January 2000

American Renaissance magazine
Vol 11, No. 1 January 2000

 

CONTENTS

A Warning From the Past
The Man Behind the Books
Documenting the Decline
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

A Warning From the Past

Lothrop Stoddard and The Rising Tide of Color.

Modern liberals like to praise W.E.B. Du Bois for predicting that race would be the defining issue of the 20th century. But another man, writing at the same time, also made that prediction. Lothrop Stoddard (1883-1950) is not as well remembered as Du Bois and his name is usually paired with words like “racist” and “white supremacist,” but perhaps a better word would be “prophet.” His major work, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy, was written in 1920 at a time when whites had colonized and ruled most of the world. Stoddard warned that supremacy was about to end and that whites had better prepare for the consequences.

The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy by Lothrop Stoddard

Although he published 14 other books, The Rising Tide of Color remains his best known work. Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, it was not an obscure right-wing manifesto but a mainstream sensation by a Harvard-educated scholar. In it Stoddard pointed out that the number of non-whites was growing rapidly and that some, especially Asians, were mastering Western technology. Increasing numbers of non-whites were threatening white colonies in some areas but, most importantly, they threatened even traditional white homelands. How skillful and united whites were in handling the rising tide would in large part determine the future of their race.

Lothrop Stoddard

Lothrop Stoddard

The Asian Threat

The Rising Tide of Color begins with a description of the various non-white populations of the earth. Although his classifications are sometimes crude, Stoddard makes sharp distinctions between different races of non-whites. In his view, East Asians living in the “yellow man’s land” were the greatest threat to whites. He classified north Asians — as well the west Asians of the “brown man’s world” — as high races with histories of accomplishment that deserve respect. Indeed, he wrote that for a thousand years the East put constant pressure on the West and at one time threatened to conquer all of Europe. By the time of Charlemagne, the “white man’s world” had shrunk to only the lands west of the Elbe River. Charlemagne pushed the invaders out but whites never fully reconquered the lands that had once been theirs — a failure in which Stoddard saw much significance:

. . . [W]est-central Asia, which in the dawn of history was predominantly white man’s country, is today racially brown man’s land in which white blood survives only as vestigial traces of vanishing significance. If this portion of Asia, the former seat of mighty white empires and possibly the very homeland of the white race itself, should have so entirely changed its ethnic character, what assurance can the most impressive political panorama give us that the present world order may not swiftly and utterly pass away?

Of all the threats to the West, Stoddard believed the Japanese were the most serious. He quotes early British envoys who described Japanese as “highly intelligent children” who could quickly acquire Western techniques. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 these “highly intelligent children,” shocked the world by becoming the first non-white nation in modern times to defeat a white nation. Since white hegemony was maintained not by love but by respect and fear, Russia’s defeat by Japan was, in Stoddard’s view, “a body blow to white ascendancy.”

Japanese writers and government officials were not shy about drawing conclusions from their victory, and soon began turning western ideas of supremacy on their heads. At the outbreak of the First World War, Japanese writer Yone Noguchi wrote that the conflict meant the ruin of whites. “It means the saddest downfall of the so-called western civilization; our belief that it was builded upon higher and sounder footing than ours was at once knocked down and killed; we are sorry that we somehow overestimated its happy possibility and were deceived and cheated by its superficial glory.”

Stoddard quotes a Japanese imperialist pronouncement written in 1916:

As for America — that fatuous booby with much money and much sentiment, but no cohesion, no brains of government . . . Well did my friend speak the other day when he called her people a race of thieves with the hearts of rabbits . . .

North America alone will support a billion people; that billion will be Japanese with their slaves. Not arid Asia, nor worn-out Europe (which, with its peculiar and quaint relics and customs should in the interests of history and culture, be in any case preserved), nor yet tropical Africa is fit for our people. But North America, that continent so succulently green, fresh, and unsullied — except for the few chattering mongrel Yankees — should have been ours by right of discovery; it shall be ours by the higher, nobler right of conquest.

A Burmese journal called Buddhism, wrote that the “yellow peril” was nothing more than an expression of Darwinian superiority:

The West has justified — perhaps with some reason — every aggression on weaker races by the doctrine of Survival of the Fittest; on the ground that it is best for future humanity that the unfit should be eliminated and give place to the most able race. That doctrine applies equally well to any possible struggle between Aryan and Mongolian — whichever survives, should it ever come to a struggle between the two for world mastery, will, on their own doctrine, be the one most fit to do so, and if the survivor be the Mongolian, then is the Mongolian no ‘peril’ to humanity, but the better part of it.

Although it was partially controlled by Japan, China also was a threat to the West. With one fourth of the world’s population, an armed China would pose an even greater challenge than Japan. Stoddard reported that in 1905 Chinese school children were taught to chant the following lines: “I pray that the frontiers of my country become hard as bronze; that it surpass Europe and America; that it subjugate Japan; that its land and sea armies cover themselves with resplendent glory; that over the whole earth float the Dragon Standard; that the universal mastery of the empire extend and progress. May our empire, like a sleeping tiger suddenly awakened, spring roaring into the arena of combats.” There was good reasons to take note of the Asians.

Brown Men

According to Stoddard, the brown man’s land was the Near and Middle East and stretched into northern Africa. Racially it was a jumble, including within its boundaries such groups as largely-white Persians and Turks, largely-black Yemenite Arabs, and Himalayan and Central Asian yellows. With the exception of India, he saw Islam as the great unifying force of this world. In 1920, the brown man’s world was completely controlled by whites, but this did not guarantee permanent white control in the face of rising brown solidarity fueled by what Stoddard called “the Mohammedan Revival.”

Ironically, this revival was aided by Western technology. Newspapers allowed Muslims to communicate with each other across their vast world. A Syrian Christian, Ameen Rihani, characterized that world in a May 1912 article in Forum magazine:

A nation of 250,000,000 souls, more than one-half under Christian rule, struggling to shake off its fetters . . . [A] nation with a glorious past, a living faith and language, an inspired Book, an undying hope, might be divided against itself by European diplomacy but can never be subjugated by European arms . . . What Islam is losing on the borders of Europe it is gaining in Africa and Central Asia through its modern propaganda, which is conducted according to Christian methods . . . Europe drills the Moslem to be a soldier who will ultimately turn his weapons against her . . .

Though Islam was a growing force, Stoddard did not think the brown threat comparable to the yellow peril. While Japanese talked openly of racial superiority and conquering white lands, the brown revolt against white rule was mainly defensive, showing few signs of expansion. Stoddard saw the brown man as having enough room for his growing population and thought any alliance among the browns would break up after white rule ended. He expected internal warfare among the browns to be constant, and thought a yellow-brown alliance unlikely. Stoddard’s main concern was that resurgent Islam might affect another sphere of white political control: black Africa.

The Dark Continent

Sub-Saharan Africa was the world of the black man. Four-fifths of the world’s 150,000,000 black people lived in Africa in 1920, with the rest scattered in the New World. Africans had suffered from a history of isolation: “Cut off from the Mediterranean by the desert which he had no means of crossing, and bounded elsewhere by oceans which he had no skill in navigating, the black man vegetated in savage obscurity, his habitat being well named the “Dark Continent.’” In stark language, Stoddard described blacks as never having developed a civilization and having no history: “Left to himself, he remained a savage, and in the past his only quickening has been where brown men have imposed their ideas and altered his blood. The originating powers of the European and the Asiatic are not in him.”

Though white contact with sub-Saharan Africa began four centuries earlier, only in the nineteenth century did Europe give the area its full attention. Within a generation Africa — both black and Arab — was partitioned by European powers, and only Liberia and present-day Ethiopia retained qualified independence.

Europeans took root in Africa — at both the northern and southern extremes — in a way they never did in Asia. Over a million Europeans — mostly French — settled in Algeria and Tunisia, and a million and a half Dutch and English in South Africa. With white control firmly established in these areas, the main question for Africa was whether whites could maintain their hold on the inner continent. This would depend on how well they contained the spread of Islam. According to Stoddard, the continent would fall either to white Christians or Islamic browns; Africans themselves would never be masters in their own house.

Stoddard believed the black man’s lack of originality and history made him particularly susceptible to outside ideas and people. Africans readily accepted the religions of both browns and whites, but since blacks were a naturally warlike people, they would be more inclined to accept Islam than Christianity. Islam had not yet penetrated below the equator and Stoddard praised the efforts of Christians to convert blacks:

In so far as he is Christianized, the negro’s savage instincts will be restrained and he will be predisposed to acquiesce in white tutelage. In so far as he is Islamized, the negro’s warlike propensities will be inflamed, and he will be used as the tool of Arab Pan-Islamism seeking to drive the white man from Africa and make the continent its very own.

Stoddard warned that “Pan-Islamism, once possessed of the Dark Continent and fired by militant zealots, might forge black Africa into a sword of wrath, the executor of sinister adventures.”

For Stoddard, the real value of Africa lay in its rich raw materials. He believed the European powers were well aware of the brown threat and was confident they could control the spread of Islam. Moreover, whites continued to settle in Africa, making more and more of it “white man’s country.” The real danger to white control lay in potential weakness and discord within the white world itself.

Red Men

By “red men” Stoddard meant the American Indians of Central and South America. In his view they accounted for about two-thirds of the population of this area with whites and “near-whites” comprising about ten percent. Stoddard contrasted the conquest of Latin America by the Spanish with the settling of North America by the British. The British undertook a genuine migration, bringing families who meant to stay, whereas Spanish men came alone to the New World for treasure and adventure and mated with Indian women. Their “mestizo” offspring were sometimes joined — primarily in Brazil — by the mulatto offspring of whites and black slaves. “Zambos” were the result of black-Indian mixing.

As long as the colonies were held by Spain, Latin America had a system of white rule, and what Stoddard calls an “idle and vapid” white governing class at least formally forbade miscegenation. After the revolutions against Spain, which Stoddard called a white civil war, there was massive racial change. The white rulers were decimated by the revolutions and their ranks were further depleted by the large number of loyalists who returned to Spain. Non-whites, many of whom had fought for the revolutionaries, wanted their share of power and the result was a long series of coups, revolutions and wars that resulted in a worsening of conditions in most of Latin America.

Stoddard praised Chile, Argentina and Uruguay as mostly-white nations that encouraged European immigration. He particularly singled out Chile for its social and political stability as well as its racial consciousness: “The country was settled by a squirearchy of an almost English type. This ruling gentry jealously guarded its racial integrity. In fact, it possessed not merely a white but a Nordic race-consciousness.” Stoddard was optimistic about these areas of South America since white immigration — mostly German — seemed to be strengthening their already strong white identities. The rest of Latin America seemed doomed to endless cycles of anarchy, tyranny and revolution.

While Stoddard saw little of value in the red man’s land, he did think it important to keep Asians out. He noted that the Japanese had targeted Latin America for expansion, and quotes a Japanese he identifies only as Count Osuma as saying, “South America, especially the northern part, will furnish ample room for our surplus.” In fact, during this period Japan was trying to strengthen relations with Mexico by posing as a counter-balance to the hated “gringo.”

Stoddard predicted the red man’s land, like Africa, would eventually be controlled by outsiders, white or Asian. The other races were out of contention because: “The Indian is patently unable to construct a progressive civilization. As for the negro, he has proved as incapable in the New World as in the Old.” Again, as in Africa, whites had the advantage over Asians. With strongholds to the north and south and with increased European immigration, white hegemony in Latin America was secure unless “internecine discord,” robbed whites of their vigor.

‘The Swarming of the Whites’

Like Madison Grant, Stoddard divided whites into Nordics, Alpines and Mediterraneans. While he considered them all sound stock, in his view, the Nordic had made the race great. He argued that traditionally it was Nordics who repelled Asiatic invasions of Europe after Alpines or Mediterraneans had been defeated.

Before the 16th century Europe had a civilization no better than Asia’s, but the years 1500 to 1900 marked the “white flood.” This period began with Columbus in 1492 and was established in 1497 with Vasco da Gama’s discovery of a route to India. Stoddard believed these discoveries not only opened new lands to Europeans, but had a profound psychological effect as well. The white man went from static “dead-end” to dynamic discovery:

. . . [H]is inherent racial aptitudes had been stimulated by his past. The hard conditions of medieval life had disciplined him to adversity and had weeded him by natural selection. The hammer of Asiatic invasion, clanging for a thousand years on the brown-yellow anvil, had tempered the iron of Europe into the finest steel. The white man could think, could create, could fight superlatively well. No wonder the redskins and negroes feared and adored him as a god, while the somnolent races of the Farther East, stunned by this strange apparition rising from the pathless ocean, offered no effective opposition.

Thus began the swarming of the whites, like bees from the hive, to the uttermost ends of the earth. And, in return, Europe was quickened to intenser vitality. Goods, tools, ideas, men: all were produced at an unprecedented rate. So, by action and reaction, white progress grew by leaps and bounds . . . For four hundred years the pace never slackened, and at the close of the nineteenth century the white man stood the indubitable master of the world.

The thought that this supremacy could end, “never entered the head of one white man in a thousand,” wrote Stoddard. Indeed, in 1920 whites were the most numerous race on earth. Comprising one-third of humanity, they occupied 40 percent of the globe, and controlled 90 percent. He called white expansion “the most prodigious phenomenon in all recorded history . . . Never before has a race acquired such combined preponderance of numbers and dominion.” Though most whites could not foresee it, Stoddard warned that hegemony was about to be challenged.

Only white solidarity could stop the rising tide of color, but the First World War destroyed this solidarity and showed the colored world that whites were vulnerable through internal discord. Just as the Peloponnesian War was the suicide of Greek civilization (“the saddest page in history,” writes Stoddard) the Great War threatened to mark the end of white supremacy.

“The war was nothing short of a headlong plunge into race suicide,” wrote Stoddard. He estimates it took 40,000,000 lives including civilians. Moreover, the conflict had a severe dysgenic effect, with the best young men of Europe dying without passing on their genes. The least fit — the cowardly and physically or mentally deficient — were left behind to propagate. Thus in 1920, at the time Stoddard wrote, the heart of the white world lay in ruins. Europe was financially and physically broken, it’s racial solidarity shattered, the flower of its youth dead on the battlefield — it stood at the same crossroads as the Greeks following their fratricidal war. The decisions made then would determine the fate of the white world.

Plugging the Dikes

In his plan to hold back the tide, Stoddard divided the world into “dikes.” The outer dikes were areas where whites had political control but had not settled. Examples were India and Egypt. Inner dikes were areas where whites firmly established, as they were in North America and Australia. Between these two lay a category he called enclaves, where whites had settled but had not displaced the native populations. Examples were Algeria and South Africa.

Though Stoddard did not advocate outright abandonment of the outer dikes, he did not consider them necessary for white survival. The question of retention would turn on economic, political and strategic considerations. In the case of Asia, he urged whites to face the inevitable: “White men must get out of their heads the idea that the Asiatics are ‘inferior.’ . . . Men worthy of independence will sooner or later get it . . . Let us not exhaust ourselves by stubborn resistance in Asia which in the end must prove futile.”

The inner dikes were the frontiers of the white world marked not by boundary stones but flesh and blood: “They are the true bulwarks of the race, the patrimony of future generations who have a right to demand of us that they shall be born white in a white man’s land. Ill will it fare if ever our race should close its ears to this most elemental call of the blood.”

The inner dikes could be breached by war, trade, or immigration. Japan showed in the Russo-Japanese War that it was a military power. Also, it and other Asian nations were in the process of industrializing and could potentially threaten the West through trade. As they prospered they would look for new areas for their surplus population, including Australia and the United States. The only thing to stop this immigration was the will of whites. If this will ever faltered or was weakened by internal discord, the inner dikes would be flooded by people seeking the better living conditions offered by the West. This is why Stoddard saw the First World War as such a bad omen (he also noted that each side used colored troops from the colonies to fight fellow whites).

Though he feared that whites were “ill-prepared” to stop the rising tide of color, he still hoped they would rediscover that race is destiny. It was due to their unique genetic heritage that whites could rule the world and create a great civilization, and it was impossible to have the civilization without the race. “For white civilization is today conterminous with the white race . . . It will be swamped by the triumphant colored races, who will obliterate the white man by elimination or absorption. What has taken place in Central Asia, once a white and now a brown or yellow land, will take place in Australasia, Europe and America. Not today, not tomorrow; perhaps not for generations; but surely in the end. If the present drift be not changed, we whites are all ultimately doomed.”

Warnings, Heeded and Ignored

Lothrop Stoddard was not alone in warning the West. The early 20th century saw the publication of several major books on the importance of race. Among these were: Mankind at the Crossroads by E.G. Conklin (1914), The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant (1916) and Race and National Solidarity by Charles Josey (1923) (reviewed in AR, August 1992). The May 7, 1921 Saturday Evening Post carried an editorial on immigration that said, “Two books in particular that every American should read if he wishes to understand the full gravity of our present immigration problem: Mr. Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race and Dr. Lothrop Stoddard’s The Rising Tide of Color  . . . These books should do a vast amount of good if they fall into the hands of readers who can face without wincing the impact of new and disturbing ideas.”

Initially some leaders were ready to heed the warnings. Congress passed the Johnson Act of 1924, which effectively ended non-white immigration. Stoddard testified at the congressional hearings. Also, the new science of eugenics was becoming well accepted. Stoddard was in charge of publicity for the Second Eugenics Congress of 1921, which was chaired by Madison Grant and held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (see AR, February 1997, for an account of the respectability and broad popularity of the early eugenics movement).

Despite these early successes, subsequent leaders ignored Lothrop Stoddard’s warnings. Twenty years after The Rising Tide of Color was published, Europe again erupted into civil war. Nazi Germany allied with the dreaded Japanese, who made good on their threat to attack the United States. Eugenics was soon linked to Adolf Hitler and concentration camps. Europe gave up her Asian colonies and soon all of Africa was freed. The supposedly permanent white colonies in Algeria and Tunisia were betrayed in the 1960s and Rhodesia and South Africa collapsed soon after. Australia abandoned her “whites-only” immigration policy in the 1970s and the United States and Canada put in motion immigration policies which, if not reformed, will make whites a minority by mid-century. Even Europe, the heart of the white world, faces massive Third-World immigration and high fertility rates combined with below-replacement white birth rates.

Just as Stoddard feared, the rising tide of color is swamping the West. Ironically, it is not the “yellows” who are displacing whites so much as the “reds,” “browns”and blacks, from whom Stoddard expected no real challenge. But just as he predicted, white disunity and loss of will are the culprits, not the inherent dynamism of non-whites. We still have time to rebuild the inner dikes — but only if we rekindle the will to do so.

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BOOK REVIEW

Stoddard in The Great Gatsby

The Rising Tide of Color was so well known in the 1920s that F. Scott Fitzgerald took a poke at it in his 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. One of the novel’s least attractive characters expresses enthusiasm for a book by “Goddard:”

‘Civilization’s going to pieces,’ broke out Tom violently. ‘I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?’

‘Why no,’ I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

‘Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.’

‘Tom’s getting very profound,’ said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. ‘He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we — ‘

‘Well these books are all scientific,’ insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. ‘This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.

‘We’ve got to beat them down,’ whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

‘You ought to live in California — ‘ began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

‘This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and — ‘ After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. ‘ — And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization — oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?’

There was something pathetic in his concentration . . .

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ARTICLE

The Man Behind the Books

Theodore Lothrop Stoddard was born in 1883 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His lineage stretched back to 17th century Massachusetts, where Solomon Stoddard held a pastorate in North-ampton, Massachusetts. An only child, Stoddard attended Harvard, where he studied history, government and European languages. He graduated magna cum laude in 1905 and traveled in Europe before entering law school. Admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1908, he went back to Harvard to train for a career as an advisor on world affairs, and received his Ph.D. in 1914. His doctoral thesis was published that year as The French Revolution in Santo Domingo, and described the slaughter of whites by black slaves (with the help of French Jacobins) in what is now Haiti. To him the event marked, “the first great shock between the ideals of white supremacy and race equality.” After receiving his Ph.D. he became foreign affairs editor for World’s Work magazine and then turned his attention to writing books on race and civilization.

The Rising Tide of Color (1920) was the most successful of Stoddard’s fifteen books. In 1921 he released The New World of Islam, which further documented the spread of that religion. The Revolt Against Civilization (1922) dealt with the Bolshevik attempt to raise the “underman.” In it Stoddard displayed a hierarchical view not only of races but of individuals. He called for a “neo-Aristocracy” to usher in a progressive era based on biological realities and the findings of science. Racial Realities in Europe (1924) was a detailed comparison of the Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean stocks of Europe. Stoddard’s ultimate solution to social problems was eugenics, which he discussed in Scientific Humanism (1926). He was a frequent contributor to Margaret Sanger’s journal The Birth Control Review  — a fact often pointed out by Sanger’s current critics.

Although others were also writing books on race at this time, Stoddard seemed to have had an especially profound influence. According to the Dictionary of American Biography, “. . . the peculiar pungency of his style, the global breadth of his vision and his pose of informed expertise made Stoddard an influential propagandist. Invitations to congressional hearings, praise from President Harding, and many favorable reviews of his books, all suggest that Stoddard was important in rationalizing for his country its new immigration laws.”

After passage of the 1924 immigration restrictions, he wrote two more books on race. Reforging America (1927) emphasized the importance of white solidarity in building a European America. Clashing Tides of Color (1935) revisited some of the themes of his most successful work. In it he wrote, “‘The Rising Tide’ has risen portentously, these past fifteen years. Only instead of roaring in like a tidal bore up an estuary, it has become more like a rip-tide — a confused welter of swirling eddies and choppy waves dashing against one another as well as against the confining shores.” Stoddard wrote that he underestimated the impact “Western machine civilization” would have on Asia. He thought the prospect of all-out race war between whites and Asians was diminishing because of antagonisms among Asians caused by Western imports like nationalism and Communism. But whites were not to let down their guard: “That does not mean that Asia’s desire to end Western supremacy has abated. It merely means that the struggle has become much more complex.”

The outbreak of World War II took Stoddard to Germany where he was correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance from 1939-1940. He interviewed Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, and part of his Goebbels interview was published in the January 22, 1940 issue of Time. After returning to the U.S. he wrote Into the Darkness (1940), described by the Dictionary of American Biography as “a fair and honest appraisal of the Nazi state, but not without hints of admiration for Hitler’s eugenic experiments.” After the war he became an editorial writer and foreign affairs expert for the Washington Star.

Though Lothrop Stoddard is now almost always remembered as a “racist” and “white supremacist” he seems to have thought of himself primarily as a foreign affairs expert. A lifelong Unitarian and Republican, Stoddard was also a member of the American Historical Association, the American Political Science Association, and the Academy of Political Science. He died of cancer in Washington D.C. on May 1, 1950 at the age of 66. The New York Times ran an eight-sentence obituary that did not even mention The Rising Tide of Color. According to the Dictionary of American Biography (written in the 1970s), “Obituaries were rare and perfunctory: the findings of science and the sordid realities of Hitler’s Germany had discredited the racial and social views that Stoddard had proclaimed.”

The Rising Tide of Color can be purchased from American Renaissance here.

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BOOK REVIEW

Documenting the Decline

What’s happening to California.

The California Cauldron: Immigration and the Fortunes of Local Communities, William A.V. Clark, The Guilford Press, 1998, 224 pp., $27.95.

The California Cauldron

William Clark is one of those rare scholars able to look at decades of Third-World immigration without being hypnotized by slogans about diversity or terrified by imagined charges of “racism.” Prof. Clark, who teaches in the geography department at the University of California at Los Angeles, has managed to frame the immigration question with a clarity that almost never disturbs the fog that has settled upon our universities: “[T]he principal issue confronting California today is whether this polyglot society can work.” Although Prof. Clark refrains from taking a position either way, his careful, scholarly account of how California is changing leaves little doubt about how this question should be answered. He even gently points towards the unmentionable core of the problem: “Clearly, non-European groups have assimilated slowly, if at all and this lack of assimilation has raised questions about the effectiveness of assimilation for integrating different races and ethnicities into the larger American society.” Within the pages of this book are more than enough data to demonstrate the insanity of our immigration policies — which no doubt helps explain why The California Cauldron has disappeared practically without a trace.

Percentages of different ethnic groups in California. The white decline appears more gradual in the most recent period only because it spans five years rather than ten. Whites became a minority just before the end of the century. (This graph, like the others in this review, is one of the many excellent illustrations in The California Cauldron.)

Although Prof. Clark discusses many aspects of immigration, his primary analysis is on three areas: the ethno-linguistic balance, the impact on education, and the increase in poverty. He makes it clear that immigration means the importation of huge social problems that may be impossible to solve. As he puts it, immigration may be ensuring for California a “future that contains all the elements of an impoverished underclass.”

This future underclass comes from many countries, but the primary source is Mexico. As Prof. Clark points out, in 1950 Mexico had only 26 million people; in 1996, it had a population of 96 million — despite having shipped off millions of its excess to the United States. Now half of all Mexicans have relatives in the United States, and Mexico all by itself has fueled an astonishing population boom in California. In 1970, before waves of Third-World immigration, there were only 20 million Californians and more than three quarters were white. In 1999 whites became a minority (see graph on previous page), and by 2025 there could be as many as 50 million Californians, with whites an elderly, dwindling, hated minority. About one third of the annual immigrant crop of nearly one million arrives in California, and about three fifths of them go to the Los Angeles area. As Prof. Clark points out, “this concentration, more than any other issue, raises the question of the nature of a nation-state and the “rule of law.’”

Even without further immigration, the Hispanic future of the state is virtually assured. Between 1975 and 1995, the share of births to Spanish-speaking Californians went from 20 percent to 46 percent. In 22 of the state’s counties Hispanics account for more than 75 percent of all births. This is due to fertility as much as to brute numbers, since foreign-born Hispanic women with less than a 9th grade education have an average of 4.7 children each, while whites are not even replacing themselves. Hispanics account for almost two-thirds of the births to teen-aged mothers, and Hispanic teen-agers now have children at nearly the black rate, which is well over twice the rate for whites.

The percentage of foreign-born Californians is three to four times higher than that of the nation as a whole, and in Los Angeles County, nearly 60 percent of the births are to foreign-born women. In 1993, no less than 45 percent of all births in the state were to mothers born outside the country. Many of these mothers are here illegally; Prof. Clark estimates that about one Californian in 15 — about two million people — are illegals.

Needless to say, since whites have so few children, they are the most elderly population. Nothing could be starker than a comparison of the white and Hmong population pyramids. Primitive Cambodians have an assured demographic future in California; whites do not.

Straining the Schools

The combination of a sharp shift in the population to non-white, along with growth at nearly sub-Saharan rates has put a huge strain on California schools. Seventy percent of the students in the Los Angeles school system — second largest in the nation after New York City’s — are now Hispanic, and 57 percent are classified as having limited English proficiency (LEP). One quarter of all the students in the state are LEP. Being born in the United States is no guarantee that a Mexican child speaks English well; 62.5 percent of US-born Hispanics speak Spanish at home. Until a 1998 voter initiative sharply curtailed bilingual programs, the state was spending $300 million a year on them. Prof. Clark notes that even though bilingualism slowed assimilation, it could not be criticized for fear of provoking charges of “racism.”

About half of California’s Hispanics fail to graduate from high school, but this is a family tradition. Only 24 percent of immigrants from Mexico have the equivalent of a high school degree, and virtually none is a college graduate. This helps put California at the bottom of the education league, with the highest percentage of high-school dropouts of any American state, and the smallest percentage of college graduates.

Prof. Clark points out that per-student spending in California, which used to be one of the highest in the country, is now near the bottom. Teachers thus have few means with which to teach the barely educable: “[W]e are witnessing a serious problem in the ability of inner-city school systems to receive and educate the flows of new immigrants.” Because children are not assimilating culturally, linguistically, or professionally, “they are as much a matter of concern as the flow of new immigrants.”

Needless to say, many immigrants are poor. Prof. Clark writes that Asian and Middle Eastern immigrants tend to have educations and good jobs, but “a very large number of migrants have very low earnings, and their wages will not improve during their working lives.” In particular: “[I]mmigrants from Mexico and Central America are not only at the bottom of the social and economic ladder; they are farther from the top than were earlier arrivals from the same geographical areas. They will find it even more difficult to move up the ladder in the coming decades.”

Prof. Clark gives the arresting example of Mexican immigrants who were aged 25 to 35 when they came during the period of 1965 to 1970. On arrival they made about half as much as native-born Americans. During the 1970s, they narrowed the earnings gap by only two percent, and then during the next decade lost another five percent, to put them at less than half the native wage. This means that over a 20-year period, they started out behind and fell further back.

The more recent the immigrant, the more likely he is to be poor and to have little education, with the result that almost half of all Hispanic children are living in poverty. From 1980 to 1990, 94 percent of the increase in welfare cases was accounted for by Hispanics and Asians, five percent by blacks, and only one percent by whites. Many Asian immigrants have the habit of bringing over their elderly parents and putting them on public assistance.

Prof. Clark notes that in macroeconomic terms, the wages of laborers — janitors, restaurant help, construction workers — are declining. Immigration has forced down wages in the only jobs many immigrants can do. At the same time, California has a large and increasing gap between wages for unskilled labor and college graduates.

European immigrants pulled themselves out of poverty and learned new jobs as circumstances changed. Now, Prof. Clark writes, “we can no longer assume that the problem will take care of itself, that somehow immigrants will acquire the skills needed to participate in a changing economic milieu . . .”

Prof. Clark points out that poor, uneducated immigrants are likely to accumulate in dense numbers, not only in neighborhoods but in housing units themselves: “In the Salvadoran neighborhoods near downtown Los Angeles, where about three-quarters of the population are foreign-born, some population densities reach almost 70,000 persons per square mile [the Los Angeles average is 7,841 per square mile]. We would expect to find such densities more commonly in the inner cities of India and Africa than in North America.”

He points out that the densities of Cambodian neighborhoods in Long Beach are almost as high.

In many cases, it is not just immigrants of the same nationality but even the same locale who cluster together. “Over a 30-year period,” writes Prof. Clark, “the initial migrants from the village of Granjenal have re-created that community in a new geographic setting [through chain migration].”

Balkanization

Needless to say, the former residents of the area didn’t like it when it turned into Granjenal. They have moved out, just as they have moved out of thousands of other neighborhoods that turned into Third-World outposts. “[T]he very large numbers of Hispanics may be stimulating a resegregation,” notes Prof. Clark, adding that “it is possible that the process could usher in an era of separation and balkanization.” He even hints that race may have something to do with it: “the “white’ immigrants did eventually merge and blend. The current immigration process, however, may not play out in quite the same way.”

What might happen instead? “[I]f the differential patterns of immigration and out-migration continue, it is entirely possible to envision a completely changed and ethnically separated metropolitan structure . . .” Prof. Clark imagines “one possible future for communities in Southern California, and eventually even the nation: political upheaval as groups struggle for group power rather than individual influence.”

Prof. Clark hopes that this may yet be forestalled by cutting immigration and basing it on skills rather than family reunification. He makes the obvious but heretical point that if family unity is so important it can take place in Mexico or Guatemala just as well as in the United States. He even explains that a nation is not defined exclusively in economic terms, and that by emphasizing “separate identity rather than integration, at just the time when the flows are more diverse,” we are destroying the basis of national unity. He forecasts increasing ethnic antagonism between aging affluent whites and young destitute non-whites.

Left unasked is the question of why a nation would ever embark upon such a suicidal policy. Why do we fight poverty but import poor people? Why do we worry about education but import illiterates? Why do we wring our hands over “racism” but ensure antagonism by importing every race under the sun? Readers will not find answers to these questions in The California Cauldron, but they will learn what we are bringing upon ourselves by not asking them.

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IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

‘African Century’ A-Coming

Thabo Mbeki, the new president of South Africa, says he wants the new year to usher in an “African century,” during which it will leave its tortured past behind. “Africa must flower once again as a continent of learning, of art and thriving cultural activities,” he told a joint session of the two houses of parliament. But Mr. Mbeki thinks he has spotted something that might hamper the flowering. “Racism,” he says, is stunting the development of a black business class, which must be created “to eradicate racism in our country.” Nothing circular here.

The Employment Equity Act, passed last year, is expected to be a big help in ushering in the African century. All companies with 50 or more employees, or with sales above a certain figure, or that want to do business with the government will have to make plans to hire more blacks. They must draw up a racial profile of their workforces and follow an “employment equity plan” to correct imbalances. There will be heavy fines for laggards.

At the same time, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has released a report accusing the country’s media of “racism.” SAHRC head Barney Pityana says racism had become more explicit since the 1994 election that ended white rule. The leader of a team that spent six weeks monitoring the media reported on abuses: “We found a lot of racial stereotyping which was negative such as blacks being criminals and affirmative action being reverse racism.” The Black Lawyers Association and the Association of Black Accountants joined in the criticism, saying opinion and free expression are stifled by the fact that South Africa’s media are still mainly owned by whites. SAHRC has asked newspapers and broadcasters to explain their behavior and will then issue a final report in March. (Jeremy Lovell, S. Africa’s Mbeki Says 21st to be Africa’s Century, Reuters, Nov. 19, 1999. Andrew Selsky, Racism Remains in South Africa, AP, Nov. 20, 1999. Emma Thomasson, S. Africa Compels Firms to Promote Blacks, Women, Reuters, Nov. 23, 1999. Steven Swindells, South African Media Face Charges of Racism, Reuters, Nov. 22, 1999.)

It is not likely to be pleasant to be a white South African when the “African century” fails to flower.

The Candidates on Immigration

Gary Bauer: Has no position on immigration levels. Wants English proficiency for immigrants.

William Bradley: Voted in favor of public assistance for legal immigrants and against public assistance for illegal aliens. Co-sponsored legislation to toughen enforcement of immigration laws.

Patrick Buchanan: Cut legal immigration by more than half to 250,000 to 300,000 a year. Put immigrants through a “national campaign of assimilation” that includes English proficiency. Deny government benefits to illegal immigrants and build barriers along Mexican border.

George W. Bush: Rejects English-only laws. Supports more visas for skilled workers. Has supported expansion of program letting temporary workers in to fill demand for farm and service jobs.

Steven Forbes: Says ‘controlled, orderly, legal immigration is good for America.’

Albert Gore: Says each wave of immigrants has enriched the nation, favors bilingual education and letting legal immigrants qualify for benefits.

Orrin Hatch: Voted to bar some public assistance to illegal immigrants and restrict some services to legal immigrants.

Alan Keyes: Favors maintaining or expanding legal immigration.

John McCain: Opposes English-only laws and withholding social services from illegals, is in favor of increasing eligibility of legal immigrants for certain benefits. (Calvin Woodward, Where the Presidential Candidates Stand on Some Key Issues, AP, Nov. 22, 1999.)

The Dream Lives On

The family of Martin Luther King, Jr. wants to sell his papers to the Library of Congress for $20 million but Republican legislators are balking at the cost. The usual practice is to give private papers to the library at no charge. The King family also wants to retain copyright on the papers so it can charge a fee whenever anyone quotes from them. In other words, it would be selling only the physical presence of the papers and not relinquishing ownership. The Library of Congress has never paid that much money for anything. The most it has ever spent on a collection was $1.5 million ($14.6 million in today’s dollars) in the early 1930s for about 3,000 books from the 15th century, including one of only three perfect copies of the Gutenberg Bible. (David Pace, Congress Delays King Papers Action, AP, Nov. 11, 1999.)

The Biter Bit

In November, the state legislature in Albany, New York, went into a frenzy when anti-black notes were discovered in front of the doors of the offices of two black legislators. “Kill all niggers because they don’t belong here,” the notes said, and were signed “Yours truly KKK.” Darryl Gray, a 35-year-old black janitor has now confessed to typing and distributing the notes. Police are reportedly unable to think of a motive. Mr. Gray has been charged with aggravated harassment and could be sentenced to up to two years in prison. (Black Janitor Accused of Hate Notes, New York Times, Nov. 9, 1999.)

Fired Up For Jesus

In 1996, the media were taken in for months by a phony black-church-arson scare whipped up by the Kansas City “anti-racist” group, Center for Democratic Renewal. In at least one case, church officials were so caught up in the excitement they apparently torched their own church. In November, police charged a minister in Wichita Falls, Texas, of burning down the Full Gospel Power House Church of God in Christ in order to collect $270,000 in fire insurance. Rev. Theophilus Thompson was free after posting bond, but three other church officials implicated in the fire are languishing in the Wichita County jail. (AP, Preacher, Three Others Arrested in Church Blaze, Nov. 8, 1999.)

Boys from Brazile

Donna Brazile is the new director of Vice President Albert Gore’s presidential campaign. There has been much satisfaction expressed over the unprecedented appointment of a 39-year-old black woman to such an important role in a national major-party campaign. She is a dedicated black activist who has worked with the Rainbow Coalition, registered black voters, and campaigned for Jesse Jackson and Washington, DC, delegate Eleanor Norton. In a November 16 interview with the Washington Post Miss Brazile unbosomed her social philosophy, saying she was determined not to let the “white boys” win. According to her, “white boy” is not about “gender or race, it’s an attitude. A white-boy attitude is “I must exclude, denigrate and leave behind.’” She says it is an attitude of utter entitlement, which must be fought at all costs. (Robin Givhan, Clearing the Decks at Gore Headquarters, Washington Post, Nov. 16, 1999, p. C1.)

One wonders what her boss Mr. Gore thinks of this. Harvard graduate and son of a U.S. Senator, he has no doubt completely stifled any sense of “white boy” entitlement.

In Washington’s Footsteps

In 1957, soldiers escorted nine black students now known as the “Little Rock Nine” past jeering white crowds to integrate Central High School. In a White House ceremony in November, William Clinton presented the nine — now adults — with the Congressional Gold Medal. “What they endured was a volcano of hatred,” said the Commander-in-Chief, as he extolled their bravery. “They walked out without being burned, but they have their scars.” (AP, Little Rock Nine Receive Congressional Gold Medals, Nov. 10, 1999.) The Gold Medal is the highest honor Congress can bestow. It was first presented to George Washington by a grateful nation for his leadership during the struggle for independence. Nelson Mandela is also a recipient.

Ah Behta Owme Fi Yuh Fambily

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is eager to tell everyone living in government housing projects about their rights and responsibilities. Many of these guests of the American people do not speak English, so over the summer HUD translated a pamphlet into nine languages and Braille. One of the languages was supposed to be Haitian Creole, which is an adulterated version of French, but the translation agency HUD hired got it wrong. What came back instead was a phonetic imitation of Jamaican English, with lines like “Yuh as a rezedent, ave di rights ahn di rispansabilities to elp mek yuh HUD-asisted owzing ah behta owme fi yuh ahn yuh fambily.” We learn, for example, that “HUD prowtekss di rights ahf di tenants, ahn tenants gauwd dem own right tru rispansible be’aviah.” The pamphlet is signed by HUD’s very own “Sekretary Andrew M. Cuomo fella.”

When the draft came back, HUD employee Silvia A. Miller passed it along to the Government Printing Office with a note: “To the best of my knowledge this appears to be a Haiti-type Creole. OK to print.” Five thousand copies then leapt from the presses, only to meet with laughter and derision when they were actually distributed. HUD has since withdrawn the pamphlet. Whether Ms. Miller is still in circulation is not known. Leonie Hermantin, executive director of the Haitian American Foundation in Miami, generously said she was happy the government was even thinking about Haitians. (Mildrade Cherfils, “Printers, not Linguists’ HUD Pamphlet a Phonetic Fumble, Boston Globe, Nov. 19, 1999.)

Blood-sucking Whites

An Ethiopian immigrant went on a rampage at work and shot two white co-workers, killing one of them, before turning the gun on himself. Negusse Zeleke was a shuttle-bus driver at the Kansas City airport, and had bounced from one job to another. In a three-page letter dated Nov. 5 he blamed his troubles on “black blood sucker supreme white people.” He wrote that problems for Africans “were created not by us, but they have created by previous colonies or today’s white supremacists evil act.” (Mo. Killer Complained of Racism, AP, Nov. 22, 1999.)

This is an unusual attitude for African immigrants. Most are disgusted by the excuse-making mentality of American blacks.

Friction in the Ranks

In 1997, the Armed Forces carried out a congressionally-mandated race relations survey of more than 40,000 service members. While 68 percent of whites said race relations were good to a “large/very large extent,” only 39 percent of blacks felt the same way. The results for other groups were Hispanics, 53 percent; Asians, 56 percent and American Indians, 54 percent. The numbers of soldiers who said relations were “not at all” good or good only to a “small/moderate extent:” 25 percent of whites, 51 percent of blacks, 37 percent of Hispanics, 35 percent of Asians, and 36 percent of American Indians.

The survey also asked about racially offensive behavior, threats or harm from other military personnel. A striking two-thirds said they had suffered anything from “insensitive language” to physical threats or violence: 63 percent of whites, 76 percent of blacks, 79 percent of Hispanics, 70 percent of Asians and 76 percent of Indians. When asked if opportunities for their race have gotten better or worse over the last five years, only 16 percent of whites thought things had improved. This compares with 39 percent of blacks, 47 percent of Hispanics, 50 percent of Asians and 41 percent of American Indians.

Results of this kind call into question the military’s reputation as the “model” for American race relations. In fact, the Pentagon held the data since February 1997, because it was embarrassed by the results. The report can be downloaded free of charge from www.defense link.mil. (Jacquelyn Scarville, Et. Al., Armed Forces Equal Opportunity Survey, Defense Manpower Data Center, 1999. Robert Suro and Michael A. Fletcher, 75 Percent of Military’s Minorities See Racism, Washington Post, November 23, 1999, p. A1.)

Liquid Assets

In Australia it is common to pay royalties to Aborigines for the use of tribal land. Over the past 20 years the Gagudju Association, which represents about 300 Aborigines in the Kakadu region, has taken in A$50 million (one Australian dollar equals 63 American cents) from uranium mining and hotels but the tribe has little to show for it . It remains one of the poorest in the country, living in tin shacks without hot water, and digging holes in the ground for toilets.

Where did the money go? The Gagud-ju Association still has A$4 million in the bank, but the rest has been frittered away, much of it on alcohol. Men in Kakadu drink an average of 284 gallons of beer a year, the equivalent 58 12-oz. cans every week, or more than a six-pack a day. This is ten times the national average.

These revelations have come at a time when mining interests are considering developing a second mine on Aboriginal land nearby, close to the present Ranger mine. Aboriginal advocates say a second mine should not be started because it would put millions of dollars into the hands of Aborigines. Jacqui Katona who speaks for the Mirrar people says the current mining royalties have done nothing but “impoverish a culturally rich Aboriginal society.” She says things would get only worse if yet another mine started paying royalties. “A steady process of cultural, social and economic reconstruction is the only way our community will recover from wounds inflicted by [the] Ranger [mining operation].” (Agence France-Presse, Millions in Mining Royalties Blown on Booze by Aboriginal Organisation, November 9, 1999.)

TB Comes to Dakota

From 1992 to 1997 the town of Lakota, North Dakota, and the surrounding two-county area had only two cases of tuberculosis. That changed in 1998 after a family in the area brought over a nine-year-old boy from the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific, where TB is common. Now 56 people in the town of 900 have been infected. They represent no fewer than one-fifth of all the people the boy had contact with in his rural community. They include 16 of his 24 classmates, 10 of the 32 children who rode his school bus, and nine of 61 children and adults at his day-care center. The case highlights the importance of medical screening for children adopted abroad. Since 1986, Americans have adopted more than 125,000 children from other countries. (Janet Mc-Con-naughey, Immigrant Child Takes Tuberculosis To Country Town, San Francisco Chronicle, November 11, 1999, p. A16. Child From Marshall Islands Passes TB to 56 North Dakotans, St. Paul Pioneer Press, November 11, 1999.)

‘Homeboy Gun Control’

A California shooting sports organization has proposed that a recent state law banning military-style weapons be renamed the Homeboy Gun Control Act of ’99 “to properly credit and recognize all the Hispanic and Black gangbangers (dead, alive, and imprisoned) who made the passage of this legislation possible.” It pointed out that in the four years, 1994 to 1997, non-whites committed no fewer than 86 percent of all handgun homicides, and that blacks and Hispanics were hugely overrepresented. The California Rifle and Pistol Association points out that “law-abiding Anglo gun owners” are paying the price for the criminal mayhem of others. (Craig Edwards, SB23 to be Renamed — AKA: “The Homeboy Gun Control Act of “99,” The Firing Line, Nov. 1999, p. 15.)

‘Beat Up Whites’

Black members of Zimbabwe’s parliament have called for therapeutic public beatings of whites as a cure for “racism.” Moses Mvenge, a former guerrilla and the ruling ZANU-PF’s chief whip in parliament, said “Time has come when instant justice must be meted out. I am not calling for the beating up of all whites but only those guilty of such (racist) acts.” “After all we are in the majority,” he added. “It must be an eye for an eye because as long as we don’t do this, they won’t stop. They must be beaten up on the spot.” Michael Mataure, another MP, told his applauding colleagues, “I think what our Rhodesians want is force. A racist must taste his or her own medicine.” “Rhodesian” is the derogatory term black Zimbabweans use for “racist” unreconstructed whites.

Seventy thousand whites account for fewer than two percent of the country’s population, and are now being blamed for the worst conditions to assail the country since white rule ended in 1980. Inflation is running at about 70 percent a year, government services are in shambles, and thousands of Zimbabweans die of AIDS every month. Robert Mugabe, who has ruled the country since 1980, is leading the anti-white crusade, threatening to confiscate white-owned farms without compensation if Britain — the former colonial power — does not hand over money for that purpose. (Cris Chinaka, Zimbabwe MPs Urge Blacks to Hit “Racist’ Whites, Reuters, Nov. 26, 1999. Anton La Guardia, Beat Whites, Zimbabwe Blacks Urged, Telegraph (London), Nov. 27, 1999.)

Anti-Gypsy Wall Comes Down

In last month’s “O Tempora” section we reported that the Czech town of Usti nad Labem had braved international criticism to build a wall separating Gypsy welfare housing from the private homes of nearby Czechs, who complained of noise, garbage, and general disorder. Now, under tremendous pressure from the national government and from international “human rights” organizations, Usti nad Labem has pulled the wall down. The European Union, which had cited discrimination against Gypsies as a serious obstacle to Czech admission, applauded removal of the block-long wall, but the one-worlders are not yet satisfied. They note that the town has set aside the equivalent of $100,000 to buy up the houses of Czechs who had complained the most about living close to Gypsies. (Petr Josek, Czech City Destroys Wall Separating Gypsies, Reuters, Nov. 24, 1999.)

Armenian Crooks

Armenian con-men in Los Angeles may have bilked the California Medicare system out of as much as $1 billion. Charges have been filed against 64 businesses, and 35 have already pleaded guilty. Nearly everyone charged is an Armenian immigrant. Quick learners, Armenians now say the investigation is a racist “witch hunt” and an example of “state terrorism.”

Lax rules made it easy for crooks to set up medical supply stores and then bill the state for prescriptions, crutches, wheelchairs, and adult diapers that never changed hands. Armenians who perfected the fraud taught relatives and friends, and phony medical supply stores began cropping up all over the city. Some operators were reportedly raking in as much as $500,000 a month. (Virginia Ellis & Joe Mozingo, Medi-Cal Fraud Probe Could Reach $1 Billion, LA Times, Nov. 29, 1999, p. A1.)

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ANNOUNCEMENT
Bruno Gollnisch

Bruno Gollnisch to Speak!

Jean-Marie Le Pen’s right-hand man and second-ranking officer in the French National Front has agreed to address the March-April AR conference. He will join an extraordinary line-up that already includes some of the most thoughtful and outspoken speakers in America on the issues that most affect our future.

Dr. Gollnisch is in charge of ideology and political campaign strategy for the National Front. For an eye-opening interview with this brilliant French patriot, see the Nov. 1998 issue of AR.

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Letters from readers
LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — Your readers may want to know about developments subsequent to the disruption of the Galton Institute conference that I wrote about in the previous issue. In the past, papers delivered at conferences have always been published, and over the years many distinguished scientists have contributed the keynote Galton Lecture. This year Arthur Jensen’s talk was to be honored with this designation, but he was unable to speak because of the disruption.

Shortly after the conference, the speakers got a short note from the institute saying that because of the unpleasantness in September the directors were reviewing their publication policy. The letter also noted that someone — who may or may not have been one of the rowdies who broke up the conference — was seen photographing the home of one of the directors. Sure enough, the speakers next received a letter that reads as follows:

At the November meeting of The Galton Institute Council it was decided that in view of the events of September 17th, 1999 it would not be possible to publish the usual proceedings of Conference. Council regrets any inconvenience this may cause.

This has been yet another sad capitulation in the face of intimidation.

Glayde Whitney, Tallahassee, Fla.

Sir — The Galton Report for December adds one more link to a virtually unbroken chain of thuggery on the part of leftist radicals who all too often succeed in disrupting any public gathering of conservatives. The script is played out again and again: The speaker is shouted down, a frightened audience disperses, and the rabble-rousers rack up another victory as local police stand idle.

The sympathetic bystander has to wonder why the speaker’s staff doesn’t deploy its own security people at strategic points, with orders to eject trouble-makers from the premises, much as judges post bailiffs during controversial trials. If the host for the event won’t agree to this reasonable strategy, find a venue that will. This would seem to make more sense than continually to concede the contest to a claque of spoiled brats.

O.M. Ostlund, State College, Pa.

Sir — Michael Masters is an excellent political analyst who really gets to the heart of the matter on race and politics. He is dead-on when he writes, “politics is war by other means — especially in today’s multicultural America.” Unfortunately, none of the third parties really represents the interests of white America, and most are composed of crackpots and losers. One immediately thinks of Ross Perot, and John Hagelin of the “Natural Law” party. Some, such as the Libertarians, have solid organizations and some good ideas but they have a blind spot on race and rarely get more than one percent of the vote. The same goes for Howard Phillips and the Constitution party.

Since the GOP is hopeless, we are left with Pat Buchanan. There is much to admire about Mr. Buchanan. He seems to be the only original thinker among the candidates and actually dares to take on the establishment on foreign policy and immigration. His syndicated column is often about race and he is not afraid to debate liberals. It’s unfortunate he is now meeting with Al Sharpton and Lenora Fulani. Both are anti-white demagogues and the less he has to do with them the better. The fact that Miss Fulani is on his staff is not encouraging. While I suppose most AR readers will vote for Mr. Buchanan, we should realize he is hardly the savior of our people but only the best of a bad lot.

Greg Helton, Charlottesville, Va.

Sir — I’m sure by now many readers have heard that the black ex-Marxist, Lenora Fulani, is now Patrick Buchanan’s campaign co-chairman. I was shocked and disgusted when I first heard this, but on reflection I have changed my mind. What Mr. Buchanan needs to do right now is win the nomination of the Reform Party, and whatever one may think of Miss Fulani, she apparently can help deliver the goods. Remember, politics is the art of the possible.

If Mr. Buchanan wins the nomination and gets his hands on that $13 million, I believe he could change the nature of the campaign. He would demand a place at the candidate debates and it would be hard for the other nominees to turn him down. Mr. Buchanan is a charming and impassioned debater who could make his opponents look like the stuffed shirts they obviously are. And by showing himself to be the sincere, committed patriot that he is, he would certainly make people think twice about all the recent charges against him. “This man is no Nazi,” I can hear people saying. “It’s the ones who say he is that can’t be trusted.” By then, Miss Fulani might be well in the background — after all, her position as campaign co-chairman is unpaid and essentially symbolic.

These are difficult times. It’s all very well to criticize from the sidelines, but total purity is a luxury no politician can afford. Remember, Mr. Buchanan is the only candidate who wants to slash immigration. He doesn’t have to change his tune on immigration just because he has lunch with Al Sharpton. And who knows, maybe Rev. Sharpton and Miss Fulani don’t want the country to go Mexican either. This (temporary?) alliance may turn out to have been a brilliant move. Pat Buchanan is still my man.

Fred Hooper, Mussel Shoals, Ala.

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