March 1992

American Renaissance magazine
Vol 3, No. 3 March 1992

 

CONTENTS

The Late Great City of New York
Hot Times in the Big City
Men, Women and “Brain Sex”
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

The Late Great City of New York, Part I

Second in our occasional series on the shifting racial composition of America’s cities.

By William Robertson Boggs

If there is one city that stands for urban America, it is certainly New York. Its 7 million people — more than twice the population of its nearest rival, Los Angeles — believe their city to be the cultural, intellectual, and financial center of the nation. In some ways it still is. Foreigners often think that New York, rather than Washington, is the capital of the United States.

New York City Skyline

Image Credit: AngMoKio / Wikimedia

But New York, like many American cities, has been transformed by the population shifts of recent decades. The safe, bustling, optimistic, nearly-80-percent white city of 1960 has now become a virtual synonym for crime, filth, and squalor. A massive influx of non-whites, together with welfare policies that reward deviance and punish responsibility, have turned America’s flagship city into a hive of degeneracy.

The Great Shift

Between 1960 and 1990, the white population dropped by nearly half — a loss of some 2.5 million people — while the black and Hispanic populations grew by 74 percent and 291 percent. Whites, approximately half of whom are Jewish [“Redrawing city districts by minority vote,” NY Newsday, 12/11/90, p. 27.] , are now only 43 percent of the city. New York, for the first time in its history, has a non-white majority and a non-white administration. [Christopher Byron, “Where have you gone, Roger Marris?,” NY Magazine, June 10, 1991.]

Many of the newcomers who replaced fleeing whites were immigrants. During the 1980s, they arrived at a rate of about 100,000 a year and most of them stayed. It is now estimated that 35 percent of the city’s population is foreign-born. [Thomas Morgan, “New York still growing, studies assert,” NYT, 7/25/90, p. B1.] Entire professions are dominated by foreigners; 85 percent of the city’s 40,000 licensed cabbies are foreigners, and many of them scarcely speak English. [Brian Murphy, NY cabbies must pass stiffer licensing exams, LA Times, 2/10/91, p. A16.] Clashes of culture, demeanor, and expectations are a routine part of city life.

New York’s future is increasingly third-world. Not only do whites continue to leave, immigrants and non-whites have higher birth-rates. Only 19.9 percent of New York’s children aged four or under are white, [Profiling the children,NY Newsday, 9/27/90, p. 28] whereas 74 percent of New Yorkers over age 65 are white. [Morgan, “New York City still growing,” NYT, 7/25/90, p. B1.]

Even the fabled attractions that once drew whites to the city are fading. In 1968, 58 shows opened on Broadway; in 1990, only 35 did. [Thomas Disch, “The Death of Broadway,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1991, p. 94.] What were once legitimate movie theaters have switched to pornography or have closed down altogether. The white suburbs, which used to depend on New York for culture and services, are becoming self-sufficient enclaves. [Elizabeth Kolbert, “Region around New York sees ties to city faltering,” NYT, 12/1/91, p. A1.]

Race and Crime

One of the iron laws of urban America is that as a city’s population turns black and Hispanic its crime rate goes up. New Yorkers now kill each other at a rate of more than 2,000 a year. Murder is such a common occurrence that its absence is news. When, in 1990, there wasn’t a single killing in an entire five-hour period, the next day’s front-page headline in the New York Post was “Eerie Calm Spooks Police as Death Takes a Holiday.” [Reported by Bob Herbert, “The fear of violence is coring Big Apple,” NY Daily News, 7/1/90.]

The connection between race and crime is vividly born out in New York’s statistics on murder, rape, and mugging — the crimes that New Yorkers probably fear most. In 1989, blacks were 12.3 times more likely than whites to be arrested for murder, and Hispanics were 6.7 times more likely. For all sex offenses (including rape) blacks were 9.5 times more likely to be arrested and Hispanics were 5.4 times more likely. For robbery (mugging) the figures were 17 times for blacks and five times for Hispanics.

These figures, startling enough already, can be reworked to paint a picture of several vastly different New York Cities. One can imagine an all-black New York, for example, whose population contained the same proportion of criminals as does the city’s current black population. It would suffer 2½ times as many murders as the New York of today, more than twice as many sex offenses, and nearly three times as many muggings

What if New York City were all white — and its percentage of criminals were the same as in today’s white population? Muggings would drop by 84 percent, murder by 80 percent, and the sex-offense rate by 66 percent — all dramatic decreases. These comparisons are not entirely fair, because New York’s whites are older than its non-whites, and crime is generally a young man’s game. Nevertheless, the common impression about street crime in New York City is correct: Non-whites are far more dangerous than whites.

The results are to be found in the city’s jails. In 1990, 95 percent of the inmates were black or Hispanic. For the state as a whole, 82 percent of all prisoners were black or Hispanic. Twenty-three percent of black men between the ages of 20 and 29 were in jail, on parole, or on probation. The figures for Hispanics and whites were 12 percent and three percent. [William Glaberson, “One in 4 young black men are in custody, study says,” NYT, 10/4/90.]

Officials were embarrassed by the recent disclosure that in New York State, whites are twice as likely as blacks (and far more likely than Hispanics) to be victims of so called “hate crimes,” in which race is supposed to be the motive. [State: “‘Hate crimes’ hit whites hardest,” NY Post, 11/15/91. p. 8.] Many crimes against whites are likely to have racial motives, but a criminal must do or say something explicitly racial for his act to be classified as “hate.” The fact that New York’s majority population is more likely than minorities to be targeted for racial reasons shows that any given non-white is far more likely than a white to commit a “hate” crime — a stark fact for which there is no place in the liberal mind.

Poor and Getting Poorer

New York City is as beset with poverty and squalor as it is with crime. Last year, 940,000 city residents — more than one in eight — were on welfare. Together, they would make up the ninth largest city in the country. [Pete Hamill, City’s welfare mess unique in history, NY Post, 9/9/91, p. 21.] Half of the children born in the city this year will probably be on welfare before they turn 18. [Sam Roberts, New York in the nineties, NYT Magazine, 9/29/91, p. 35.]

These people are looked after by a mammoth, creaking Human Resources Administration with 32,000 employees and a budget of $6.2 billion (no, those figures are not misprints). [Thomas Morgan, Head of welfare agency is warned of too little progress after 8 months, NYT, 12/10/90, p. B3.] One of its more recent follies was to set up a program for “homeless families.” Any woman with a child simply need declare that she and the brood are a “homeless family,” and they are entitled to a two-bedroom apartment in a so-called Tier II shelter — which can cost the city as much as $2,700 a month. They then go to the top of the waiting list for city housing. “Homelessness” is now a rite of passage; it is the next step after getting pregnant, dropping out of high school, and going on welfare. [“Housing the un-homeless,” NY Post, 9/9/91, p. 20.]

Close to 35 percent of New York City’s $29 billion budget is spent on handouts and uplift of one sort or another — food, housing, medicine, therapy, and pay checks for the indigent. If the dollar value of all city handouts were simply divided up among eligible families, each would get $21,000. That is not far below the average New York City after-tax family income of people who work for a living. [Peter Salins, “Jump-starting New York,” NYT Magazine,11/3/91, p. 54.]

It is little wonder that the professional poor head for the city. If the people who move into and out of the city are grouped by income, only one group now shows a net increase: those with incomes below $10,000. [Richard Levine, “Middle-class flight feared by New York City experts,” NYT, 4/1/91, p. A1.] Where does money for handouts come from? In 1990, the rest of the country paid for 9.6 percent of New York’s budget through federal taxes. Some help comes from New York State, and the rest is raised through a ruthless system of taxes and fees. Back in 1961, when the population was still nearly 80 percent white and could look after itself, New York did not even have a city income tax. [Christopher Byron, “Where have you gone, Roger Marris?,” NY Magazine, 6/10/91, p. 29.] Today, it wrests $20 in taxes and fees out of every $100 earned in the private sector. [Peter Salins, “Jump-starting New York,” NYT Magazine, 11/3/91, p. 54.] Visitors are always good for a legal mugging. The city hotel tax is 19.25 percent of the bill plus $2.00. [“An apple that has lost its sheen,” Economist, 6/1/91, p. 19.]

Of course, the biggest chumps are the people who work and pay taxes. Seven percent of the city’s households pay 50 percent of the city’s income tax. At the same time, they actually benefit from no more than 12 percent of the city budget — the part left over for policemen, firemen, street cleaners, parks, and museums. [A.M. Rosenthal, “Tax cows of New York,” NYT, 7/13/91.]

City of Drones

Even in New York, it takes quite a few people to spend a budget of $29 billion. There are 350,000 people on the municipal payroll [Joe Klein, “The pinochle club,” NY Magazine, 10/29/90, p. 19.], which is more than the population of the state’s second largest city, Buffalo. They live in the city, and can be 15 to 25 percent of the votes in a Democratic primary election. They are represented by 140 unions, and, for all practical purposes cannot be fired. Their primary interest seems to be jobs for the boys. [Joe Klein, “The pinochle club,” NY Magazine, 10/29/90, p. 19.]

Jobs they have gotten. Since 1961, as the city’s population declined by 6 percent, the number of city bureaucrats increased by 50 percent. The city now has four times as many employees for every 100 residents as Chicago, which is hardly a model of urban efficiency. [George Will, “Manhattan dreams and nightmares,” LA Times, 5/26/91.] This mass of dead wood, combined with thousands of state and federal employees, means that one out of every six New Yorkers who actually have jobs works for some layer of government. [Clifford May, “Noble goals rotted away in Big Apple,” Orange County Register, 5/22/91.] The bloat has not been uniform; the number of firemen and street cleaners has actually fallen since 1961. [Christopher Byron, “Where have you gone, Roger Marris?,” NY Magazine, 6/10/91, p. 29.]

With so many pencil pushers, jail birds, and welfare bums to carry around on their backs, it is a wonder that the city still has as many white, tax-paying citizens as it does. The number keeps dropping. Moving companies report that for every household they moved into the city, they moved out 1.7. [Richard Levine, “Middle-class flight feared by New York City Experts,” NYT, 4/1/91, p. B4.] Whereas half of the country’s 30 largest companies used to have their headquarters in New York City, today only two do. [“An Apple that has lost its sheen,” Economist, 6/1/91, p. 19.]

Even some immigrants have begun to realize that coming to New York was a mistake. Koreans, who have opened badly-needed stores in black neighborhoods only to be hated for their successes, are returning to Korea at a rate of about 50 families a month. [“Warning! Koreans are leaving,” NY Post, 10/1/91.] They are going back to a country that doesn’t subscribe to foolish notions about multiculturalism, and which therefore has the coherence, purpose, and unity that New York has lost.

As productive people leave the city, a shrinking tax base makes New York both desperate for money and less credit-worthy. Last year, when it raised $1.25 billion in the public markets, the financing was like a junk bond distress sale. The city paid more for its two-month notes than some cities pay for 30-year bonds. [Constance Mitchell, “New York City pays dearly to borrow,” WSJ, 5/1/91, p. C1.]

Felix Rohatyn, the financier who helped pull New York City out of the hole the last time it nearly went bankrupt, has washed his hands of a city he thinks no longer has the will to save itself. In late 1990, he resigned from the city’s Municipal Assistance Corporation and from the mayor’s Council of Economic Advisors, warning that New York was on the brink of “social and economic disaster.” [Mike Santangelo, “Rohatyn sees ‘disaster,’” NY Daily News,10/18/90, p. 5.]

“The Late Great City of New York” will conclude in the following issue.

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ARTICLE

Hot Times in the Big City

On December 28th of last year, nine people were killed in the crush, when a crowd of black, rap music fans stampeded the doors to an event in Harlem. Thousands of fans without tickets broke through glass doors, crushing and trampling ticket-holders waiting to see a basketball game starring such “hip-hop” attractions as LL Cool J, Heavy D, Run-D.M.C., and Bell Biv DeVoe. [Eddie Borges and Dick Sheridan, Death crush, NY Daily News, 12/29/91, p. 3.]

After rescue crews arrived and relieved the crush, fans stepped over bodies to get close to the rappers, and several robbed the corpses. Rappers who tried to help evacuate some of the dozens of injured were prevented by mobs of autograph-seekers. [Robert McFadden, Survivors of tragedy describe the chaos in which 8 died, NYT, 12/30/91, p. A1.] Five emergency rescue men were also injured when they were attacked by the crowd. [Vera Haller, 8 Killed, 28 hurt in crush to see rap stars in N.Y., SF Chronicle and Examiner, 12/29/91, p. A2. Also Eddie Borges and Dick Sheridan, Death crush, NY Daily News, 12/29/91, p. 3.]

It was, in short, a despicable display of viciousness and callousness, even by the standards of rap music fans — though white journalists couldn’t bring themselves to say so. The Associated Press blamed the horror on “the beast”: “The beast bent a lightpole in front of the gym building; it pestered rappers for photo ops and autographs in the morgue of the gym floor, distracting those who were trying to help the injured; it laughed and joked outside amid the despair; it robbed the dead.” “It” killed nine people. [Rick Hampson, AP, Real “beast” in deadly N.Y. crush: wild crowd, SF Sunday Examiner, 1/5/92, p. A3.]

One white music critic went further: “It’s no secret that our society teaches minorities to hate themselves. If you are not white, male, straight, middle-class, well-educated or well-off, you are told . . . that you and others like you are disposable . . . You self-destruct and aid in the destruction of others. You do as you are told . . . Should it come as any surprise that people trapped like animals in cages are going to rip each other apart out of sheer frustration? Why should they value human life when society judges their lives as meaningless?” [Barry Walters, Death rides the concert rails, SF Examiner, 1/12/92, p. D1.]

A memorial service held two weeks after the deaths was a high point in moral blindness. Speakers blamed the deaths on the police, city officials, the “white establishment,” and “Uncle Tom blacks.” Rev. Lawrence Lucas of the Resurrection Roman Catholic Church called the deaths an “orchestrated disaster,” designed to give the police an excuse to attack young blacks and to take power from students. Rev. Timothy Mitchell of the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church said the deaths were a “painful reminder of the racist, capitalist, individualistic society in which we live.” Thus edified, the crowd left the memorial service and promptly tried to storm a building as a protest. [Lynda Richardson, Outdoor memorial service becomes emotional rally, NYT, 1/13/92, p. B4.]

Surprisingly, it was that old race-baiter and rabble-rouser, Al Sharpton, who appeared to be the only black “leader” to see things as they were. He led a protest march in Harlem, for a change, where he said, “these kids do not have the right to act like animals . . . They did this to themselves. Black kids did this to black kids.” [Mike McAlary, For once, Rev. Al is marching colorblind, NY Post, 1/3/92, p. 5.]

As it happens, those who blamed the deaths on inadequate police protection did have a point. Although there were 100 security guards at the event, this number fell short of the ratio of one policeman for every 30 spectators that specialists say is necessary to control a rap audience. This is a more rigorous ratio than that of guards to inmates in most jails. [Rick Hampson, Real “beast” in deadly N.Y. crush: wild crowd, SF Sunday Examiner, 1/5/92, p. A3.]

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REVIEW

Sex of the Brain: Why Men and Women are Different

Brain Sex by Anne Moir and David Jessel

Brain Sex, Anne Moir and David Jessel, Carol Publishing Group, 1991, 242 pp., $17.95

Reviewed by Thomas Jackson

“Men are different from women. To maintain that they are the same in aptitude, skill or behaviour is to build a society based on a biological and scientific lie.”

With these brave words begins a remarkable book by two journalists, Anne Moir and David Jessel. Brain Sex is their attempt to get at the biological and scientific truth, no matter how much it may threaten current intellectual fashion. As the authors point out, it has been precisely during the period when liberal feminism has been most shrilly insisting that men and women are largely equivalent that scientific research has produced incontrovertible evidence that they are not.

It was Anne Moir, who has a PhD in genetics, who first learned about some of the new research findings. As she and Mr. Jessel looked further, they found that many eye-opening discoveries about sex differences were known only to specialists. They claim that their book was simply waiting to be written by anyone ready to go through the scientific literature, but they are overly modest. Few people could have done so lively and thorough a job.

There are striking parallels between the study of sex differences and the study of race differences. Both yield results that refute the assumptions behind social policy and both can be professionally dangerous. Nevertheless, entrenched liberalism is not quite so hostile to the facts about sex as it is to those about race. Even Time magazine toyed with the possibility of sex differences in a recent cover story but stopped well short of Dr. Moir’s and Mr. Jessel’s conclusions. “The argument about the existence of brain sex differences has been won,” they write, and their book is an invaluable collection of evidence.

Hormones Are All

Probably the greatest surprise to the layman is to learn that hormones are even more important than genes in governing sex-related behavior. It is massive doses of the male hormone testosterone, both during gestation and at puberty, that make a male brain different from a female brain.

The brain, it appears, is naturally inclined to be female. Unless it is bathed in testosterone at critical stages, the brain of a genetic male — someone with the XY combination of chromosomes — will not develop male characteristics. As an adult, even if he is anatomically male, a man may have a brain that remains female.

This has real consequences. In the female brain, some mental functions seem to be scattered around the hemispheres, whereas the male brain is specialized and compartmentalized. The parts of a woman’s brain that handle speech and emotion are spread across both halves of the brain, whereas these capacities in a man are tucked into discreet locations. Moreover, the corpus callosum, which connects the right and left brains, is thicker and more highly developed in women. The two halves of their brains communicate better.

In practical terms, this means that women are verbally more fluent than men but are less able to separate emotion from reason. At the same time, since they can bring more diverse parts of the brain to bear on a problem, they are better able than men to arrive at apparently non-rational but correct conclusions — “women’s intuition” is based in biology.

Different brain constructions also produce the few sex differences that have gained public acknowledgment despite a hostile intellectual climate: Men are better at math, have better hand-eye coordination, are better mechanics, and more easily grasp spatial relations.

For every mathematically gifted girl there are 13 gifted boys and the best boys are always better than the best girls. Boys, however, are four times more likely to be in remedial reading classes than girls.

These differences have routinely been attributed to the way children are reared, but infant boys and girls begin to behave differently long before social pressures could have begun to effect them. One researcher says, “After 15 years looking for an environmental explanation and getting zero results, I gave up.”

Some purely biological differences have been widely confirmed, but are scarcely known outside the laboratory. A woman’s senses, for example, are more acute than a man’s; she can hear, taste, smell, and feel things he cannot, and she has better peripheral vision. In some sensory tests, there is no overlap between the scores of men and women; the least sensitive woman outscores the most sensitive man.

One of the conclusions that egalitarians find most difficult to accept is that men and women differ biologically in how badly they want success and power. Dr. Moir and Mr. Jessel are unequivocal: Men are more competitive and dominating than women because their brains make them so. Some of the strongest evidence for this comes from people who have developed abnormally.

Wrong Turn in the Womb

There are several critical moments in the formation of the male brain at which a sufficient flow of testosterone is vital for normal development. However, certain medications and physiological conditions can produce abnormal flows of female hormones in a woman’s body while she is pregnant. These hamper the work of the fetus’ own male hormones and the transition to a male brain may be incomplete. As a consequence, a boy is likely to be effeminate or even homosexual, though the two need not go hand in hand.

Studies suggest that the intra-uterine testosterone doses that make for a ruggedly masculine body and manner don’t come along at the same time as the ones that direct the male libido towards women. Depending on the timing of hormone flows, a homosexual may be typically male in every way except for his lust for men, and an extremely effeminate man may be very much a Casanova. In both cases, it appears that the transition from the female to the male brain was incomplete. Dr. Moir and Mr. Jessel report that this process can be reproduced at will in laboratory animals; homosexual and effeminate rats can be bred without fail by blocking the normal action of testosterone.

As the hormone theory of sexual differentiation would suggest, homosexuals and effeminate men have brains that operate more like those of women. They use language better than other men and their mental functions are more scattered around the brain. Their senses are more acute than those of other men — though not so acute as those of women — but they have less mechanical ability. Effeminate men are less aggressive and less ambitious than other men.

The equivalent effects have been found in women. Girls born with a genetic abnormality called Turner’s Syndrome do not have ovaries. Since ovaries produce a small amount of masculinizing testosterone, these girls do not have even this small check on the naturally female propensities of the brain. They are exaggeratedly feminine, shy, accommodating, constantly dreaming of children — which, alas, they cannot have — and preoccupied with romance and marriage. Their sense of mechanics and spatial relations is also exaggeratedly female; many have a terrible time remembering even how to get to school.

When girls in the womb are exposed to abnormal doses of testosterone the very opposite happens. They grow up as aggressive tomboys, with an interest in guns and dump trucks. Although they may marry and have children, they are likely to be successful career women, with unsentimental attitudes towards family. Not surprisingly, they are likely to be better than most women at math and mechanics.

Psychotics and Psychopaths

One of the most fascinating corollaries to the discovery of how important hormones are in giving the brain its sex is a theory that would explain why men are so much more likely than women to be sexually or psychologically abnormal. Sadomasochists, fetishists, voyeurists, and exhibitionists are almost exclusively male. Homosexuality is ten times more common among men than women, and schizophrenics are overwhelmingly male.

It is likely that this is because more can go wrong with men when their brains undertake the tricky business of becoming male. The female brain need simply stick to nature’s path, whereas the transition to maleness can go wrong in many spectacular ways. Moreover, if the adult male brain is more likely to be unbalanced to begin with, the greater volatility and aggressiveness brought on by high, typically male levels of testosterone only makes things worse. Biology thus explains why men are vastly more likely than women to be criminals, psychopaths, and deviants of all kinds. Even when they are “normal,” men are likely to be more violent, self-centered, and power-hungry than women; this has always been so, in every known society.

These differences naturally make for difficulties in marriage. Dr. Moir and Mr. Jessel marvel that marriages hold up as well as they do, given the biological differences that bulk so large between the sexes. Women, even from infancy, are more interested in people than in things, whereas the interests of boys are reversed. Girls and women are drawn to friendship, peace-making, conversation, and emotion, and bring these propensities to a union with a creature who is virtually an alien — one who is more calculating, more interested in things, and less interested in talk.

To men, women appear to be unpredictable bundles of emotion who burst into tears for the oddest reasons. Dr. Moir and Mr. Jessel suggest an explanation: “Women cry more than men perhaps because they have more to cry about — they are receiving more emotional input, reacting more strongly to it, and expressing it with greater force.”

One thing they might well despair over is the male attitude towards sex. The authors of Brain Sex bravely state a stark fact that is rarely acknowledged in print: “The desire for sexual novelty is innate in the male brain.” They go on to describe how the aphrodisiac effect on the male of new sex partners came to be known as the Coolidge effect. President Calvin Coolidge and his wife were visiting a farm and as Mrs. Coolidge passed the chicken coop she asked how often the rooster copulated each day:

‘Dozens of times,’ was the reply. ‘Please tell that to the President,’ Mrs. Coolidge requested. When the President passed the pens and was told about the rooster, he asked ‘Same hen every time?’ ‘Oh no, Mr. President, a different one each time.’ The President nodded slowly, then said ‘Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.’

Apocryphal or not, this story illustrates something every cattle breeder knows. A bull shows little interest in a cow he has just copulated with, but will mount a fresh cow — or seven more fresh cows — with undiminished zest. Attempts to disguise the first cow make no difference; the bull wants something new.

Dr. Moir and Mr. Jessel do not flinch from the obvious conclusion: “In starkly sexual, and evolutionary terms, there is nothing in marriage for men, given their rooster desire for novelty and the widest possible distribution of their seed.” Men do marry, though, and many are faithful because they know this is best for society and for their own children.

Remaking the World

It is in the face, not only of millennia of human history but of overwhelming scientific data that feminists and liberals insist on the essential equivalence of men and women. If “sexism” is eliminated, they argue, women will assume the same levels of power and achievement as men. If women can be liberated from the tyranny of child care, they will take their place beside men as bank presidents and astronauts.

Dr. Moir and Mr. Jessel argue in the clearest possible terms that this is folly. Women will never be as powerful or successful as men because their brains drive them in different directions: “Men will make the most extraordinary sacrifices of personal happiness, health, time, friendships and relationships in the pursuit and maintenance of power, status and success. Women won’t; most of them are simply not made that way.”

What women are naturally made for is motherhood. Not only are they biologically equipped for it, their brains yearn for it. Women are nature’s natural parents. A woman’s breasts may drip milk at the mere sound of her child’s cry. Fathers, no matter how good their intentions, cannot understand, comfort, or care for their children the way mothers can — although effeminate men, with more feminine brains, handle children better than do normal men.

One of the great tragedies of feminism is that it devalues the very undertaking for which women are unquestionably gifted. Motherhood is the arena in which a woman’s sensitivity and generosity can shine the brightest, yet feminist dogma equates child care with slavery. As the authors of Brain Sex put it, “feeding, clothing, and educating the successor generation is as noble a task as earning the money to pay for its food, clothing, and education. It is also, ultimately, as rewarding, but most men have to wait until they are grandparents to appreciate the fact.”

Dr. Moir and Mr. Jessel conclude that “liberation” is often unnatural. Women force themselves into competitive careers for which they are emotionally and biologically unsuited, and are plagued with guilt because they must circumscribe the mothering towards which both their brains and bodies impel them.

Some women, of course, are different, and there is no reason to foreclose their professional options. But to hope for the day when half the world’s nuclear scientists will be women is to hope for the impossible. As Dr. Moir and Mr. Jessel point out, 99 percent of the people who hold patents are men. Only by thwarting biology could that number ever be reduced to 50 percent.

Round Pegs in Square Holes

It is difficult enough to manage a society of two sexes without willfully ignoring the ways in which men and women are different. Insisting that men be emotional or that women be competitive will not make them so. Both sexes would be spared a great deal of distress if they acknowledged their differences and understood, respected, and made the most of them. Of course, wise men and women do this even in today’s misguided era of obligatory equality.

Society makes a terrible error when it tries to force the sexes into the same roles, just as it makes a terrible error when it tries to force the races into a state of equivalency. No society can flourish if it is built, as the authors of Brain Sex put it, “on a biological and scientific lie.” In matters of sex and race, liberal orthodoxy insists on lies rather than truth. Today we are reaping the consequences.

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IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Yahweh Update

The trial of Hulon Mitchell, the leader of the Miami-based, anti-white “Yahweh” sect continues in Miami, but the national media do their best to ignore it. Robert Rozier, a former Yahweh sect member and one-time professional football player, testified in January about some of the crimes he committed under orders from Mr. Mitchell. Of the six people he killed, three were blacks who had offended Mr. Mitchell in some way, and the rest were “white devils,” killed at random.

The first two “white devils” were Mr. Rozier’s white roommates. However, Mr. Mitchell gave him no credit for these killings because he failed to bring back parts of the bodies as proof. Mr. Rozier took to riding the subways with a twelve-inch sword, looking for “white devils” to do in. When he finally got his man, and brought back an ear as a trophy, Mr. Mitchell reportedly was beside himself with glee, tossing the ear around the room and calling it a pig’s ear. [Donna Gehrke, I felt power while slaying 6 people, former Yahweh “death angel” testifies, Miami Herald, 1/30/92, p. 1A.]

If a group of whites were on trial for ritual murder and mutilation of blacks, can there be any doubt that the news would be constantly on the front pages?

Multiracial Harmony in California

A recent northern California survey on racial stereotypes has left the chattering classes tongue-tied. Asians, for example, are three times as likely as whites to report that they wouldn’t stand for it if a black or Hispanic moved in next door. Hispanics are about twice as likely as whites to say they wouldn’t have a black neighbor and three times as likely to say they wouldn’t have an Asian neighbor. Whites are supposed to be the big racists in this country, so commentators were reduced to wringing their hands over “how quickly immigrants learn racism in America.” Some racial activists insisted that the questions were ambiguous.

When asked whether blacks could pull themselves up to better positions if they worked harder, 65 percent of Hispanics agreed, followed by 58 percent for both blacks and Asians. Only 42 percent of the whites agreed; most dutifully blamed society for black poverty. When asked if Hispanics could get ahead if they worked harder, the percentages were similar except that an even larger number of Hispanics (72 percent) agreed. [Steve Johnson, Survey finds Bay Area tolerant of diversity, SJ Mercury, 11/17/91, p. B1.] Hispanic activists were annoyed that their people weren’t more worried about “institutional racism.”

‘Stop Apologizing’

Last month we reported on the success of a clever Canadian author who shot to instant media stardom by sending copies of his pro-white book, Stop Apologizing, to media and government bigwigs. His message, which officialdom hates like poison, is that whites should stop feeling guilty for having established a better way of life, and should stop feeling responsible for “the failures of non-achievers.”

This book is available only by mail order, and last month we did not know the address. A reader has kindly sent it to us. Stop Apologizing is available from The Procult Institute, Box 1358, Postal Station A, 757 West Hastings, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6C 2T2. The cost is $30.00 in Canadian currency, but purchases by Visa or Mastercard will automatically be converted at prevailing exchange rates.

The author, Jud Cyllorn, promises his readers two more books this year. Circle Your Wagons! will be “an exposé of the myths of ‘aboriginal rights,’” and We The People will be a “constitutional solution for Canada.”

This Hertz

In January, the Hertz car-rental company announced that it will levy a surcharge on New York City residents who want to rent cars. Anyone living in Manhattan will have to pay an extra $3 per day, with $15 extra for Queens, $34 for Brooklyn, and $56 for the Bronx. The company explained that it has lost $45 million in the metropolitan area over the past three years, because of accidents, stolen vehicles, and insurance claims.

New York State has “vicarious liability” laws, meaning that you may have to pay for something that was not your fault. For example, a Brooklyn car-renter turned over the keys to his cousin, who was unlicensed and below Hertz’s minimum rental age of 25. The cousin ran over a pedestrian and left him so disabled he couldn’t even operate a wheel chair. Although Hertz hardly seems any more responsible for this accident than the auto-maker or even the city that built the street, “vicarious liability” held the company responsible for $2.5 million in damages. Hertz says this sort of thing simply happens more often in places like Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Mayor David Dinkins promptly accused Hertz of discrimination. The city has filed a law suit, claiming that since Brooklyn and the Bronx have large non-white populations, the surcharges are disguised racial discrimination. [Matthew L. Wald, Politicians assail Hertz for New York surcharge, NYT, 1/4/92, p. L23. Michael Cottman, Hit ‘em where it Hertz, NY Newsday, 1/8/92, p. 3.]

Credits to Their Races

The same muddled thinking is behind a recent interpretation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1971. The act was passed to ensure that the information in credit reports be accurate and confidential. Employers sometimes use credit reports when they are considering hiring someone or transferring him to a job with responsibility for money.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found that such use of credit has an “adverse impact on minorities” and may therefore be illegal. Non-whites make less money than whites and their credit ratings are worse, so to use ratings to help make an employment decision is racist. [County of Harris (New Jersey), Personnel Dept., Credit reports: what employers should know about using them, Resource Newsletter, Jan. 1992.]

It is already illegal to use standardized tests to select employees, since non-whites score worse than whites. It is already illegal to require an honorable discharge of potential employees who are ex-servicemen, because non-whites don’t get them as often. In some cases, it is illegal to require that employees have a college education, since not as many non-whites as whites go to college.

All this points in one direction: Soon, any measure by which non-whites perform less well than whites will be “discrimination,” even if that standard is nothing less than how well one does the job. The government is officially against racial “quotas,” but increasingly leaves employers no other option.

Progress Rolls — In Wheelchairs

The latest group to get legal protection from “discrimination” is the handicapped, which includes all the people one would expect, as well as recovering alcoholics and people with AIDS. The Americans With Disabilities Act, which sailed through Congress in 1990, went into effect this January. Businesses and employers must take all sorts of measures to accommodate the blind, the lame, the deaf, and even the “mentally handicapped.” Lawyers will get rich while the courts hammer out what the law’s mandatory “readily achievable” accommodations really are.

In the meantime, the law lays down strict rules for new buildings. Essentially, American businesses must transform themselves for the benefit of a minuscule number of patrons in wheelchairs. Bank teller machines must be low enough to be reached sitting down and must have keys in braille. Stores must reduce the amount of merchandise on display so they can widen the aisles for wheelchairs. Carpets may be only so deep, because a thick pile might slow down the disabled. Elevators must “talk” and have braille keys. Requirements will get stiffer as the years go by.

Employment standards will come under attack. The courts will decide whether jobs requiring a driver’s license discriminate against the blind, or whether insisting that employees be able to speak to customers discriminates against the deaf and dumb. We quake to think just what sort of job standards will have to be done away with in order to accommodate the “mentally handicapped.” [Peter Copeland, New “nightmare” for business, SF Examiner, 1/19/92, p. 1. Michelle Levander, Advocates hoping disabilities law raises awareness, SJ Mercury, 1/26/92, p. E1. Michelle Levander, First phase of sweeping law takes effect, ushering disabled into social mainstream, SJ Mercury, 1/26/92, p. 1.] All this, from a Congress that claims to be concerned about America’s competitiveness.

Loony Tunes

The highest-paid entertainer in America, Bill Cosby, has joined the growing army of loonies who think that AIDS was concocted as a weapon to get rid of undesirables. Late last year he told a television audience that AIDS is “something I think was started by human beings to get after certain people they didn’t like.” Later, he explained his views through a spokesman: “I have no proof, period. I just have a feeling, period.” [Cosby’s theory on the origin of AIDS, NY Post, 11/28/91. Bill Cosby’s AIDS conspiracy, NY Post, 12/4/91, p. 26.]

According to a 1990 poll, 30 percent of blacks were either convinced that AIDS is a plot to exterminate them or think that there is at least a chance that this is so. Mr. Cosby will therefore share the company of 12 million other thoughtful blacks.

Stirring Patriotism

Julianne Malveaux is a black woman who writes a syndicated column in San Francisco. She recently wrote that she finds the words to the Pledge of Allegiance “as much a curse as a pledge,” because they deny the fundamental racism of white America. Her version of the pledge would go like this:

I acknowledge the flag of the United Racist States of America and the repression for which it stands, two or three bifurcated nations, two economies, two health-care systems, two nations under God, divisible by color, class, gender and access [she is all ready for the new disabilities law — see above], with liberty for some and justice for fewer.

It is not uncommon to find blacks who write and think this way. If whites are so awful and America is so evil, why do blacks not live in Africa or demand an all-black homeland in North America? A visit to any black-run nation — or city — probably explains why they do not.

Sex, Illegitimacy, and Obscenity

The Centers for Disease Control report that more than half of all American high school students have had sexual intercourse. By the time they are seniors, 70 percent say they have had sex. Seventy-two percent of black high school students say they have had sex, as opposed to 53 percent of Hispanics and 52 percent of whites. Whites reportedly use contraceptives more often than either blacks or Hispanics. [AP, Sex and the high school student, NY Newsday,1/4/92, p. 6.]

These differences are borne out by the latest data on illegitimacy. More than 70 percent of black babies born in America are illegitimate. The figures for Hispanics and whites are 37.5 percent and 21.6 percent. In the early 1960s, illegitimacy rates for the races were: blacks — 42.4 percent, Hispanics — 19.2 percent, whites — 8.5 percent. [Cheryl Laird, Teen-age moms, Houston Chronicle, 1/8/92, p. 1D.] You’ve come a long way, baby.

Obscenity seems to be creeping into every corner of life, but, happily, it has been completely eliminated in New York City. Obscenity laws now often refer to community standards; one man’s art is another man’s obscenity. In 1983, Appeals Court Judge Thomas J. Meskill ruled that “the community standards in New York are so low nothing is obscene.” [Steven Myers, Obscenity laws exist, but what breaks them? NYT, 1/19/92, p. 4E.] Since that date, there have been no more obscenity prosecutions in New York. This is the way that America likes to solve its problems.

More White Mischief

Blacks smoke more than whites, so the usual uplift organizations are trying to help them quit. Smokefree Education Services of New York has come up with an anti-smoking poster directed at blacks, which it hopes to display in subway cars. It shows a skeleton in a cowboy outfit lighting a cigarette for a black child. The caption reads: “They used to make us pick it. Now they want us to smoke it.” There’s just no end to the evil that white men do.

The Truth at Last

Occasionally, the government actually puts into print such contradictory foolishness on the subject of race that even the most jaded are taken by surprise. IRS Publication 557 explains how to get tax-exempt status for an organization. The publication makes it exceedingly clear that if you run a school, its admissions policies must not discriminate by race. Schools must also advertise in local newspapers or on the radio that they do not discriminate, and the IRS kindly includes a sample of what a print ad should say, as well as instructions on how big it must be. Then the IRS says this, with bold-faced italics in the original:

A policy of a school that favors racial minority groups with respect to admissions, facilities and programs, and financial assistance does not constitute discrimination on the basis of race when the purpose and effect of this policy is to promote establishing and maintaining the school’s nondiscrimination policy.

It’s a riddle as to how favoring minorities promotes a policy of nondiscrimination, but here it is in black and white: discriminate against non-whites and your tax-exemption is over; discriminate against whites and you have the IRS’ blessing — so long as you are practicing nondiscrimination. [IRS publication 557, revised Oct. 1988, copy actually distributed end of 1991, p. 12.]

The Heights of Folly

Shaker Heights (OH), a suburb of Cleveland, has discovered that racial integration is unnatural — but the town wants it badly enough to pay for it. Blacks who move to neighborhoods thought to be excessively white get help with their mortgages. So do whites who move to black neighborhoods. The town has been working at this for thirty years, managing housing the way a company manages inventory, but only three of its nine neighborhoods are integrated in any but a token way.

Students at Shaker Heights’ schools learn early to count by race. Racial sensitivity is taught in the sixth grade, and sports teams have informal racial quotas. Even the photographs in the year book are racially balanced. What is the result of all this sensitivity? Essentially two school systems, with whites in advanced and honors classes, and blacks in regular classes. Almost without exception, blacks socialize with blacks, and whites with whites. As a black sophomore put it, “You don’t have a choice in the classroom,” but “you eat lunch with who your buddies are.” [Isabel Wilkerson, One city’s 30-year crusade for integration, NYT, 12/30/91, p. A1.]

A Real Insight

Insight, the weekly news magazine published in connection with the Washington Times, is well ahead of the pack in its reporting on race. The cover story of its issue dated January 5, 1992 is an astonishingly even-handed account of the controversy over race and IQ differences. The article includes sympathetic portrayals of such outspoken IQ scholars as Arthur JensenRichard HernnsteinLinda Gottfredson, and Michael Levin.

Insight stands on its head the required media view that the idea of IQ is a bunch of buncombe propagated by crazed elitists: “The consensus among professional psychologists is that the pro-IQ researchers are soundly scientific and their critics are the ideologues.”

Interestingly, the ideologues appear to be losing their stomach for the fight. Leon Kamin, Stephen Gould, and R. C. Lowentin used to be willing at the drop of a hat to tell the press that intelligence has virtually nothing to do with genetics; none wanted to talk to Insight.

The article reports, with scarcely a qualification or apology, that the average IQ score is 85 for blacks, 90 for Hispanics, 100 for whites, and 105 for Japanese. It points out that only 3 percent of blacks have scores over 115, the minimum required for learned, professional work. The article makes no attempt to refute the hereditarian view that black progress is held back by a lack of intelligence.

That brave researcher, Arthur Jensen, almost gets the last word. Musing sympathetically about eugenics, he asks: “Which is worse, to deprive someone of having a child, or to deprive the child of having a decent set of parents?”

Small Victories

It would be pleasant to report progress, but whenever the march of folly is thwarted, that too is victory. The faculty of Drake University in Des Moines recently issued a statement opposing any campus regulation that would prohibit speech of any kind. It also refused to single out racial harassment as a crime worthy of special punishment.

The University of Washington has defeated a move to require all students to take a gender- and race-sensitivity course, as has Wichita State University. A disgruntled Wichita professor says the defeat means there is “a closet full of David Dukes” on the faculty.

Set-Asides by the Wayside

In 1989, the Supreme Court struck down the widespread practice of setting aside fixed percentages of public contracts for non-white companies. Thousands of such companies, many of which had never competed in the private market, have failed or are foundering. Ralph Thomas, head of the National Association of Minority Contractors says, “Most of the minority community’s business comes from government programs, and when these programs are struck down, they no longer have a place to sell their services.”

Philadelphia’s recent experience is typical. After set-asides were ended, the percentage of contracts awarded to black businesses shrank in just one year from 25 percent to 3.5 percent. Since set-asides bypassed the usual open bid contract process, they raised the cost of city business. Rather than give thanks for the cost savings, the black city administration has gone to court to try to get the old program reinstated. [Michael Hinds, Minority business set back sharply by courts’ rulings, NYT, 12/23/91, p. A1.]

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LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — Anyone who has lived in Africa would find your portrayal of the continent a refreshing change from the timid, flattering accounts that pass for American journalism. After two years as a peace corps volunteer in Malawi, I have no illusions about the ability of blacks to run a modern economy.

Even by African standards, Malawi is a sad case. It is considered the sixth poorest country in the world; the average weekly income is about $1.25. At least 10 percent of the population has AIDS — that’s 20 times the rate in the United States. Ninety-four-year-old Hastings Banda has been His Excellency the Life President for 28 years. Anybody who criticizes him or his policies can go to jail without trial. While I was in Malawi, you could go to jail simply for referring to the old boy as “president” rather than “life president” but I understand that regulations have loosened up a bit since then.

His Excellency has been the typical African dictator. He owns a good chunk of the economy, and the government spends more money maintaining his six palaces than it does on health care. Malawians love him just as black Washingtonians loved Mayor Barry. The higher his style and the less he does for his people, the more they seem to like it.

Carl Gottlieb, Port Huron, Mich.

Sir — Your interesting and provocative lead article on multicultural history paints a misleadingly rosy picture of the early 20th century American educational scheme that “turned foreigners into Americans.” The “Americanization Movement,” as it was then called, downplayed, ignored, and even slandered immigrant cultures to the point where immigrants were denied even the simple respect of their own traditions. To a great extent, the underlying objective of “Americanization” wasn’t nation-building at all, but solidification of the social hegemony that the native Anglo-Saxon then enjoyed.

The consequences of what should be called “Anglofication” were hardly all positive. It produced gigantic provincialism of spirit that marks the American style to this day, a style that makes a virtue out of ignorance. Unwilling to appreciate other cultures, unable even to speak other tongues, the modern-day American confusedly stumbles about this world of cultural complexity, wondering where his great Anglo traditions fit in.

In pondering the racial problems currently confronting this nation American Renaissance should avoid portraying “Anglofication” as anything like honest culture-building.

Ivan Hild, Falls Church, Va.

Sir — In this backwater of Eastern rusticity, I had blissfully unaware of the extent to which America has been invaded. Recently, I visited my son in the Los Angeles area, but the Disney aspect of the metropolis prevents one’s focusing sharply on the texture; it is a paisley seen at a distance.

There is no longer any help for this through the avenues of government. I fear that my children will inherit a world so exotic and alien that none of my efforts to prepare them will help. What can I leave them?

Truth is no good; it is as evanescent as the revisionists can make it. Wealth is no good; the redistributionists will take it away. My traditional moral and spiritual precepts are no good; they will doom my children to being pariahs in the New Diversity. Already I have seen them handicapped by an inability to jump the hurdles set by the politically expedient left.

What gift then? My name? It is anathema to those who came later, or were brought, or were already here; it is too much a part of colonialism and exploitation. (That, of course, accounts for my riches.) The homestead? No, it is too opulent. I have no right to what others refuse to earn. The torches and pitchforks may be here any day.

Ah! I so have a small treasure hidden from the masses, a gift so valuable and so cursed that it would be confiscated in a moment by even the most tolerant of the New Left. It is HATE! Intolerance! Bigotry! Bias against everyone who is not what I have always striven to be.

Poor legacy, you say? Well, of all the conservative treasures man has carried as his personal baggage since time began, the knowledge that there is a “me” and a “them,” and a feeling that the “me” is superior has endured. It prepares my posterity to recognize the differences and defend itself against those who would make us one, mediocre, and dependent.

Let those who know of my intention to bequeath this to my children cavil in vain. They have already destroyed the nation I loved and defended. They cannot, however, destroy my wish to see that the differences, the diversities, the “otherness” are known by my descendants for what they are: an attack on decency, honor and the sanctity of the American home.

Loring Emery, Hamburg, Penn.

We have been asked the source of our statistics on interracial rape in the February issue. They were taken from Criminal Victimization in the United States,1988, by the U.S. department of Justice, Table 44, p. 50. In 1988, 67,841 whites were raped by whites and 24,370 blacks were raped by blacks. There were in fact, no reports of blacks being raped by whites, whereas 9,406 whites were raped by blacks. — Ed.

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