American Renaissance magazine
Vol 4, No. 11	November 1993

 

CONTENTS

The Rise of Islam in America
The Reality of Race
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

The Rise of Islam in America

Islam lies at a dangerous intersection between race and immigration.

by William Robertson Boggs

Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States. Partly through conversion but mainly through immigration, the number of Muslims has now risen to three or four million. At current rates of increase, there will be more Muslims than Presbyterians within the decade. Early in the next century their numbers may well grow past six million, at which point there will be more American Muslims than Jews.

Islam is not a religion that attracts whites. Although there may be as many as 1,500,000 native-born Americans who have converted to Islam they are, almost without exception, black. Heretofore, black Muslims and immigrant Muslims have had little to do with each other, but they are beginning to build alliances. Militant blacks and Middle-Eastern fundamentalists are discovering common ground, bound together in a religion that, in its extreme forms, strives to dominate all aspects of society.

For America’s first 153 years, there was not a single mosque on United States territory. The first was built in Ross, North Dakota, of all places, in 1929, to serve Lebanese and Syrian peddlers who had settled there. There are now more than 1,100 mosques in the United States — with at least one in nearly every state — and 80 percent were founded in the last 12 years.

The greatest concentrations of Muslims are in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In the Los Angeles area alone, there are 250,000 to 300,000 Muslims and about 50 Islamic centers. Within just the last few years, Muslims have established lobbying groups, magazines, student organizations, schools, social clubs, bookstores, and even marriage services. All that is lacking is an Islamic theological seminary, but one is likely to be built soon. Muslims are now a substantial and growing minority, which has already started making the demands that all non-white minorities inevitably make.

As the Immigration and Naturalization Service does not record the religions of new arrivals, there is no precise count of incoming Muslims. However, in 1991 alone there were more than 100,000 legal immigrants who were probably Muslim, from countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Bangladesh, Iran, and Lebanon. About half of the 8,000 immigrants from Nigeria were probably Muslim; the number of Islamic illegals is unknown.

The newcomers are beginning to flex their muscles. There are now Islamic chaplains in prisons and in the armed services, and in some locations special meals are prepared for Muslims. Although there are 165 full-time, private Muslim schools in America, the majority of Muslim children attend public schools. In Dearborn, Michigan, they account for 36 percent of the students and the lunch rooms serve no pork. Muslims have joined every other group in the country in scouring school books for “insensitivity” and “negative stereotypes.” They are a new and increasingly vocal element of our storied “diversity.”

Although Islam means “submission,” Muslims have quickly learned how to make the majority submit. Two years ago, Fairfax County, Virginia gave an Islamic group permission to build a temple if it would also build a 90-car parking lot to accommodate worshipers. However, instead of the 100 or so that the lot could handle, weekly services attract as many as a thousand. Every Friday afternoon, Muslims block neighboring driveways, trample back yards, and clog streets. The complaining residents have, of course, been called bigots and racists, and the county authorities are afraid to take action for fear of being called the same thing.

Black Muslims

Islam got its first start among American blacks in the 1930s when Allah appeared in Detroit in the person of W. Fard Muhammad. Mr. Muhammad unaccountably vanished without a trace in 1934, but in the meantime he passed on his message to Elijah Muhammad, who ran the Nation of Islam for 40 years, until his death in 1975. Immigrant Muslims scoff at the story of the Chicago apparition since mainstream Islam holds that the real Prophet hailed from Mecca and did not go by the name of Fard.

Another point on which American Islam differs from the imported version is its racial theology. Blacks were the original race of men, but 6,000 years ago, a mad scientist named Yacub invented whites to be a curse upon the black man. Whites, known as white devils, are therefore the source of all evil and hardship, and it is whites who promote AIDS and pump black neighborhoods full of drugs and guns. The original goal of the Nation was full, political separation, which was seen as the only way to escape the toils of the white devil.

After he took over the Nation of Islam upon his father’s death, Warith Deen Mohammad began to down play the Yacub story and, in what is known as “the change,” began to lead the flock towards a more conventional, non-racial brand of Sunni Islam. Nearly 20 years later, it is still a struggle for Mr. Mohammad to convince blacks that Islam is “a religion for all.” “Too many people are holding on to the old ways,” he explains. Nevertheless, his branch, which is no longer called the Nation of Islam, is thought to have anywhere from 100,000 to 250,000 members.

Lately, Mr. Mohammad has gone startlingly mainstream. He votes Republican in presidential elections and supported George Bush over Bill Clinton because he thinks welfare keeps blacks poor. He may well speak for a quarter of a million blacks and is happy to talk to the press, but the media do not care for his politics.

After Mr. Mohammad’s move towards Sunni Islam, the Saudis quietly began to support him. They have donated most of the $8.5 million for a brand new mosque for his followers in South-Central Los Angeles and have promised at least five more mosques in other parts of the country. Mr. Mohammad is now thoroughly respectable; last year, he became the first imam ever to give the invocation before the United States Senate.

Mainstream black Muslims show up in other unlikely places. Kountze, Texas, has only two Muslim families and 70 percent of its 2,700 residents are white, but it has a black Muslim mayor.

Louis Farrahkan founded his Nation of Islam in 1978, in opposition to the tame teachings of the younger Mr. Mohammad. His group retains the whites-as-devils theology and Mr. Farrahkan is now America’s best known advocate of black separatism. Although his group is much smaller than Mr. Mohammad’s — last count was something around 20,000 — he is far better known because of his uncompromising anti-white stance and because of his famous remark that Judaism is a “gutter religion.” The media treat him almost as venomously as they treat David Duke.

His is, however, one of the fastest-growing Islamic groups in the country, and his racial message has a special appeal for young blacks. Many convicts convert to Islam while in prison, and they favor Mr. Farrahkan’s anti-white version of the faith. On the outside, blacks like Islam because they think it is African (which it is not), as opposed to Christianity, which they think is a white religion (wrong again). They also think it is more appealingly aggressive than homilies about blessing the meek and turning the other cheek.

Today there are at least two other groups besides Mr. Farrahkan’s that claim to be the true Nation of Islam: a small band in Detroit and a slightly larger group in Atlanta. In addition, there are any number of black Islamic splinter groups with names like the Five Percenters and the Moorish Science Temple.

The former Black Panther, H. Rap Brown, has changed his name to Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin and runs yet another sect, which is based in Atlanta and has followers in 30 different cities. Mr. Al-Amin’s headquarters overlook a basketball court, where the imam shoots baskets and wins converts. “We make them believers right here,” he explains; “we play the best ball around.”

There is continuing tension between different groups of black Muslims. It is worth recalling that although current myth holds that Malcolm X was killed because of white machinations, his assassins were followers of Elijah Mohammad who thought Mr. X was a dangerous deviate. Today, there is friction between those who say they are black first and Muslim second, and those who say the reverse. Some black Muslims say they love America and others say they hate it.

One of the potentially most dangerous black Muslim groups is called Fuqra, the Arabic word for poverty. It is thought to have 1,000 to 3,000 members and is based in Brooklyn. The group was reportedly established by a Pakistani sheik in 1982, and members are sometimes sent to Pakistan for military training. Fuqra also operates several camps in the United States, including a 55-acre property in Deposit, New York.

Fuqra’s targets reflect its Pakistani connections. It has tried to kill Hindus, Hare Krishna members, and Indians, as well as Israelis and other Muslims for whom it develops a dislike. Four Fuqra members will soon go on trial in Canada for conspiring to bomb a Hindu temple and movie theater.

Fuqra appears to be the black Muslim connection to Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the outlaw Egyptian cleric who was finally indicted in connection with the February bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City and the foiled plot to bomb the city’s important transportation links. Mr. Abdel-Rahman has bands of followers to whom he preached in mosques in Brooklyn and in Jersey City, New Jersey. He also has ardent admirers in Egypt, seven of whom were hanged in Cairo in July for attacking foreign tourists and for conspiring to overthrow the Egyptian government. The sheik has been in jail since July, ever since a federal judge ruled that Mr. Abdel-Rahman lied to enter the United States a decade ago.

In an up-to-date display of multiculturalism, the crew that has been indicted for the mayhem in New York City includes Sudanese, Egyptians, Jordanians, Pakistanis, Palestinians and several black Americans. One of the latter, Clement Rodney Hampton-El, is said to have close ties with Fuqra. At least for the most devout, Islam seems to come before race or nationality.

It may never be entirely clear who is connected to whom or why these lads wanted to blow up the George Washington Bridge and bomb the Holland Tunnel. But what should be clear to even the most obtuse is that the sheik and his friends should never have been let into the country. Even jaded America-watchers must have been shaken by the television coverage of the mobs who came out to shout support for the sheik when he went to prison; the screen was filled with head-dressed Middle-Easterners for as far as the eye could see, in what could have been a scene from Baghdad or the Gaza Strip. What are all these foreigners doing in this country?

Islam, in its various forms, lies at the intersection of America’s two most dogma-laden and self-destructive policies: immigration and race relations. It was the purest idiocy to have imported crowds of swarthy fanatics who are prepared to kill each other — and us — over obscure conflicts in the Levant. Had no one noticed that Middle-Easterners fight out their unsettled feuds not only in their own countries but in Europe as well? To have imported fanatics who worship the same god as the black Muslims was idiocy on stilts.

In any case, we now have an immigrant group with a well-established history of suicide bomb attacks that has a faith in common with our most lawless racial minority. The one group we have taught to hate us with our Middle East policy; the other by constantly blaming their failures on white people. To be sure, black Muslims have generally been models of sobriety and restraint. Nevertheless, several of them clearly fell under Sheik Abdel-Rahman’s spell, and the Pakistani who founded Fuqra intends for his men to do more than pray and wear bow ties.

With or without black Muslims, Islam is a rum import. The Europeans seem to have forgotten the events that led up to the battle of Tours in 732 A.D., where the forces of The Prophet were led by a general with an almost familiar name: Abd-er-Rahman. Islam then had a markedly imperialist quality, which it is now reviving. No longer held in check by a firm, Western will, it is pushing into the territory denied it by Charles Martel.

Arab Muslims have congregated in France, where clerics have been known to say, “There can be no government contrary to what God has revealed in the Koran;” or to urge the faithful “to overthrow every power which governs in contravention of that which God enjoins and to bring about the erection of the Islamic state.” Let us hope the French are listening.

The British had better be wide awake, too. Some Pakistani and Indian Muslims are openly calling for revolution. One preached the following statement from a mosque in Bradford, England: “The implementation of Islam as a complete code of life cannot be limited to the home and to personal relationships. It is to be sought and achieved in society as a whole.” Another British imam says that Islam “could not properly be reduced to merely an item of personal piety in the private sector.” And let us not forget that the latest death sentence handed down for blasphemy was punishment for an alleged slight against The Prophet.

Far be it from us to tell Arabs or Persians or Pakistanis how to live or what to believe. Conservative Islam holds much promise for men whose lives and cultures have been blighted by Western vulgarity. Many earnest people seek in Islam a refuge from license and materialism. However, as Europeans are discovering and as we eventually will, Islam is hungry for converts and power. Even worse, in the United States it is poised to join forces with an unstable and violent racial minority. Islam can bring us only trouble. We have every right and every reason to insist that Muslims stay in their own countries.

David Koresh and his followers did nothing nearly so menacing as bomb public buildings or preach the overthrow of secular government. There is some question as to whether they did anything wrong at all; yet they were besieged by the government and died in flames. It is difficult not to note the contrast between the way they were treated and the gentlemanly handling of Sheik Abdel-Rahman’s gang of murderers. Islamic criminals shelter behind the twin madnesses in the name of which the United States is destroying itself: race and immigration. Whites cannot.

SIDEBAR Food for Thought How to Eat to Live is a book on diet distributed by the Nation of Islam. According to the cover, it is “from God in person, Master Fard Muhammad, by Elijah Muhammad, Messenger of Allah.” Here are a few excerpts: Under this white race of people, we were not taught how to eat to live. They, the white devils, are not here to teach us, the Lost and Found members of the Aboriginal Nation, to live a long life. They were put here to cut short our lives, and for the last 6,000 years they have done so. If you want a beautiful appearance, eat the proper food and eat one meal a day. When you are used to eating one meal a day, then eat one meal every other day. Your children may be able to eat two meals per week. This will put them into centuries as Noah and Methuselah. Before the white man was made, the Black man was known to live approximately a thousand years. He ate the right food and ate it at the right time. A doom is set for the whole race of them [whites] and you will share their doom with them if you follow eating and drinking intoxicating drinks just because you see them doing such things and going nude in the [sic] public (women with dresses above their knees and men wearing just trunks in public). YOU ARE FOLLOWING one of the filthiest things that even an animal wouldn’t follow, by doing such things. White people do this to tempt you to do the same so that you can share hell fire with them. Your sweethearting and wanting to marry them [whites] is like a frog trying to court a rattlesnake . . . Socializing with them is no sign of justice, but a sign that they have deceived you into going to hell with them.

BOOK REVIEW

The Reality of Race

An eminent biologist’s classic analysis of the forbidden subject.

Race, Foundation for Human Understanding, John R. Baker, (original publisher: Oxford University Press), 1974, 625 pp., $25.00.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

Race, by John Baker, is a remarkable book. There is probably no other treatment of the biology and physical anthropology of race that approaches it in breadth, detail, erudition or style. Even more remarkable is the book’s point of view. Far from evading the issue of racial differences in ability, it was written for the very purpose of investigating and clarifying those differences.

Dr. Baker, now deceased, was the ideal author for this book. He was professor emeritus of cytology at Oxford University, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and president of the Royal Microscopical Society. To these professional qualifications he added an abiding interest in what he called the “ethnic question,” that is to say, the entire range of ways in which the races differ.

Written late in life, Race is Dr. Baker’s definitive statement on what he considered one of the most important issues of our time. From start to finish the book is stuffed with little-known, eye-opening facts, and it is fascinating, even essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in race. It is supplemented with more than 80 illustrations, and some of the simpler line drawings are reproduced here.

Race is organized in four parts. The first is a summary of what was thought and freely written about racial differences up through the end of the 1920s when, as Dr. Baker puts it, “the curtain came down” on open discussion. The second is an introduction to the biology of taxonomy or classification, including a thorough treatment of how races and species are identified. The third is a detailed inventory of the biological differences that distinguish the major races and subraces. In this section Dr. Baker makes a particular study of whites, or Europids as he calls them, and of Africans (Negrids), Bushmen (Sanids), Australian aborigines (Australids), Celts, and Jews. In the final section, Dr. Baker sets out what he considers to be the essential criteria for determining what he bluntly calls superiority and inferiority. Not surprisingly, his conclusions are at odds with current dogma.

Dr. Baker’s historical account of what has been written about ethnic differences includes introductions to a number of people one might well expect, such as the Comte de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Nietzsche, Francis Galton, and even Hitler. Dr. Baker also describes the pioneering but no longer recognized work of men such as Johann Blumenbach (1752-1840) and Samuel Sömmerring (1755-1830).

Other famous men have pronounced themselves on the question of racial differences and, until recently, few have had any sympathy for the notion of equality. Rousseau, for example, thought the chimpanzee was a primitive form of human being, and Kant, Voltaire, and Hume thought the Negro vastly inferior to the European. Dr. Baker reminds us that even the Bible is hardly silent on the ethnic problem. The Children of Israel routinely exterminated enemies, whom they considered inferior, and in the tenth book of Joshua, they enslaved the entire Hivite people.

The Proper Study of Mankind

In the more technical sections that follow, Dr. Baker draws on his scientific training to treat homo sapiens as just one more member of the animal kingdom. “No one knows man who knows only man,” he observes, and adds: “One might almost go so far as to say, in relation to the ethnic problem, that the proper study of mankind is animals.” By this he means that without a thorough grounding in biology and taxonomy it is impossible to view man with the detachment that science requires.

Dr. Baker writes, he explains, in the spirit that inspired T.H. Huxley to conclude that “Anthropology is a section of zoology [and] . . . the problems of ethnology are simply those which are presented to the zoologist by every widely distributed animal he studies.” In this, Dr. Baker is out of step with many contemporary social scientists who seem to believe that humans are uniquely exempt from the laws of heredity and from the kind of scrutiny to which all other animals are subject.

Dr. Baker leads us firmly back to biology with an account of how evolution gave rise to different species, how species are classified, the nature of hybridity, and the circumstances under which animals can be made to mate with differing species. Anthropology indeed becomes a branch of zoology. However, in this discussion it becomes clear that man differs from animals in at least one important way: humans are exceedingly unselective in their mating habits and will copulate with individuals — across racial lines, for example — from whom they are physically very different.

The contrast with the seven kinds of European mosquito, for example, could not be greater. Their eggs can be distinguished because of slight differences, but adults are so similar that not even experts can tell them apart under a microscope. What experts cannot do, the mosquitoes do without fail; they never interbreed.

Dr. Baker likewise reports that Grant’s gazelle and Thompson’s gazelle live together in mixed herds and are so similar in appearance that it takes a trained eye to tell them apart. They, too, never interbreed. It is only under domestication that animals can be made to overcome their repugnance for mates unlike themselves and thus produce mules or leopons (a cross between tiger and leopard). Domesticated dogs breed indiscriminately with widely different types but wild dogs like wolves, foxes, and coyotes breed only with their own kind.

Man is the most domesticated of animals and the least exclusive in his amours — but his promiscuity varies enormously by group and individual. As Dr. Baker points out, the Indian caste system successfully prevented interbreeding even among racially similar people. At the same time, there are individuals whose lust for animals is so great that bestiality has had to be specifically forbidden ever since Biblical times.

The races and sub-races of man have evolved largely because of geographical separation, but Dr. Baker also refers to what he calls “ecological races” that evolved to fill different but overlapping niches. The small stature of African pygmies, for example, fits them to forest life while the larger Negrids live in clearings.

If humans had continued to evolve in isolation or if they were as discriminating as animals in their choice of mates, racial differences would eventually lead to mutually infertile species. This would be diversity of a truly remarkable kind.

Domestication and travel have led to increasing miscegenation, but Dr. Baker speculates about another possible reason. The skulls of our remote ancestors show that their olfactory organs were much better developed than ours. It is also likely that ancient man had stronger odors than does modern man, and since our ancestors’ mating habits were probably governed by smell just like those of animals, this discouraged mating with unfamiliar peoples. Even today the races have different odors.

Dr. Baker notes drily that although modern man is scrupulous in selecting only the most promising breeding couples among his domestic animals, he almost never gives the same attention to his own reproduction. “It follows,” he adds, “that we cannot look for any advance in inborn intelligence . . .”

Race and Color

Dr. Baker writes at some length about skin color, but only because race and color are sometimes confused. He himself thinks the subject is trivial and, in fact, since at least Darwin’s time scientists have recognized that color is unimportant in distinguishing biological forms. Dr. Baker points out that to make color the touch stone of race is as stupid as to think that a red rose is more closely related to a red petunia than to a white rose.

Australian aborigines are similar in color to Bushmen, for example, but it would be difficult to think of two racial groups that are more dissimilar biologically. Likewise, Dr. Baker explains that some of the inhabitants of northern India have relatively dark skin but are racially very close to Europids.

Skin color is affected by the color of blood that may be visible through it, but the main reason for variations in skin color is the presence of different amounts of the pigment melanin. All humans make the same melanin and have much the same number of melanocytes — the difference is in how much melanin is produced. The darkest Africans have visible concentrations of melanin even in the whites of their eyes and on their tongues. Melanin colors hair as well as skin, though it is the presence of a slightly different substance, called phaeomelanin, that causes “red” hair.

Dr. Baker explains that blue eyes are not caused by a blue pigment but by the absence of pigment. Eyes appear to be blue for the same reason the edges of a snow bank may appear blue: red light and other long wave lengths pass through but shorter, bluer wave lengths are refracted and scattered, and some are reflected back towards the viewer.

Light-skinned people are probably descended from dark-skinned people who migrated from the tropics. The skin of Europeans transmits three and a half times as much sunlight as the skin of Africans, and the ultraviolet rays convert ergosterol in the body into vitamin D. Dark-skinned people, whose skins are adapted to sunnier latitudes, may therefore get rickets — a vitamin D deficiency — if they live in cold climates.

The third section of Race, in which Dr. Baker describes the myriad ways in which the races differ from each other physically is the most technical. It includes general descriptions of blood chemistry, physiology and skeletal structure, with a special emphasis on the characteristics of the skull. It introduces concepts like brachycephaly, paedomorphism, and the cranial index.

It is useful for the reader to have had some training in physiology but it is not necessary. Even the most technical passages can usually be understood by a non-specialist who has paid close attention to earlier explanations, and Dr. Baker has set his most abstruse observations in smaller type as a signal to laymen that they may skip over them without much loss.

A certain level of scientific detail is necessary here not merely because physiological differences between the races require a certain vocabulary. In this section Dr. Baker is at pains to explain the extent to which some races show the traits of primitiveness — the retention into the modern era of features possessed by our remote ancestors — and paedomorphy — the retention as adults of traits commonly associated with children.

For example, it is indisputable that Australids are more primitive than other races. Like Pithecanthropus, their teeth and lower jaws are strikingly large, and their skulls are twice as thick as those of any other race. The forehead recedes sharply, and the brow ridges are so well developed as to be reminiscent of Pithecanthropus and of the larger apes. The brain is only about 85 percent the size of that of Europids and the back part has lunate folds not found in other races but similar to those in the brains of orang-utans. Likewise, the nasal aperture is similar, in some respects, to that of the orang-utan.

The Bushmen, or Sanids, show equally remarkable evidence of paedomorphy. Their very small size — males are often no taller than 4’7” or 4’9” — is the most obviously juvenile characteristic retained by adults. Their skulls are notably short and squat like those of a Europid infant and their eyes are set wide apart like a new-born’s. The facial and body hair of both sexes is very weakly developed and reminiscent of children. Among males, the scrotum is like that of a pre-adolescent: so small and tightly drawn up that one might think only one testicle had descended.

As for Negrids, aside from a brain that is very slightly smaller than that of Europids and Sinids (North Asians), Dr. Baker finds no characteristics that could be called either primitive or paedomorphous. Negrids differ in blood chemistry from other races, and have broader shoulders and thinner calves. Certain tribes, such as the Hottentot, show extreme steatopygia or enlarged buttocks. In some cases the posterior extends horizontally, almost like a shelf.

Francis Galton, who travelled among the Hottentot in 1850 and 1851, wrote of one such woman that he was “perfectly aghast at her development.” He wanted to measure her dimensions but could not bring himself to ask her permission to do so. Instead, he took observations through his sextant and, he says, “worked out the results by trigonometry and logarithms.”

Equal or Unequal?

The question of whether Africans are, on average, equal in intelligence to whites is important both in the United States and in Britain. Dr. Baker therefore devotes considerable space to 19th-century accounts of African societies before they came into sustained contact with foreigners. This is the only sure way to know how far they had been able to advance without outside influence.

Every explorer found a remarkable poverty of development. No black African society had a written language or a calendar. None used the wheel or practiced joinery or built multi-story buildings. Iron smelting was common but no black Africans built what could be called a mechanical device, even one so simple as a hinge. Africans apparently tamed no animals themselves but received already-domesticated dogs and cattle from north of the Sahara. None used any beast of burden, despite the presence of large mammals that could have been tamed.

Although African societies are today described as having rich oral histories, this was by no means universal. A few tribes did have men who could recite the histories of their kings, but many were completely ignorant of the past. The Ovaherero tribe, for example, kept no count of years at all.

Slavery and polygamy were widespread. Arbitrary execution of subjects by rulers or wives by husbands was common. A few tribes ate human flesh though even some of their own members seem to have rejected this custom. Some coastal natives, seeing slaves being fed before being loaded onto ships for export, believed that Europeans intended to eat them.

Some people have argued that the reason Africans showed such poor development was that the effort to maintain life was too great to permit the leisure for advancement. On the contrary, the missionary and explorer, David Livingstone, found that some parts of the continent were a veritable paradise:

To one who has observed the hard toil of the poor in old civilized countries, the state in which the inhabitants here live is one of glorious ease . . . Food abounds, and very little labour is required for its cultivation; the soil is so rich that no manure is required.

Although Dr. Baker does not pursue this idea very far, he suggests that it was the very ease of life in Africa that kept high intelligence from being as necessary for survival as it was in harsher climates.

In the concluding section of Race, Dr. Baker draws the only conclusions that the data will permit: Just as they differ in biology, the races differ in their mental traits. They are not equally intelligent or capable of building civilized societies. Dr. Baker reviews the literature on mental testing and on the heritability of intelligence and finds that it only confirms his conclusions.

After setting out an interesting set of criteria for genuine civilization he finds that the first people to achieve it were the Sumerians of the fourth millennium B.C. Physically, it is likely that they were more closely related to the Kurds than to any other present people. Europids and Sinids have also created genuine civilizations, but Negrids and Australids have not.

Dr. Baker puts the Maya of Central America in a category of their own. Their astronomy and mathematics were extremely advanced and were at one time the most sophisticated in the world. They built great cities and administered large territories. However, Dr. Baker hesitates to call them genuinely civilized for several reasons: they did not use the wheel or use commercial weights, their written language was poorly developed and their religion was a mass of superstitions that were often the basis for torture, human sacrifice, and mass slaughter.

A Mountain of Evidence

Race is a veritable mountain of evidence, all of which can lead only to the conclusion that the races differ in ability. Nevertheless, Dr. Baker is strictly the scientist. He draws no further conclusions and makes no suggestions about social policy. There is no doubt in his mind that current orthodoxy on this subject is absurd, but he limits his exegesis to the interpretation of data.

In its realm, however, Race is a magisterial work to which justice cannot be done in a review. It is probably the single most ambitious and comprehensive volume on the subject ever attempted, and is surely without peer in its treatment of the physical differences that distinguish races. It is not an easy book — Dr. Baker does not address himself to dullards or dilettantes — but in these blighted times it is a stroke of astonishing good fortune that a man of his immense learning and ability should have chosen to take up a position on the unpopular but truthful side of “the ethnic problem.”

Oxford University Press, which first published Race, soon came to consider it an embarrassment and let it go out of print. It has been reprinted by the Foundation for Human Understanding, Box 5712, Athens, GA 30604. The price is $25.00 plus $3.00 for shipping.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

The Wages of Liberalism

In August, 26-year-old Amy Biehl was killed by a mob of South African blacks, making her the first known American victim of race murder in that country. Miss Biehl was in South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship after having become interested in Africa while at Stanford University. She had been spending a lot of time in the black slums around Cape Town, as part of her effort to “fight oppression.”

On the day she was murdered — just a few days before she was to return to the United States — she was driving three black friends back to their homes. Young black thugs stopped the car, pulled her from it, and hit her in the face with a brick. She broke away but was caught and stabbed repeatedly in the head. The presence of three black women in the car with her was no protection and the blacks were unharmed. One of the thugs explained that they had attacked Miss Biehl because she was white.

Tsietsi Telite, chairman of the Pan-Africanist student wing was calm about the killing: “The youths and students are so angry and frustrated that when they see someone who they identify with the dispossessing classes, anything can happen, and could happen again.” [Bill Keller, South African strife claims American life, Miami Herald, 8/27/93, p. 9A. Davan Maharaj, U.S. Student Killed by a mob in South Africa, LA Times, 8/26/93, p. 3.]

Amy Biehl’s death is a perfect example of liberalism’s effect on its intended beneficiaries: Far from showing gratitude, the “oppressed” respond with hatred. It is the same in South Africa as in the United States.

The Wages of Ignorance

For the last ten years, the black-white gap in student test scores in Pulaski County, Arkansas has remained unchanged. White eighth graders, for example, are in the 74th percentile on national tests while black eighth graders are in the 32nd percentile. School administrators are baffled by this persistent gap because these children have been attending integrated schools all their lives.

Pulaski County has a financial interest in narrowing the gap in test scores. If, by the year 2000, it can reduce the difference so that the average black score is 90 percent of the average white score, the district will not have to pay back $20 million it borrowed from the state to pay for integration. [Danny Shameer, Black-white test score gap lingers after decade, Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock), 8/19/93, p. 1A.]

It would be hard to think of a more perverse incentive based on greater ignorance. Any reputable geneticist could explain to the school district that the gap can be narrowed only if white scores drop. For $20 million, Pulaski County has a strong temptation to teach white students as little as possible, so that they, too, will score in the 34th percentile.

Filing for Dollars

In 1988, a storage tank collapsed and spilled diesel fuel into the Ohio River. Ashland Oil was sued because of the accident, which was well reported in cities down stream. One of those cities was Louisville, Ky., where the accident continues to reverberate in unexpected ways.

A group of black con artists has been distributing forms to blacks, explaining that anyone who files one will get $3,000 in compensation for “water contamination” caused by the fuel spill. There is a $2.00-per-form “notary fee” for filing the forms. Hundreds of blacks heard about the deal and swarmed into makeshift offices to fill in forms. Many paid for forms for everyone in their families.

The con artists told customers that white people would not be allowed to file, and that this was part of a special effort to make sure that blacks got what they deserved. This not only appears to have made the fraud more attractive to blacks, but ensured that it could go on longer without whites — and the authorities — hearing about it.

Hundreds of Louisville blacks signed up for a similar fraud in late 1989. At that time the supposed payoff was to be $7,000. [Andrew Melnykovych and mark McCormick, Apparent scam plays of lawsuit, targets blacks, Louisville Courier-Journal, 4/24/93, p. A7.]

Say, Mon, Wahs Dat Flag?

David Lawrence is publisher of the Miami Herald, and is typical of whites who have somehow convinced themselves that the displacement of people like themselves is a fine thing. In an August 8 editorial he wrote about how wonderful it is that the Miami city council recently voted to allow official city business to be conducted in Spanish:

This country’s future, previewed in South Florida, is a future of many colors, many faiths, a variety of tongues.

We can serve as example to America . . . What is happening in Dade County is happening, albeit more slowly, in Florida and elsewhere in these United States. Those who see this as an opportunity, who see this as the Great American Adventure will be the best prepared for a good future.

He goes on to say that he looks forward to hearing the Star Spangled Banner sung in Spanish and Haitian creole. [David Lawrence, Miami, yes, is very much in this country, Miami Herald, 8/8/93, p. 3C.]

Strange Fruit

“Dark Fruit” is the name of a stage show put on by a group called the Pomo Afro Homos, a trio of black homosexual “performance artists.” According to the New York Times, “Dark Fruit” is “a collection of six satirically-edged sketches and monologues about black homosexual life and the myths and attitudes around it.” Apparently, this is a subject of considerable interest in New York City; the Pomo Afro Homos have been performing at Lincoln Center. [Stephen Holden, black, homosexual performance artists use Dark Fruit to hone their cutting edge, Chicago Tribune, 7/29/93, p. 12.]

White Madness

Warren, Michigan used to have a requirement that all city employees live within the city limits. This used to be common all over the country, since off-duty police and firemen can respond more quickly to emergencies and because employees work more diligently for the city in which they live.

In 1986, the United States government brought suit against Warren, claiming that since only one percent of the city’s population was black, the residency requirement was a disguised form of racial discrimination. This summer, the newspapers in the Detroit area have been filled with ads paid for by the city, promising compensation for victims of this terrible form of “discrimination.”

The ads even solicit claims from blacks who would have applied for a job with the city but did not because they knew about the residency requirement. How is the city going to disprove such claims? Needless to say, whites who did not apply for jobs for the same reason cannot file claims. [Notice to potential victims of discrimination, Detroit News, July 30, 1993.]

Dog Days in Brooklyn

Before its population changed, Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay was a thriving pleasure quarter and tourist trap. One of its landmarks was a restaurant called Lundy’s, which shut down in 1979. Two years ago, the city started trying to revive Sheepshead Bay, but since Lundy’s could not be persuaded to reopen, the authorities decided to commission an artist named Audrey Sackstein to paint a happy restaurant scene on the outside of the building. (These days, a painting of peace and prosperity is thought to be almost as good as the real thing.)

Miss Sackstein duly painted a 7-foot by 8-foot tableau of Lundy’s in the 1950s. All the waiters and diners were white, since she assumed that would have been the case in the 1950s. Later she learned that Lundy’s hired only black waiters so she corrected her painting. This, of course, offended local blacks, who claimed that it was demeaning to portray blacks only as menials. At the urging of the project coordinator, Peter Romero, she abandoned historical accuracy and painted in a few black diners and white waiters.

This did not satisfy the local blacks, who smeared tar over the faces of some of the white diners. Miss Sackstein then decided to end the controversy by turning all the people in her mural into dogs, on the assumption that “everyone likes dogs.” Mr. Romero objected. Believe it or not, he was afraid that anyone who had seen the original would think that the change was meant to convey the idea that blacks are akin to dogs. He ordered Miss Sackstein to turn all the dogs back into people with a “proportional share” of blacks.

Miss Sackstein, god bless her, is standing firm. She refuses to change her painting and has threatened a law suit if anyone else does. [Art by the Numbers, NY Daily News, 8/7/93.]

Gifts from Uncle Sam

The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and the Centro Cultural de la Raza have jointly sponsored what they call a “public work of art.” “Artists” David Avalos, Elizabeth Sisco, and Louis Hock have been going to places around San Diego where illegal immigrants congregate, and then give away ten dollar bills to illegals. One of the artists said he was making a political and artistic statement about “the interaction of physical space with intellectual space and civic space.” The recipients are said to be surprised, confused, or suspicious. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) helped fund this masterwork.

Local congressman Randy Cunningham has demanded that the NEA stop the program immediately and ask for its money back. “I can scarcely imagine a more contemptuous use of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars,” he says. [Endowment gets heat over handouts as ‘art’, Chicago Tribune, 8/8 93, p. 12.]

Congressional Cover-up

Critics of the NEA recently set up an exhibit in the Capitol building of some of the other “art” that our government funds. They reasoned that if congressmen actually saw this rubbish they might think twice about paying for it. One of the featured exhibits was titled “Testicle Stretch with the Possibility of a Crushed Face.” House Speaker Tom Foley let the exhibit stay up no more than 15 minutes before he sent uniformed capitol police to close it down. It is worth recalling that people who oppose government-funded art are accused of censorship . . . [National Review, Aug. 23, 1993, p. 12.]

The Mayor Speaks His Mind

Mayor David Dinkins of New York City has been criticized in a recent report about his mishandling of riots in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn two years ago. Shortly after the critical report appeared, he said this on a black radio station:

I see a lot of brothers and sisters everywhere I go. I got to tell you, the reception I get . . . is so wonderful it sustains me. I don’t care what other folks are saying. When brothers and sisters come out and encourage me, it makes everything all right.

[The Mayor speaks his mind, New York Post, 7/27/93, p. 20.]

“Other folks,” dear reader, means you.

The Gang That Couldn’t Think Straight

Five Hasidic Jews, all dressed in traditional black garb, recently stopped at a gas station near Kenosha, Wisconsin. Three black men opened fire on them, wounding one of the Jews and a station attendant. The three told police they felt threatened by the Hasids, whom they claim they thought were KKK members. [Hasid shot as ‘KKKer’, N. Y. Post.]

Things That Go Splash in the Night

It has been widely reported that in New York City, young blacks have been terrorizing women in public swimming pools by tearing off their bathing suits and pawing them. It is less well known that young blacks break into the pools at night, after they are closed. The city has expressed official concern that unauthorized bathers may drown, but they have another complaint. In the morning, some of the pools are so full of broken beer bottles, dirt, and urine that they must be closed for cleaning. [Michael Marriott, the lure of splashes in the night, NY Times, 8/21/93, p. 21.]

People Problems

Time Magazine recently published a cover story on the use of guns by Omaha delinquents. Most of the article is about a young white criminal and it ends with a challenge to the city to lead the nation in stamping out juvenile violence.

Eddie Stanton is an Omaha man who has founded an organization called Mad Dads to oppose violence and drug-taking. The Omaha World Herald reports that after the Time article appeared, he held up a copy of the magazine at one of his meetings and said, “What I love about this article is that it tells the truth. It says this problem is all across our community . . . This is not a black, Hispanic problem. This is a city problem. This is a people problem.” [Laurie Niles, Stanton: Magazine issues challenge, Omaha World Herald, 7/29/93.]

On the same page of the same day’s Herald (July 28, 1993), is a story about juvenile arrest rates in Nebraska. Non-whites are arrested three times as often as whites and are four to five times more likely to be in jail. [Christine Laue, Minority Arrests Studied, Omaha World Herald, 7/29/93.]

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I have read your Sept.-Oct. cover story with great interest, and I can dispute neither its logic nor its facts. No matter how hard the busybodies try to force them together, most people of different races prefer to be apart.

What, then, is the solution for the United States? If, as you argue, it is a mistaken view of human nature to expect Americans (or anyone else) ever to ignore race, how should society accommodate itself to the correct view of human nature? How would the United States go about officially recognizing that the races are incompatible?

Up until the 1960s, the races were separated but treated unequally. Although it is now obligatory to assume that what is separate is inherently unequal, perhaps it is time this dogma was reexamined. North Carolina is separate from South Carolina, but the two states are “equal” in all the senses anyone cares about. Men and women use different wash rooms but no one complains about inequality of facilities. Logically, there is no reason why separate must be unequal.

If there were widespread acceptance in the United States of the ideas detailed in your article there would be a lively discussion of these questions. As it is, our country will continue to labor under illusions that are slowly destroying it.

Lance Cole, Providence, R.I.

Sir — I was not aware, as reported in your Sept.-Oct. issue, that 30 percent of blacks think AIDS may have been invented by the government in order to kill blacks. Our government has undertaken massive efforts on behalf of blacks and has launched innumerable campaigns to try to explain how AIDS is contracted and how it can be avoided. Any black who believes that this same government is trying to exterminate his race is simply not amenable to rational discussion. Surely, such a person will find evil and “racism” in anything that white people do, no matter how well intended.

Brenda Gathright, Florence, Ala.

Sir — I have read Prof. Hardin’s book, Living Within Limits, and it is just as clearly and persuasively argued as your reviewer says. Like race, population is a subject about which one need only say the most self-evident things in order to bring down torrents of liberal wrath. I mean no offense to Prof. Hardin, but his thesis is obvious: Population increase is a curse that could ultimately doom us all. I sometimes wonder if our era is the first in which it takes courage to state the obvious.

Michael Russoni, Boise, Idaho

Sir — The article by Gedahlia Braun in the Sept.-Oct. issue is one of the most astonishing things I have read in a long time. I consider myself a knowledgeable, undeceived person when it comes to race, but I did not know there were any systematic collections of interviews with former slaves. If the excerpts in Dr. Braun’s article are typical, I think I know why I have never heard of them. No one — not even the undeceived — would expect accounts of slavery by former slaves to be so touchingly positive. Even those who know very well that there are substantial mental differences between blacks and whites have been made to believe that slavery was barbaric. In some cases I suppose it was, but it is clear from the narratives Dr. Braun quotes that it was not always so. It makes one wonder: In some cases would slavery not be better than the squalor and barbarism that so many blacks have brought upon themselves?

Paul Kittering, Pensacola, Fla.

Sir — I have enclosed selections from the editorial page of two editions of our local newspaper, the Juneau Empire. The first is a soi-disant editorial on racism and the second is my response to it.

The letter to the editor was my first, and I must give credit for the ideas, format and tone of the letter to AR. I trust I didn’t misrepresent your views.

Please keep up your excellent work. It is my opinion that when the dust finally settles, AR will be remembered as one of the few periodicals to inspire ordinary people like myself to speak up on the taboo subject of race.

Richard Smiley, Juneau, Alaska

Sir — I am sorry that I cannot renew my subscription to American Renaissance — for several reasons.

I am 72 years old, blind in one eye and have limited vision in the other eye because of glaucoma and cataracts. I use a wheel chair, walker, and canes, and I must use my money to help poorer relatives.

However, I wish you well. You fill a badly-felt need.

Name Withheld, Columbia, S.C.

Sir — In your August issue you report that Winston Churchill (grandson of the famous one) has been publicly vilified but privately praised for criticizing non-white immigration to Britain. My experience in speaking out about race has always been the same. Therefore, AR readers, be bold. Ignore the loudmouths. Those who support you in private will eventually do so in public.

John Gunn, Toronto, Canada