American Renaissance magazine
Vol 5, No.10	October 1994

 

CONTENTS

The Chicago Police Exam
Book Review: Thinking the Unthinkable
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

The Chicago Police Exam

First Promotions Since the Abolition of Race Norming

Ninety-six percent of those who pass are white. Racial hysteria ensues.

by Marian Evans

The city of Chicago has spent the summer working itself into one of the finest racial frenzies in years. The heaving and frothing have been as stupid as they were inevitable but they have called attention to something very important: The city actually took a stand for sanity, despite the sustained braying of every black and Hispanic who could find a soap box.

Beneath the rococo frills that are always part of late-20th-century race relations, the story is really quite simple. After years of blatant racial preferences in the hiring and promotion of police officers, the city of Chicago finally gave a test for police sergeant that was fair. And it stuck to the results.

It is no easy job, devising a fair test that can weather the charges of racism when whites, as they invariably do, outperform non-whites. The administration of Mayor Richard Daley therefore went to astonishing lengths to ensure that the 1994 sergeant test was beyond reproach. First, it took the entire procedure of test-making and administration out of the hands of the police and the politicians so as to avoid any possibility of favoritism. At a cost of well over $5 million, the city hired a top-flight consulting firm, Barrett and Associates, to devise the test, and the accounting firm of Arthur Anderson to administer it.

The consultants interviewed 124 Chicago sergeants — 46 of them non-white — as part of their project to devise the fairest, most objective test possible. Once it was complete, Arthur Anderson treated the test papers like plutonium. All employees involved with the project had to sign sworn confidentiality agreements and to affirm, under penalty of perjury, that they had no relatives on the Chicago police force. Advance copies of the test were kept in a secured cage in a secret warehouse, under 24-hour guard.

To make sure that no one got a head start on preparation, Chicago police were all told on the same day when the test would be and exactly what it would cover. Four thousand seven hundred candidates took the test.

The results, announced on July 22nd, would not have been much different if the city had asked the Ku Klux Klan to grade the tests: 96 percent of the 114 top scorers, eligible for immediate promotion, were white. There were two Hispanics in the top group and three blacks, two of whom were women.

The last time Chicago minted new sergeants was in 1985. Then, of the 458 promoted, 26 percent were black and nine percent were Hispanic. That year, as in previous years, scores were “race-normed” to ensure that non-whites were promoted in proportion to their numbers on the force. Race norming appears to have improved the chances of black promotion ten-fold: 26 percent in 1985 as opposed to 2.6 percent in 1994.

Righteous Indignation

This time, of course, blacks worked themselves into a fury of righteous indignation. One alderman, John Steele, unbosomed this carefully-considered opinion:

They [the promotions] are done on who you know and not what you know. People are controlled by people who are not minorities, and they look out for themselves and kick minorities to the curb.

“It’s business as usual,” said Patricia Hill, president of the African-American Police League; “The objective is ultimately to eliminate African Americans from any positions of decision-making on the job.” She also explained that blacks had failed the test because the questions were from “a white world.” One black lady police officer said she had not even bothered to take the test because “I know the odds are stacked against me.”

A black Chicago congressman, Bobby Rush, accused the Daley administration and the police department of “flagrantly and shamelessly” practicing racial discrimination. Black senator Carol Moseley-Braun joined another black congressman, Mel Reynolds, (as well as a white senator, Paul Simon) in urging the city to find some other way to promote officers. Hispanic aldermen accused Mayor Daley of breaking his promise to hire more non-whites, and complained about unspecified “cultural impediments” in the test. Some black aldermen accused the white officers of cheating, or of getting advance copies of the test. Alderman Ed Smith called for lie detector tests for Arthur Anderson employees to see if any had leaked the questions to whites.

The Puerto Rican Police Association denounced the test, as did the Mexican American Police Organization. The Chicago chapter of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives demanded that the city find an alternative to the “unfair” test, and the African-American Police League threatened to break away from the Fraternal Order of Police and establish an all-black labor union. The city informed them that would be illegal.

Despite this chorus of wailing, Mayor Daley refused to budge. The test, he said, was fair, and ever since the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the city was forbidden to fudge the scores the way it used to. He did, however, make many of the spineless gestures expected of whites under these circumstances. He claimed to be “as frustrated as anyone by the results” — an odd complaint for someone who said he thought the test was fair. He even wrote a newspaper editorial boasting about the large numbers of non-whites he has hired. No one seemed to wonder how thumping great crowds of blacks and Hispanics were going on the payroll when only a handful could pass the city’s latest and most excruciatingly fair test.

When it began to sink in that the mayor was not going to invalidate the test, astonished black politicos started casting about for ways to force him to. First, they tried to call a special meeting of the board of aldermen to repudiate the results. Mayor Daley managed to persuade enough of his supporters to boycott the meeting, and it failed to establish a quorum. Black aldermen then held hearings, during which they grilled the people who made and administered the test, hoping to find traces of racism. Even these experts in detecting white wickedness could find none.

Blacks turned to the federal government. Congressman Bobby Rush called on Attorney General Janet Reno to look into whether the test violated civil rights laws. He threatened to vote against President Clinton’s crime bill, which would provide money for law enforcement, if she did not. “I cannot and will not vote for a crime bill that will give Chicago more means with which to discriminate,” he explained. The Justice Department promptly began a review.

What did whites have to say? For the most part, they moaned piously about how it really was very, very sad that non-whites had done so poorly, but they kept mum as to why. Columnist Mike Royko ventured the view that blacks failed the test because most of them attended Chicago’s public schools, which are miserable.

The Chicago Tribune cleared its throat and decided that the test, admirable though it might be, was just not the right way to choose sergeants. “Non-objective, unquantifiable elements — the stuff we commonly call ‘chemistry’ — come into play,” it said. The editorial admitted uncomfortably that it was precisely to eliminate non-objective evaluations that written tests were introduced in the first place, but felt sure that broader evaluations would fill the force with non-white sergeants. Blacks and Puerto Ricans will presumably be found to be brimming with “chemistry.” Of course, back in the days of racial quotas, the Tribune seemed to think that pencil-and-paper tests were just fine.

One white police officer, quoted anonymously by Mr. Royko, voiced perhaps the only explanation for the results that was even faintly unorthodox:

The poor performance by minority group members is a direct result of affirmative action and selective promotions in the past. Maybe these officers believed they didn’t have to prepare as much and score as well because they’d get promoted regardless.

No one in the entire city seems to have breathed a word about genetics or racial differences in IQ. As it always does, the obvious explanation hung over the debate like a great, black cloud, but everyone pretended not to see it. U.S. News & World Report, in an article about the fracas, conceded that a few people might think that the problem was genetic, but this idea never appears to have gotten into print in Chicago itself.

Even so, it is significant and encouraging that despite this huge controversy over nothing, the city stood firm. It took $5 million and a summer of hand-wringing and hot air to get essentially the same promotions the city would have gotten 30 years ago, before the reign of racial idiocy — but Chicago has achieved what may be its first real merit promotions in decades.

It is likely to have more. The same firm that designed the sergeant test, Barrett and Associates, has been at work on other tests for the city.

The firm has made a name for itself as a purveyor of objective tests, but the eponymous Mr. Barrett explains that when it comes to race, nothing is yahoo-proof. “I’ve been in litigation since 1973 and the issue is always the same — black officers who believe that they have been discriminated against,” he says. So far, his company has been sued in Akron and Columbus, Ohio, but the tests have been proven in court to be unimpeachably objective.

A Useful Dustup

In the long run, high-profile dustups like this are enormously useful. Only the most gibberingly liberal whites do not understand that the city could not have tried harder to make the test objective and fair. Stripped of the protection of the jiggery-pokery that passes for “equal opportunity,” blacks performed miserably and everyone in Chicago knows it.

Everyone in Chicago also knows that whenever a black or Hispanic could get near a microphone he bellowed about “bias” and “racism.” Unlike the usual “racism” story — blacks spout nonsense, whites whimper sympathetically, and the story disappears — this one was on the front page long enough for even the boneheads to see that black “leaders” were frauds and scoundrels, snout to tail.

This is all excellent news. Every time a well-publicized, rigorously objective test throws a harsh light on the black/white performance gap, the more receptive the country becomes to the genetic explanations that will eventually prevail. Every time blacks and Hispanics work themselves into a roaring lather over imaginary “racism,” the more immune to future accusations the average white becomes.

Chicago may have taken its first, hesitant steps towards redemption.

Miss Evans would like to thank a Chicago subscriber for his help with this story.

SIDEBAR What the Officers Said With everyone from Mayor Daley and police superintendent Matt Rodriguez on down expressing “disappointment” with the test results, how do the officers who passed the test feel? A few spoke to reporters, but only on condition of anonymity. White Woman: I thought this was gong to be legit, finally. No quotas. No political involvement. Now this. The city officials says they are “disappointed” in the results. What does that mean? Have they ever met any one of us? No. Are they “disappointed” because they didn’t get in the people they wanted? Are they saying this to cover their political [butts]? Non-white: This test was based solely on the general orders [police regulations] and the law. How you can say that an internal exam based on those two things is culturally or racially biased is ridiculous . . . If you don’t understand the general orders or the law and how it applies to police work, what good are you as a sergeant? Those of us who are minorities and in the class have been congratulated. But the whites now are living with the suggestion that they got there by cheating. Now you talk about fairness. That is really unfair. White Man: What the law is, that was this test. Cut and dried. No bias in it. It’s what we are supposed to know as police officers. The federal investigation into this test is a waste of time. Look at every question we were given, and show me one racially biased question. White Woman: If I had the questions in advance, why did I pass with flying colors and my husband who is a police officer flunked and so did my partner? Don’t you think I would have shared it with them?

SIDEBAR Antics Elsewhere Chicago is hardly the only city to discover the awkward fact that whites get higher test scores than blacks or Hispanics. The search for “solutions” to the “problem” of test bias, often ordered by busy-body federal judges, is rich in tragi-comedy. In 1989, New York City decided it could eliminate bias if it got black and Hispanic police officers to help write the sergeant test. They had exclusive power to throw out all questions they thought were biased. Two percent of the blacks who then took the test passed, and 95 percent of the people promoted to sergeant were white. Blacks and Hispanics howled and filed suit. New York was briefly taken with the idea that pencil-and-paper tests were all, somehow, biased against non-whites, and produced a video version of the police test. This was enormously expensive, failed to narrow the gap in pass rates, and produced more law suits. One way to get rid of test bias is to make a test so easy that anyone can pass it. New York City’s Sanitation Department indulged in a huge waste of time with a test on which 23,078 applicants out of 24,000 got perfect scores. The department then hired all the non-whites it wanted, claiming correctly that they had all gotten the highest possible score. The prize for ingenuity, however, goes to the Houston Fire Department. In 1991, it gave a 100-question test with a passing grade of 70. Whites got better scores than non-whites. The department then went over the test papers and threw out questions that non-whites were more likely than whites to get wrong. The reasoning was that if there was a performance gap it could only be because the questions were biased. Twenty-eight questions were duly eliminated. The result was that 32 people who had originally passed were now declared to have failed: 24 whites, four blacks, three Hispanics, and one Asian. Thirteen people who had originally failed were now found to have passed: five blacks, four Hispanics, and four whites. Eight non-whites were knocked off the pass list and nine added to it, for a net gain of one. There was a net loss of 20 whites who, along with the non-whites who were bumped from the passing list, were hopping mad. It was plain hard luck for the non-whites who got the right answers to questions that were supposed to be “biased” against them, and pure good luck for the four whites who got wrong answers on questions that were supposed to be “biased” in their favor. Some day, sanity will drift back to these cities, too.

BOOK REVIEW

Thinking the Unthinkable

Whites must choose between separation and oblivion.

The Racial Compact, Richard McCulloch, Towncourt Enterprises 1994, 135 pp., $7.95 (soft cover)

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

Seldom are the long-term prospects for the white race considered honestly and dispassionately. To do so requires keenness of vision and a willingness to pursue ideas even to their most unpleasant conclusions. In The Racial Compact, Richard McCulloch calmly describes the choices we face: establish a new, moral form of racial consciousness or become extinct.

To begin with, Mr. McCulloch reminds us that reproductive isolation was the single necessary condition for the development of racial diversity. It was only because they lived in separate, isolated groups that humans diverged into races and sub-races. If these groups had remained separated, they would have evolved into different species, but this process was arrested by migration and intermixture.

The last century or so has brought an unprecedented rise in intermixture, thanks to advances in transportation. The end of geographic separation has created multi-racial societies that are now celebrated, at least in formerly-white countries, as good and inevitable.

As Mr. McCulloch points out, even though multi-racialism is touted as an affirmation of diversity, it destroys racial diversity, and does so in two ways. One is interbreeding. Most people choose mates of the same race, but those who do not will have children who have lost the unique features of their parents’ races.

If it were widely practiced, interbreeding could obliterate racial distinctions in just a few generations. The most vulnerable races are those whose traits — like the fair hair and light eyes of whites — are genetically recessive. Consistent interbreeding could eventually produce a nearly uniform mass of humanity.

At the same time, even if there were no interbreeding, multi-racialism would eventually abolish diversity through simple displacement. Mr. McCulloch reminds us of Gause’s Law of Exclusion, according to which different groups of animals that have the same physical requirements cannot coexist for any length of time in the same habitat. “All but one,” explains Mr. McCulloch, “eventually become extinct.”

There is no doubt as to which race, under present multi-racial circumstances, would become extinct. Whites (or “the Nordish,” as Mr. McCulloch calls them, to distinguish northern Europeans from Turks, Arabs, and others who are often called “white”) are already only a ten percent minority of the world population and account for only five percent of the world’s births. Even in their traditional European homeland they are being displaced by migrants from less successful societies. Mr. McCulloch draws the only possible conclusion:

If their commitment to multiracialism . . . remains unchanged, and recent demographic trends in immigration, differential birthrates and racial intermixture continue, one can project that by the year 2100 the remnants of the native Nordish populations of northwest Europe will be too small to constitute a viable continuation of their previous existence. They will be effectively extinct.

In North America, where intermixture and displacement are further advanced than in Europe, effective extinction could come even sooner.

What has put these gruesome trends in motion, and what can be done about them? Clearly, the multi-racialism that portends extinction for whites has been permitted and even encouraged by them. Mr. McCulloch quotes a statement made by the Dutch Minister of Education and Science in 1989:

I think that the Dutch will in the long run disappear. The [immigrant] ethnic groups’ population growth is much faster [%-2]than that of the Dutch . . . [%0] . The white race will in the long term become extinct. I don’t regard this as positive or negative. Apparently we are happy with this development.

This statement is unusual only because a government official has logically (and cheerfully) described the long-term consequences of current policies. Most proponents of multi-racialism would never admit that government policies will lead whites to extinction; most would probably not admit it to themselves.

For those who do see the future clearly, and who do not cheerfully accept the prospect of extinction, Mr. McCulloch proposes only one solution: peaceful separation. Reproductive isolation was what gave rise to different races, and only reproductive isolation can preserve them. In order to restore the conditions for their survival, whites must repatriate recent, non-white immigrants from Europe and divide North America along racial lines.

Of course, to most Americans, this is a shocking proposal. It does not matter that Mr. McCulloch’s logic is airtight; racial separation is, to them, unthinkable. Why, though, do the majority of whites submit to policies that can only lead to their own disappearance? Why is the only guarantee against extinction unthinkable?

Intellectual Straight Jacket

Some of Mr. McCulloch’s most interesting observations are about the intellectual straight jacket that prevents whites from acting in their own interests. A large part of the problem is the widely accepted view that racial consciousness, at least among whites, can only be an expression of hatred and the desire for domination. Mr. McCulloch calls this kind of racial consciousness — of which there has been plenty — “immoral racism.” In its place, he proposes “moral racism,” which is not just an expression of love for one’s own race but a recognition of the rights of all races. It is on the basis of moral racism that he proposes what he calls The Racial Compact, that is, the mutual recognition of the rights of races and acceptance of the peaceful separation this would require.

For moral racism to win broad support, it must not depend on ideas of racial inferiority or superiority but on recognition of the importance of preserving all races. Racists will always be loyal to their own races, but this should never prevent them from securing the same racial rights for others that they demand for themselves.

Mr. McCulloch points out that most people have never heard of moral racism and this is a great obstacle to its acceptance. The idea that races could separate, wish each other well, and pursue their unique destinies is one that is never publicly articulated. However, if the white race is to have a future — and in the very long term, if any race is to have a future — some form of racial compact must be established. Steeped as they are in the idea that expressions of racial pride are immoral, most people have no concept of an ethic of racial preservation and mutual respect.

Mr. McCulloch draws a parallel between racial rights and individual rights. Everyone knows that there are good and bad kinds of individualism. The bad kind is non-reciprocal and exploitative, but that does not mean all affirmations of the individual are exploitative. The same is true for race. Expressions of racial consciousness can be spiteful and even murderous. Most whites have been trapped into thinking that this must always be so, and Mr. McCulloch argues that this is because it so often has been so. No peoples have ever achieved peaceful racial separation under conditions of mutual respect and fairness, so it is not surprising that scarcely anyone thinks of it as a solution to racial problems.

Another reason many people are unwilling to exert themselves to avoid extinction — even if they understand that this is where multi-racialism leads — is that they do not care. Mr. McCulloch calls this “nihilism by default.” “[A] simple lack of interest, care and concern, often not consciously intended” he writes, “is by far the most common form [of anti-racial thinking], and also the most insidious.”

Part of the problem is that today’s popular culture emphasizes the individual and the present while ignoring the future and the group. Many white Americans are dimly aware that current policies are reducing their race to a minority and that this is likely to be awful. That, however, will be a problem for other generations. The present is tolerable, so why worry?

Mr. McCulloch also points out that economics leaves no room for race. It is more efficient to treat all people as interchangeable parts in the world economy. Since the preservation of races has no monetary value, cheap foreign workers are a costless boost to the New-World-Order GNP.

Whites v. Spotted Owls

Here Mr. McCulloch draws an arresting parallel between racial preservation and environmentalism. At one time people treated the environment as if it were costless and expendable. Now, powerful movements have sprung up to save the habitats of every possible obscure fish or bird, even if humans must pay a high price to do so. Human races, particularly the white race, are like the environment. If we proceed heedlessly, if we are oblivious to their fates, they will be destroyed. Only the most unbalanced mind can work fanatically to save the spotted owl but be oblivious to the possible disappearance of whites.

For whites themselves, their own preservation is the most natural, normal, and healthy goal they could have. Human races are not merely interesting biological phenomena, though they certainly deserve as much protection on those grounds as the snail darter; they are the bearers of magnificent cultures and traditions that cannot survive without the people who created them. Individual lives are short, but the race and culture are potentially immortal. The death of a race is an infinitely, immeasurably greater loss than the death of any individual.

Mr. McCulloch is surely right to argue that in a time when racism is so widely condemned, the only racism that can win enough advocates to bring about the establishment of The Racial Compact is a new racism, free of the taint of hatred and exploitation. Whites have been so terrorized by a one-sided, closed-minded depiction of racism that most are prepared to let their people and culture disappear rather than be guilty of it.

In Mr. McCulloch’s view, promoting a new and moral racism is the most urgent task facing white civilization. This book is an important contribution to that task.

The Racial Compact is available from Towncourt Enterprises, Box 9151, Coral Springs, Fla. 33075. In addition to the cover price of $7.95, please include $1.00 for postage.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Possessed by Lunacy

Back in 1980, Alphonse Pecou of Brooklyn (race unspecified) hacked his wife to death with a machete and then set her on fire in front of his four children. Later, he walked into a police station in Crown Heights, clutching a Bible, claiming to be Jesus Christ, and admitted that he had killed his wife. He was tried, but found to be insane rather than guilty. Since 1982, he has been a guest of the people of the state of New York, in Kingsboro Psychiatric Center.

Last May, Mr. Pecou was put into the care of none other than the Most Reverend Prophet Alpha Omega Bundu, leader of the United Church of Salvation, for “culturally sensitive” spiritual counseling. The Most Reverend Prophet, who hails originally from Sierra Leone in West Africa, determined that Mr. Pecou was possessed by demons — seven, to be exact. He offered to drive out the demons for a fee of $12,900, or $2,150 per demon with one tossed out for free.

In June, a black woman named Patricia Lambert who runs the Kingsboro center, authorized the treatment, and Prophet Bundu went to work with the help of several parishioners. They sat around the heavily-medicated Mr. Pecou, reciting psalms, while Mr. Pecou managed to respond with an occasional “Amen.” Prophet Bundu then immersed the patient in holy water and anointed him with olive oil. He now claims that Mr. Pecou is much improved and “wants to be like you and me.”

When the Prophet submitted his bill for $12,900 someone in the state Department of Mental Health found it a trifle irregular. Prophet Bundu got $500 for the “spiritual counseling” but the state refuses to pay for the exorcism, claiming it didn’t work. Miss Lambert has been put on leave, while the state investigates.

As for the now-famous Mr. Pecou, latest reports confirm that he is having a mad affair with one of the kitchen workers at the mental hospital. A spokesman for the hospital conceded that fornication is officially forbidden and that “the facility strongly believes it [the affair] must be stopped.” [All stories by Al Guart in the New York Post: Will the exorcist re-possess? (8/17/94), Exorcised maniac’s madly in love with hosp worker (8/18/94), ‘Exorcist’ Exec put on leave for probe (8/31/93)]

White Man’s Burden

Djibouti is an African “nation” about the size of Vermont, located on the Red Sea coast. It was colonized by France in 1862 as a fueling stop for ships bound for Saigon and Madagascar. When Djibouti was granted independence in 1977, only three of its 320,000 citizens were college graduates, and its only manufactured product was Coca-Cola.

Very little has changed since independence. Were it not for the presence of about 6,000 French civilians and 4,000 soldiers, Djibouti would cease to exist as a country. Its only exports are goats and sheep, which are marched off on the hoof to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. French aid and business account for 60 percent of Djibouti’s gross national product. [David Lamb, In Djibouti, independence has brought little change, LA Times, 6/29/94, p. A8.]

In some other parts of Africa, where the European presence is less pervasive, societies have completely collapsed and people are kept alive on international charity. The United Nations estimates that one in every 30 Africans is a refugee, either in his own or in a neighboring country.

In places like Sudan, Angola, Zaire, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Somalia, there is essentially no government, and there is little distinction between crime and warfare. Young men with guns but with no apparent leaders or loyalty spread terror entirely as they please. This is why many of the approximately 22 million Africans who have fled their homes are afraid to go back even after “peace accords” end the official fighting. [John Darnton, Crisis-torn Africa becomes Continent of refugees, NYT, 5/23/94.]

Another obstacle to normal life is the huge number of mines that warring factions have scattered across each others’ territories. Mine sweeping, even with modern equipment is difficult and expensive. Often, farmers and children discover old mines with their bare feet.

White Man’s Burden II

In the 19th century, when Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands, he was amazed to find dozens of species of reptiles, birds, and plants found nowhere else in the world. Recently, the islands have become an exotic destination for American and European nature lovers, and the last 20 years have seen a nine-fold increase in tourists.

Tourist money is a big attraction to Ecuadorians, who have streamed over from the mainland, swelling the permanent population from 6,200 in 1982 to more than double that number today. White visitors treat the local fauna with something close to idolatry, but many Ecuadorians are jealous of the attention nature gets. A German who lives on the islands says that the prevalent attitude is, “They are giving more importance to the stupid blue-footed booby than to you and me.” Ecuadorians do not even seem to realize that it is blue-footed boobies who bring the tourists, who bring the money.

Locals have taken to slaughtering and eating the famous and highly endangered Galapagos tortoises. Thirty-nine carcasses had been found by May of this year. In the past, people used to kill perhaps one or two a year. Ecuadorians also showed little interest in helping control a recent fire that destroyed thousands of acres of vanishing habitat for endangered species.

This spring, a tortoise was found with a mangled rear paw, but the local authorities would not let naturalists use the local clinic for surgery. They were afraid there would be a riot if word got out that the clinic had been used to help a mere beast. The tortoise was airlifted to Miami, where American doctors fixed it up. [Tim Johnson, Darwin’s lab has evolved into a tourist hot spot, Miami Herald, 5/15/94, p. 1A.]

We are just guessing, but chances are high that all the people involved in the tortoise rescue were white — and refuse to recognize that in Miami they are the endangered species.

Not Donald Duck

Next spring, we can expect a new movie called “Jefferson in Paris.” It accepts as proven fact, an old and unsubstantiated rumor that Thomas Jefferson had an affair with a black slave named Sally Hemings. The movie is full of torrid love scenes and concludes with a parade of mulatto children. This is a Walt Disney movie, made with help from Merchant Ivory Productions. [Jefferson Slave flick irks scholars, 8/27/94, p. 6.]

Healthy Instincts

It has now been 30 years since pollsters started asking Americans if they trusted Washington to do what is right all or most of the time. Government got the best review the first year, 1964, with 75 percent of respondents saying “yes.” That number declined steadily to about 25 percent in 1980 but rebounded to about 40 percent from 1982 to 1988 (during Ronald Reagan’s two terms in office). In 1994 the figure hit an all-time low of about 18 percent. [Do We Trust Government?, Readers Digest, May 1994, p. 141.] Actually, it’s astonishing to think that only 30 years ago 75 percent of Americans thought the federal government could be counted on to do what was right all or most of the time.

Speech Police

Anything the government touches becomes an anti-discrimination nightmare. Fair housing laws were supposed to prevent whites from keeping blacks out of their neighborhoods, but have been hijacked by every conceivable interest group. Realtors now police their ad copy for fear that an offending word might launch a new law suit. So far, most speech codes are voluntary and defensive, but formal censorship may not be far behind.

“Master bedrooms” are now off limits since they might remind blacks of slavery. “Spectacular views” might offend the blind. “Quiet neighborhoods” might suggest a prejudice against children. Anything that is “executive” hints of excessive whiteness. One fair-housing official browbeat a company into withdrawing an ad for a Chester, Pennsylvania house described as a “rare find.” Chester is mostly black, and it was reprehensible to suggest that a nice house in a black town might be unusual. [Dale Russakoff, Housing-Ad suits leave agents at a loss for words, Chicago Sun-Times, 6/7/94, p. 22.]

Free Speech Update

The First Amendment appears to have been written to protect only pornographers and flag-burners; certainly not ordinary white folks. Richard Kraft, a vice president for the New York Yankees, is out of work for not having buttoned his lip. The Yankees are having a hard time filling their stadium, especially for night games, because it is in a largely black part of the Bronx. In an interview, Mr. Kraft said he didn’t know what was wrong with the “colored” children in the area, who can often be seen hanging “like monkeys” from basketball rims. Even after Mr. Kraft resigned, blacks in the Bronx were carrying around signs saying “We’re not monkeys — We’re people,” thus, presumably, ending the confusion.

Another loose-lipped New Yorker was deputy mayor John Dyson, who was trying to explain to a journalist why it was a waste of money to pay two securities companies to do a job that one could do by itself. “[You] ought to know the difference between a bid and a watermelon,” he said, somewhat obscurely. This raised a ruckus because the extra securities firm is owned by a black woman, and had been recommended for “diversity.”

Despite the usual intemperate outbursts, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani refused to fire Mr. Dyson. “The first reaction to this was to demand an apology,” he said. “There was an apology. Now the reaction is to demand resignation. I imagine tomorrow they’ll be talking about execution.” For a white man, the mayor is showing unusual spunk (see below).

In Waterford Township, Michigan, Peter Poprafsky has been ordered to pay a $3,200 fine for having added the line, “No Blacks Need Apply” to the for-sale sign he set out in front of his house. Mr. Poprafsky had recently been robbed in his home by two black men, and the sign was on his own property, but the Michigan Civil Rights Department wants him punished in the name of “tolerance.” [Elizabeth Atkins, The Detroit News, Racial slur on ‘for sale’ sign may cost man $3,200, apology, 6/8/94.]

Meanwhile, in San Leandro, California, a police detective has been reprimanded and given an unspecified punishment merely for referring to two homosexuals caught cavorting in a public restroom as “fags.” Tom Di Maria, executive director of the Gay/Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, voiced just the kind of thoughtful commentary one expects in these cases: “For a police detective to be using that kind of slur or to be promoting that kind of hatred and violence is completely unacceptable.” [Henry Lee, Detective faces discipline for gay slur, SF Chronicle, 8/24/94, p. A16.]

Miracle at City Hall

It can be done! Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City has eliminated just about every affirmative action program he can. The city no longer sets aside 20 percent of its contracting for minorities and women, and has stopped advertising government jobs in black and Spanish-language newspapers. The mayor has dismantled the Bureau of Citywide Equal Employment Opportunity, and has abolished the offices of African American/Caribbean Affairs, Latino Affairs, and Asian Affairs. He has also stopped using “diversity” as a criterion for selection of city judges. Finally, minority participation will not be a factor in choosing private companies to take over work that had been done by the city. [Jonathan Hicks, Giuliani is halting of scaling back affirmative-action efforts, NYT, 8/23/94, p. B1.]

Abandoned at Birth

Every year, about 22,000 mothers abandon their infants in hospitals after they give birth. They show up in labor, give false names and family contacts, and leave as soon as they can. Seventy-four percent of the abandoned infants are black, 12 percent are white, and eight percent are Hispanic. It costs about $600 a day to keep an infant in the hospital, and about a quarter stay for at least three weeks. [John Ritter, ‘Babies will keep coming,’ USA Today, 12/2/93, p. 1.]

Progress in Civil Rights

Rosa Parks is famous in the civil rights movement for her involvement in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56. She now lives in Detroit, where she was mugged by a black man. Another black man gained public acclaim by capturing the mugger. During a laudatory television interview, a watching FBI agent recognized the man as a bank robbery suspect and had him arrested as he left the studio. [Hero in Parks Case is Held, NYT, 9/2/94.]

Selma is Still Selma

1994 is the 30th anniversary of all sorts of important doings in the civil rights movement, and liberal newspapers are making sure to remind us of them. As part of its retrospective series on the movement the New York Times of August 2 printed a long article on Selma, Alabama. The paper is baffled to discover that even after 30 years of legal equality and despite the fact that the “civil rights” leaders of the 1960s are now the entrenched political class, not much has changed.

The black belt (named for its rich, dark soil rather than its inhabitants), of which Selma is a part, is one of the poorest places in the United States. Sixty-six percent of the population is black, and the black-white income gap is still very large. In Wilcox County 60 percent of blacks but only 10 percent of whites are poor. In Lowndes County the figures are 50 percent and 5.8 percent.

There has been one big change: Selma’s public schools that used to be all-white are now virtually all black. Whites, even working-class whites, scrimp and save for private school. Moon calf whites who pack their children off to public school soon become sadder and wiser. The Times quotes one liberal:

I remember my friends telling me, in great distress, that their children were now more racist than their parents had ever been, not out of ignorance but out of bitter experience . . .

[Peter Applebome, In Selma, Everything and Nothing Changed, NYT, 8/2/94, p. A1.]

Supreme Idiocy

It finally had to happen. The New Jersey Supreme Court has not only ordered the state to equalize spending in all public schools by the 1997-98 school year; it has ordered equal outcomes as well. Equivalent performance in all schools is now “squarely and completely” the responsibility of the state, which it is to achieve through “special programs and services targeted to the needs of disadvantaged students.” [Jersey court’s unmeetable mandate, NY Post, 7/15/94, p. 20.]

The Wicked White Man

Late in July, 6,000 non-white journalists met for a conference in Atlanta. They duly approved a report claiming that “The mainstream news media’s coverage of people of color is riddled with old stereotypes, offensive terminology, biased reporting and a myopic interpretation of American society.”

Examples?

CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg was attacked for a program in which he chuckled and asked “What am I missing here?” when an Asian complained that his people are portrayed as “model minorities.” This offensive stereotype apparently masks all sorts of vicious problems faced by Asians.

The New York Daily New was criticized for its headline on a story about Donald Trump’s opposition to Indian casino gambling: “Donald Says Ugh to Indian Gambling.” An Indian said the headline was not merely racist but also stereotypical and stupid.

A long profile in Vanity Fair about the chairman of Nike Inc. sinned by saying that “his immersion in Japan and other places Asian has more particularly influenced him in his ability to be inscrutable and manipulative.” [William Galberson, Press, NYT, 8/1/94.]

Indians complained that newspapers were racist to print names of professional sports teams, like Braves and Indians. [William Galberson, As minority journalists meet, an example of white power, NYT, 7/29/84, p. A12.]

These are not simply the most ridiculous accusations; they are every complaint that was included in New York Times stories on the conference.

Blacks Outearn Whites

Hard as it may be to believe, there are 130 cities and counties in the United States in which the median black household income is higher than the white median. These are mostly places that are very poor, near military bases, or where blacks are either an overwhelming majority or a tiny minority.

Only nine of these places are more or less racially diverse communities of more than 50,000 people, and the New York borough of Queens is one of them. There, the white median income is $34,075 and the black median is $34,314. As it happens, it is blacks born outside the United States who bring up the black average. Their median household income is $38,650 compared to $32,000 for native-born blacks.

The explanation for the black/white difference has to do with type of income and the number of people in each household who work. Whites are considerably older than blacks, and 75 percent live on retirement income, Social Security, or investments. Ninety percent of blacks are salaried. Among households with a married couple, twice as many black households as white have three or more wage earners. [Sam Roberts, In Middle class Queens, Blacks pas whites in household income, NYT, 6/6/94, p. A1.]

Too Many Black Mailmen

Tirso del Junco, who is vice chairman of the Postal Service board of governors, says the post office hires too many blacks and not enough Hispanics. In Los Angeles, the post office is 63 percent black whereas the city’s work force is only 9.6 percent black. Hispanics are 34 percent of the city work force but are only 15 percent of the postal employees. In Chicago, 80 percent of the post office workers are black, though they are only 18 percent of the city work force. Etc.

Mr. del Junco has been trying to get more Hispanics into the service but says that black managers are prejudiced against anyone who is not black. He even concedes that “the amount of discrimination against white men in some cities is incredible.” [Bill McAllister, Postal official: Too many blacks hired, Wash Post, 8/3/94, p. A1.]

Hispanic Art

This summer there was a display of art in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park called “El Grito,” which consisted of pictures of dead policemen killed in a “civil war.” One policeman is on his knees with a bullet through his chest; another lies dead with his head blown off. Molotov cocktails hang on the wall, and a loudspeaker blares such sentiments as “When we have driven the pigs out, we will be free.” The exhibit was paid for with taxpayer money by the New York State Council on the Arts. [Cop-killing isn’t art, New York Post, 6/9/94.]

I’m a Racist

by Fred C. Kopp

If I have your permission
To distinguish day from night
And society demands of me
That I learn wrong from right
And yet I must not notice
If you’re black or if you’re white
Then I’m a RACIST.

If I mention while describing you
The color of your skin
In the same way I’d take notice of
Your wit, your charm, your grin
And if with that description
I commit some awful sin
Then I’m a RACIST.

If I’m allowed to trust my eyes
To find my own front gate
And I may trust my taste buds
To enjoy what’s on my plate
Yet acknowledging your color
Means that I am full of hate
Then I’m a RACIST.

And if I am expected
To believe that it’s just fine
For you to huddle with your peers
Though I dare not with mine
While society condones this act
And finds it quite benign
Then I’m a RACIST.

So if you have to hyphenate
Your group to make a stand
You want to live within my world
But keep your world at hand
Though you enjoy excluding me
I can’t do that to you
Then take a long look in the mirror
‘Cause you’re a RACIST, too.

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I just received the issue with the Samuel Francis cover story. Once again, I raise the question, “Therefore what?” Our situation stinks. You’ve made that point. If we do nothing, it gets worse. You’ve made that point, too. So?

What would AR have us do, for Heaven’s sake? The time for kvetching is past. Where do we go from here? I don’t mean to be overly critical, but surely AR is not just a genteel crybaby, forever moaning about the demise with no clue about how to stop it.

Mayer Schiller, Monsey, N.Y.

Sir — The article in the September AR, “What Race Were the Pharaohs?” is misleading with respect to the Israelites in that it makes assumptions that are theological rather than historical.

Aside from the Bible there is no evidence that the Israelites ever entered Egypt or that they left in a mass exodus and conquered Canaan. Whether King David had fair skin or whether his son, King Solomon, had a huge harem (which, if we are to believe I Kings 11:1, may have included the daughter of the king of Egypt), or whether either of these two men existed outside the imaginations of the writers of the Bible is a matter of conjecture, not history.

As the Italian scholar, John Sarbim has written, “Down to the present day, for reasons that can easily. be imagined, the Jewish tradition has exercised such a theological or even psychological pressure that it has conditioned even historical research, which only very recently . . . has begun to release itself from the fetters in which it has been bound.”

Ed Novak, Massapequa Park, N.Y.

Sir — In the September issue Thomas Shorter suggests in a letter that “no one really knows the cause of white suicide.” Surely, it is the media that control what we think. Those who control the media orchestrate a consistently anti-white message that is destroying us.

The point of no return is fast approaching. It remains to be seen if our people value life and liberty over television ball games and situation comedies.

Harry Dace, Houston, Tex,

Sir — In a September “O Tempora” item, you mentioned the troubles that Ben Chavis was having as executive director of the NAACP. As your readers must know, Mr. Chavis has been fired, ostensibly for using NAACP funds to pay for a secret and expensive settlement in a sexual harassment case. It has not been widely reported, but three days before the board of directors took action against Mr. Chavis, it agreed to use NAACP money to settle a similar case against another board member.

Harriet Diles was, for three years, advertising director for the NAACP magazine, Crisis. She brought a sexual harassment suit against Gentry Trotter, who is the publisher of the magazine and a board member. She claimed that the NAACP as an organization was guilty of a longstanding “policy and pattern of [mis]conduct,” and sought $2 million in back pay and damages. The amount of the settlement has not, to my knowledge, been made public.

Sarah Chandler, Baltimore, Md.

Sir — It made me angry to read your “O Tempora” account of Jorge Mas Canosa’s remarks, in which he coolly points out that Cubans have kicked white people out of South Florida and therefore have no reason to fear that the United States might exercise undue influence over a post-Castro Cuba. I had never heard of Mr. Mas before, but soon after learning about him in AR I read in the newspaper that he is busy telling President Clinton how to manage America’s Cuban policy!

How much lower are we expected to bow to our conquerors? Our President appears to be taking orders from a man who boasts about displacing white people. As, I believe, AR has pointed out in the context of similarly frank statements by our dispossessors, we cannot claim that we were never warned.

Allan Hulder, Shreveport, La.

Sir — Thank you for sending me a sample copy of American Renaissance. I am having trouble taking possession of it, though, because the mail room has confiscated it. It has given the following reason:

“The June 1994 issue of American Renaissance [the cover story is about race and crime rates] is a danger to the safety of an individual(s) or security of the institution.”

I am seeking a remedy through the offender grievance program.

Ronald McKinney, Westville, Ind.

Sir — I have finally received the tapes of the Atlanta conference. I have listened to all of them and am greatly encouraged. I now know that our very best people are discussing our problems openly and are offering leadership. This is the best news I have heard in a long time.

Long live American Renaissance.

Larry NeSmith, Thomasville, Ga.