistently vote their racial interests but whites do not. Democrats knows this and, in some cases, made explicitly racial appeals. The Missouri Democratic Party paid for a radio advertisement directed at blacks that said, “When you don’t vote, you let another church explode. When you don’t vote, you allow another cross to burn.” Maryland Governor Parris Glendening’s ads painted his Republican opponent as a “racist” even though members of his own party denounced the so-called “evidence” as a lie. In Ft. Worth, Texas, people distributed fliers claiming that “Republicans are trying to intimidate African-American voters.” Even the White House said Republicans were trying to scare off blacks.
Republicans are too stupid and too cowardly to court their obvious constituency, which is whites. Instead, they are now fawning over new heroes, the Bush brothers. George, Jr. won reelection as governor of Texas with 47 percent of the Hispanic vote and Jeb won the Florida governor’s race with 58 percent. National Journal points out that if the Bushes are to be the new Republican model, the party “will have to abandon, or at least strongly suppress, any hard-line positions on immigration, civil rights and affirmative action.” No problem. George and Jeb Bush appear happy to do that if it will win non-white votes.
The interests of whites go by the boards at the national level, too. In the past two Presidential elections the Republican candidate won the majority of the white vote, but lost to William Clinton, who was the non-whites’ favorite.
School Days in Baltimore
Southern High School in Baltimore was recently profiled in the Baltimore Sun, as one of those schools that go unaccountably out of control. Just two years ago, city officials were praising it for reducing violence and dropout rates, but it is now back in the dumps.
Nearly every day, teachers clear the halls in what is essentially a prison routine. They shout “Lockdown! Lock-down!” and the 1,500 students run back to their classrooms before the doors are shut and bolted. Anyone still wandering the halls is supposed to be punished, but the criminals and trouble-makers have a safe haven: stairwells 5 and 6. The worst of the rowdies have taken them over and made them so dangerous even the police officers assigned to the school are afraid to go there.
Principal Darline Lyles, who presided over Southern’s relative improvement of a few years ago, has all but given up on the stairwells. “I’m sure there are streets in Baltimore you won’t walk down,” she says. “I ask my students not to go into Stairwells 5 and 6 for the same reasons. It’s about personal safety.” Even with no one in them the stairwells are dangerous. They are piled so high with trash, cigarette butts, and chicken bones that students easily loose their footing.
The rest of the school is not much better. The toilets are broken and overflowing, and the washrooms are strewn with garbage and used feminine hygiene products. Students smoke marijuana openly, boys grope girls with impunity, and roaches scurry across the floors. On the first day of school, when a girl complained that several boys had urinated on her, a teacher told her to clean herself up and go to lunch. Students also like to start little fires; several times a week someone has to put out a trash fire or douse a blazing bulletin board.
For years, Southern has been a battle ground for students who come from two different housing projects, Cherry Hill and Flag House. This year there have been fights every day since school began, and though the principal has suspended the most determined pugilists, girls have now taken to punching each other. The cafeteria is so chaotic — students like to heave full trays of food at each other and turn over trash barrels — that many people stay in class or eat in the library.
Principal Lyles is trying to improve things. The school recently doubled the number of police officers from three to six, and there are “safe school facilitators” who roam the halls trying to keep order. On October 12 Miss Lyles had a meetings for parents but they just ended up yelling at each other.
Miss Lyles concedes that the difference between the current chaos and what were said to be the good years is not all that great. “These problems aren’t new,” she says. “We deal with it all the time.” (Stephen Henderson and Joe Mathews, It’s a School, But the Aura is of Prison Chaos, Baltimore Sun, Oct. 30, 1998.)
Clintonesque Capers
It was recently reported that in May, 1997, President Clinton fired John Hicks, the American ambassador to the African nation of Eritrea, for sexual misconduct. Mr. Hicks, a career foreign service employee, was making crude sexual advances to two embassy secretaries. On one occasion, he slipped his hand under a woman’s underwear and fondled her. He told another that she was refusing his advances because he was black. The State Department turned over a report on Mr. Hicks to the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office for possible criminal prosecution but in the end, his case was handled “administratively.”
At the time President Clinton fired Mr. Hicks, he was under investigation for making similar advances to Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey, and was in the midst of a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. (Jerry Seper, During Lewinsky Affair, Clinton Fired Envoy for Sex Misconduct, Washington Times, Oct. 30, 1998.)
Search for Equality Continues
There is a growing movement in New Zealand to grant apes certain “human” rights. The Great Ape Project of New Zealand has asked parliament to make special legal provisions for chimpanzees, bonobos (a species of African pygmy ape), gorillas and orangutans. According to David Penny, a theoretical biologist at Massey University in New Zealand, “There’s now a mountain of evidence that the great apes are as intelligent as young human children, and very similar in their emotional and cognitive development.” He adds that “they have self-awareness and theory-of-mind: hallmark traits which were once thought to separate humanity from all other species.” If passed, the new law would make it illegal for an owner to kill a great ape and would also outlaw invasive or painful experimentation. (Reuters, New Zealand Lobby Wants Human Rights for Apes, Oct. 30, 1998.)
Third Time’s the Charm
Barbara Coe and the California Coalition for Immigration Reform have once more been thwarted in their efforts to publicize the problems illegal immigration is causing their state. In May, the CCIR put up a giant, 10 foot by 40 foot billboard at the California/Arizona border, which read “Welcome to California, the Illegal Immigration State. Don’t Let This Happen to Your State.” The advertising took down the sign after Hispanic activists threatened to burn it.
In November, the CCIR put up another sign at the border, but it lasted only a week. The owner of the land under the billboard began to fear for the safety of his family because so many motorists were stopping to gawk at the sign. Miss Coe is determined to find another location. (2nd Anti-Immigration Billboard Removed, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 14, 1998.)
High-Tech Ethnic Cleansing
Israel is reported to be working on a biological weapon that would kill only Arabs. The weapon would use viruses and bacteria that alter the DNA in cells they attack, and would be based on micro-organisms that kill only cells with DNA that is unique to Arabs. The research program is said to be based at the biological institute in Nes Tziyona, the main research facility for Israel’s clandestine arsenal of chemical and biological weapons.
A scientist at Nes Tziyona said it was very hard to design an anti-Arab weapon because Jews and Arabs are both Semitic and therefore closely related. He claimed, however, that the program has “succeeded in pinpointing a particular characteristic in the genetic profile of certain Arab communities, particularly the Iraqi people.” Diseases could be spread by spraying organisms into the air or putting them in water supplies.
American Secretary of Defense William Cohen has said he has received reports that a number of countries are trying to develop biological weapons that are racially or ethnically specific. Senior Western intelligence sources have reportedly confirmed that Israel is one of those countries. Israel has denied the existence of the program. (Uzi Mah-naimi and Marie Colvin, Israel Planning ‘Ethnic’ Bomb as Saddam Caves In, Sunday Times (London), Nov. 15, 1998.)
Race and Government
Researchers at Harvard and the University of Chicago have sifted through mountains of data to decide which of the world’s governments are best and which are worst. They considered such things as per capita income, tax rates, measures of corruption, literacy, education, and infant mortality. They found that the best governments were, in descending order:
New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway, United Kingdom, Canada, Iceland, United States of America, Finland, Sweden, Australia.
The worst, in ascending order, were:
Zaire, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Haiti, Cameroon, Mali, Syrian Arab Republic, Indonesia, Niger, Algeria.
There is a certain very clear pattern here that, needless to say, escaped the attention of the savants. They wrestled with such issues as whether it made a difference if a country uses the Napoleonic code or whether Protestant countries are better run than Catholic. They did notice that government gets worse as you approach the equator, but Lopez de-Silanes of Harvard explains it this way: “In temperate zones, there is much less disease and the agriculture is much more productive.”
The great minds did hazard one bold conclusion: “[E]thno-linguistically heterogeneous” countries aren’t as well governed as homogeneous countries. Mr.de-Silanes explained that this is because ethnic groups can’t seem to stop fighting each other. (Richard Morin, Putting the Good in Good Government, Washington Post, Nov. 1, 1998, p. C5.)
Same People, Same Problems
Laurel Productions, a British television company, has found that blacks were overwhelmingly responsible for the 14 juvenile gang rapes that took place in Britain in 1996. In nine of the 14 cases, all the rapists were black, and there were black participants in four of the other five cases. Eighty-six percent of the juveniles charged were black; most but not all of the victims were also black.
Laurel Productions made a documentary about this, which provoked much whooping even before it was aired. Black newspapers editorialized about “sloppy journalism,” and demonstrations were planned. A few blacks welcomed the program as a way to call attention to the problems black girls face, but others used it to blame whites. One black broadcaster, Darcus Howe, explained that today’s black misbehavior can be traced to the brutalization of slaves on Caribbean sugar plantations. (Paul McCann and Kathy Marks, TV Gang Rape Documentary Angers Black Groups, Independent (London), Nov. 18, 1998.)
Louts Win at Columbia
Accuracy in Academia, a conservative organization affiliated with Accuracy in Media, signed a contract with Columbia to hold a conference on the campus over the weekend of November 13 and 14. Speakers were to include Ward Connerly, Dinesh D’Souza, and John Leo. Mr. Connerly, who led the campaign for the California ballot initiative to ban racial preferences, gave the keynote address on the 13th. This prompted a demonstration by about 100 students who demanded that Columbia cancel the rest of the conference. The University did as it was told, and Dinesh D’Souza and others spoke as best they could at nearby Morningside Park.
The demonstrators took great pride in having disrupted the conference and even followed it into the park, where they shouted down speakers. Some waved signs reading “Access Denied” and “We Win: Racists Not Allowed At Columbia.” One of the protesters, Adrienne Brown, expressed her satisfaction at seeing the conference move to a park “where homeless people sleep and piss.”
Accuracy in Academia plans to sue Columbia and to hold another conference there. (Columbia University Censors Conservative Conference, NewsMax.com, Nov. 18, 1998.)
Hoaxer Convicted
A black woman has been convicted of trying to defraud United Parcel Service by means of a phony hate crime. Angela Jackson of St. Paul, Minnesota, sent 28 pieces of hate mail to herself and to black congressmen Bobby Rush and Jesse Jackson, Jr. She scrawled racial insults on the packages she received and then tried to collect $150,000 from UPS, claiming that “white supremacist” employees had vandalized her insured packages. On the witness stand she claimed that the charges against her were part of a “racist conspiracy.” (AP, Conviction in Phony Hate Mail Case, Nov. 21, 1998.)
Racial Health Differences
Life Expectancy: A white baby born in 1996 can expect to live for 76.8 years; the average black baby will live 70.2 years.
Infant Mortality: Of every 1,000 black babies born in 1995, 14.7 died in the first year; 6.1 of every 1,000 white babies did.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: 57.9 of every 100,000 white babies die in their sleep of this mysterious condition; for blacks, the figure is 137.5.
Cancer Deaths: The death rate for cancer among black men is about 50 percent higher than for white men.
Prostate Cancer: From 1990 to 1995, 230 out of 100,000 black men got prostate cancer, compared to 154 white men per 100,000.
Lung Cancer: Blacks as a group are 27 percent more likely than whites to die from it; blacks are 50 percent more likely to get it.
Stroke: Blacks are nearly twice as likely to die of a stroke, with 44.2 deaths per 100,000 as opposed to 24.5 for whites.
Heart Disease: Black death rates are 40 percent higher than whites. Deaths declined 20 percent overall from 1987 to 1995, but were down just 13 percent for blacks.
Hypertension: Between 1988 and 1994, 35 percent of black men ages 20 to 74 had high blood pressure, compared to 25 percent of white men.
Diabetes: Blacks are 70 percent more likely to get it than whites. Between 1980 and 1994, the number of cases among blacks rose 33 percent, three times the increase for whites.
AIDS: Blacks are 13 percent of the population but account for 43 percent of new AIDS cases and more than two thirds of new HIV infections. Black men are seven times more likely than whites to be infected with HIV; black women are 20 times more likely than white women. The number of newly-diagnosed AIDS cases fell by 13 percent among whites in 1996 — the first decline since the disease appeared — but there was no decline for blacks. (AP, Statistics on Racial Health Disparities, Nov. 27, 1998. Richard Morin, Blacks, AIDS and the War on Drugs, Washington Post, Nov. 29, 1998, p. C5.)
‘Vile Hypocrites’
In a recent column about inter-racial crime, Charley Reese of the Orlando Sentinel lets the facts speak for themselves:
If there is a race war going on, as some black intellectuals have contended, it is being waged by blacks against whites . . .
[In 1994] there were 100 rapes committed by whites against blacks but 20,204 rapes committed by blacks against whites. As for robberies, 7,031 involved a white perpetrator and a black victim while 167,924 robberies involved a black perpetrator and a white victim.
White assaults of blacks were 49,800, but black assaults of whites were 431,670. In the category of all violent crimes, only 55,301 involved white perpetrators and black victims; 572,458 violent crimes involved black perpetrators and white victims.
A history professor recently pointed out that the stabbing death of an 82-year-old Alexandria, LA, woman barely got mentioned in the news — despite the fact that the four black killers admitted that they chose her ‘because she was white.’ That’s not a hate crime? Why didn’t the president comment on that? How come the national television networks didn’t put that on the evening news, do specials and invite Rolodex experts to proclaim how ingrained black racism is against whites?
This huge disparity between white-on-black and black-on-white crime is the elephant at the tea party that both the press and the federal government pretend they can’t see. They are vile hypocrites.
(Charley Reese, Race War Will Continue Until We Can Talk About it Honestly, Orlando Sentinel, November 5, 1998.)
Perils of Tolerance
Ruth Sherman is a 27-year-old white third-grade teacher in Brooklyn, New York. She tried to “relate” to her mostly black and Hispanic pupils by having them read a “multi-cultural” children’s book praised by the New York Times. Nappy Hair is about a little girl with the “nappiest, fuzziest, the most screwed up, squeezed up, knotted up” hair. “Nappy” is a traditionally derogatory term for fuzzy African hair, but the author, a black woman named Carolivia Herron, says her book is “a wonderful celebration of nappy, African-American hair” and not at all anti-black. The students’ parents have a more traditionalist understanding of the word. In a meeting with Miss Sherman they shouted racial insults at her and threatened violence. The school superintendent removed her from the classroom and considered disciplining her.
The district decided no punishment was necessary, but Miss Sherman has asked for a transfer, saying she fears for her life and has nightmares about being threatened. She also regrets that her lesson in “tolerance” failed. “The poor children must be so confused right now,” she says. “Everything I tried to teach them about getting along and togetherness has been thrown out the window.” (Judie Glave, Teacher Removed for Book Choice, AP, Nov. 24, 1998. Judie Glave, Threatened Teacher Seeks Transfer, AP, Dec. 1, 1998.)
Dixie Rising
A history course at North Carolina’s Randolph Community College is causing a stir. It is taught by members of the local Sons of Confederate Veterans and is called “North Carolina’s Role in the War for Southern Independence.” The instructors teach that the war was not about slavery but about independence, and that over 30,000 blacks fought loyally for the South. They also assign readings from a series of 1930s interviews with ex-slaves, who generally had positive things to say about slavery.
“Civil rights” leaders are hopping mad but the instructors are not backing down. “We cannot allow political correctness to rewrite history or wipe out our heritage,” says Jack Perdue. “African-Americans celebrate Kwanzaa; Native Americans hold powwows. Everybody can celebrate their culture but we can’t.” (College Slavery Course Draws Fire, Las Vegas Sun, November 15, 1998.)
Another Nation of Immigrants
Germany’s new leftist government has announced it will change the country’s citizenship laws to permit foreigners born in Germany to become citizens. According to the current law, which was passed 85 years ago, German citizenship is based on blood rather than on place of birth.
Seven million foreigners — who account for nearly 10 percent of the population — now live in Germany. Of this number, two million are Turks. Many of them came to Germany during the economic boom of the 1960s. There are now many second-generation Turks but they are not automatically German citizens. Under current law they may apply for naturalization after they have lived in Germany for 15 years, and must renounce Turkish citizenship. Under the new law, anyone born in Germany would have automatic citizenship if one of the parents was a resident of Germany for at least 14 years. The law would also permit dual citizenship, which Turks want.
A representative of the Green party, which is the junior partner of Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats, says the agreement “is a clear signal for integration. This government will recognize that Germany is a country of immigrants.” (Tony Czuczka, German Group Seeks Integration, AP, Oct. 14, 1998.)
Malcolm X Gets a Stamp
Malcolm X (Credit Image: © MediaDrum via ZUMA Press)
The Postal Service has announced a stamp in the black heritage series honoring Malcolm X. Roger Wilkins, a history professor at George Mason University and a specialist on the civil rights movement, says the Black Muslim who was killed in 1965 deserves the honor because he did so much to promote black pride. (Bill McAllister, Malcolm X Stamp Added to Series, Washington Post, Nov. 20, 1998, p. A27.)
More New Citizens?
Organized crime is an increasingly serious problem in Russia and Eastern Europe, and many gangsters have close connections with American criminals. Hungary, in particular, has become a mob playground, and the FBI has increased its presence there. One of the problems with prosecuting Hungarian gangsters is that the country does not have a witness protection program for informers who testify against their former friends. In America it is common to give cooperative ex-mobsters a new job and a new identity. The United States is considering opening its own program to chatty Hungarian criminals, who would get new identities and new lives in America in exchange for testimony. (Susan Milligan, US Weighs Asylum for Hungary Mob Cases, Boston Globe, Nov. 29, 1998.)
More Anti-Semitic
A study by the Anti-Defamation League claims blacks are four times more likely than whites to hold strong anti-Semitic views. Based on whether they agreed with statements like “Jews have too much power,” and “Jews are more loyal to Israel than America,” the ADL puts 34 percent of blacks but only nine percent of whites in the “most anti-Semitic” category. ADL director Abraham Foxman blames Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan: “The Farrakhan message of anti-Semitism is repeated and repeated and that strengthens and reaffirms these attitudes.” (AP, More Blacks Found To Be Antisemitic, Las Vegas Sun, November 23, 1998.)
Whatever it Takes
After five years of failing to narrow the test score gap between black and white students, the Omaha, Nebraska, School District now has a “black achievement plan” that should solve the problem. There was some debate about whether the plan should cover all students who do poorly but Omaha has decided to limit it to blacks. There will be all-day pre-school and kindergarten for black students, free transportation to school events for black parents, special teacher training, and a series of “black parents summits.” The city will also hire 50 new tutors to work only with blacks. Some parents worry that all this will suggest to students that blacks are inferior, but the plan’s administrator says it would be “educational malpractice” not to put it into practice. (Melissa Matczak, Blacks Stay Focus of Tutor Plan, Omaha World-Herald, November 10, 1998.)
Pay Before You Pump
Daron Hill, a black Chicago police officer, is suing Shell Oil Company because a local station made blacks pay before they pumped gas but let whites pay afterwards. The station had a memo to employees written in the Indian language of Urdu saying, “Do not release [gas pumps] for blacks. First get the money.” Station manager Shahid Hasan denies there was such a policy. “It is not true. We love to attend black people, and we respect them.” However, at a press conference to announce the suit, Mr. Hill played a video in which a white person paid after he pumped but Mr. Hill was waved into the station and told to prepay. Last year Mr. Hill sued Amoco for the same reason, and is reportedly planning a suit against a third company. (Leon Pitt, Gasoline Stations Accused of Bias, Chicago Sun-Times, September 17, 1998, p. 3.)
| LETTERS FROM READERS |
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Sir — Samuel Francis, in Part I of his article on “Race and the American Identity,” says many true and important things. Yet he seems to have overlooked that in the Declaration of Independence the phrase “all men are created equal” is followed not by a full stop but a comma, and it goes on to declare the respect in which they are equal; namely in their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
These rights are option rights (not to be injured by others) rather than welfare rights (to be supplied with goods at the expense of other people.) It would be even more wrong to suggest that the founders declared that all men or all sets of men are equal in their abilities.
Prof. Anthony Flew, Reading, England
Sir — Let us not forget that the equality clause appears in the Declaration, not in the Constitution. It was addressed to King George III to explain to him that the authors of the Declaration considered themselves his political equals and entitled to independence. The Declaration severed ties with England; it did not establish a new government. In the Constitution one finds no chatter about equality because that was the document the founders were going to have to live by. In fact, as Dr. Francis points out, the Constitution is steeped in inequality.
The equality clause therefore has no bearing on American government, nor is it even an expression of American political philosophy. Its purpose was to claim for the signers a status that permitted them to do business with the king as equals and not as subjects. The clause essentially disappeared until Lincoln fished it out again for the Gettysburg Address in a fraudulent attempt to give his war upon the Confederacy the appearance of a campaign for democracy and freedom.
The purposes to which the liberals put the equality clause are just as fraudulent. We should therefore expose the fraud rather than criticize Jefferson for writing what was a perfectly useful statement designed to tweak the nose of a monarch to which he no longer wished to be bound.
Alexander Selkirk, Groton, Ma.
Sir — Regarding your O Tempora item in the November issue titled “Not Intermarrying,” I don’t believe it. My eyes aren’t lying to me. I grew up here in the 1950s. One never saw an interracial couple back then — never. Now it is impossible to go out without seeing many such couples.
Dax Crockett Stewart, McGregor, Tx.
Sir — The December issue reports that liberal whites are leaving South Africa because they no longer feel appreciated by their former black comrades. Now it appears that the widow of Alan Patton, whose book Cry, the Beloved Country did so much to ruin South Africa, is also leaving. Apparently she is tired of carjackings and break-ins. She also says the police and government are corrupt and don’t care about the crime problem. On the plane to England, I hope she thinks about the many whites who can’t leave, and who must live with the mess she helped create.
Name Withheld, Madison, Wi.
Sir — Last month you wrote that a hate crime against a homosexual in Wyoming received much more press than similar anti-white crimes. On ABC’s Nightline, a homosexual filmmaker said the way to stop anti-homosexual crime is to discard “outmoded” notions of sexual identity. He wants to start in the schools, where all “dysfunctional” identities will be rooted out. This is a good thing! If trying to turn our children into homosexuals doesn’t wake us up, nothing will.
Thomas Oleson, Gig Harbor, Wa.
Sir — The way Thomas Jackson writes about the European partition of Africa would make one believe it was a great, romantic expression of the white man’s dynamism. This is an odd position for AR to take. Even if the civilization Europeans brought to Africa was vastly superior to anything indigenous, what justification was there in forcing it on anyone? In his speech to the 1994 AR conference, Jared Taylor points out that white Americans have the right — he calls it the obligation — to resist displacement even by people who may be superior to us in every way. Didn’t the Africans have the same rights and obligations? And weren’t the Europeans just as blameworthy as the Third World invaders AR is always on about?
Although one might debate the ethics of it, a pragmatic case could be made for colonizing Africa if it had been like colonizing North America, where natives were displaced in order to extend the reach and power of whites. But aside from Algeria and a few parts of Southern Africa, it was never even that. Colonies were prestige projects for politicians and bargaining chips in European diplomacy. They were administrative headaches that then became springboards for non-white immigration to Europe. European involvement in Africa — aside from the dubious achievement of giving Africans a taste for a way of life they can never achieve — has therefore been disastrous. It is all very well to write admiringly of patriotic Germans bounding through the jungle in the name of the Vaterland, but fine intentions don’t count. If whites wanted to push Africans around and fly the flag we should have moved in and taken over as we did Australia or Canada. If we didn’t have the stomach for conquest we should have stayed out.
Curt Eisner, Lexington, Ky.