February 1994

American Renaissance magazine
Vol 5, No. 2 February 1994

 

CONTENTS

Murder on the Long Island Rail Road
Another Reply to Doubters
White Might, Black Fright
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

Murder on the Long Island Rail Road

A black kills six whites at random. Liberals find it ‘unfathomable.’

by Lawrence Auster

This past December, a Jamaican immigrant named Colin Ferguson opened fire in a Long Island Rail Road commuter car, killing six and wounding nineteen. In hand-written notes carried in his pocket, Mr. Ferguson made undeniably clear his motive for murdering a bunch of white strangers: revenge for the racism he saw lurking behind every disappointment in his life.

Without missing a beat, the liberal establishment rushed in for damage control, declaring that the carefully planned massacre was simply the “incomprehensible” and “meaningless” act of a deranged man. “No more sense can be made of such a thing than of a typhoon or cyclone,” wrote Luc Sante in the New York Times. “Forget the gunman’s declared motive of racial hatred [emphasis added]. When someone with a semiautomatic weapon starts perforating citizens en masse, the question of motive evaporates.” Governor Cuomo of New York struck a similar tone of bemused detachment, saying that the massacre was “unfathomable.”

Unfortunately, nothing could be more “fathomable” than Colin Ferguson’s act of hatred. “Deranged” or not, he was only taking to its final conclusion the paranoid message that has become an article of faith for all too many blacks in this country: that all of their problems and failures are caused by white racism. If the incompetent black mayor of New York City is defeated for re-election, he and many other blacks blame white racism; if a black mayor of Washington, D.C. is arrested for cocaine use, it is said to be due to white racism; if blacks die in great numbers from AIDS or drugs or black-on-black violence, it is because of a white conspiracy to commit “black genocide” — a theory that one out of three blacks believes is at least “possible.”

White liberals and mainstream institutions, far from disabusing blacks of this poisonous suspicion of whites, have encouraged it. President Clinton came to New York City during the mayoral election and charged that white voters’ only possible reason for not supporting Mayor David Dinkins was covert racism. Earlier, Clinton had picked Johnetta Coles — the black college president who has publicly endorsed the “whites are committing genocide” theory — as his transition adviser for education. American schools are now dominated by multiculturalism, an ideology based on the premise (in the words of the New York State Education Department) that non-whites “have all been the victims of an intellectual and educational oppression that has characterized the culture and institutions of the United States and the European American world for centuries.”

Colin Ferguson

Hollywood and the news media hawk the image of a pervasive, barely repressed, racism hiding behind the bland, smiling face of white America. Businesses across the country hire “diversity consultants” to indoctrinate their employees on the need to get rid of the “white male” way of doing things. Corporations such as Gillette and Bell South sponsor a conference of Afrocentric high school teachers, where Western civilization is described as “vomit” and the participants recite: “We, the African community, in the hells of North America, do pledge our minds, our selves, and our bodies to further the struggle . . .” Ironically, while white America is routinely condemned for its “institutional racism,” the real institutional racism in this country is the systematic message — put out by the schools, the mass media, and the whole liberal culture — that whites, and the civilization they have created, are essentially evil.

Should it be any surprise, then, that many blacks take this message to heart? White liberals think that constant reminders of the sins of the white man will root out racism. In fact, the endless drumbeat about black victimization only gives blacks reasons to hate whites. It is as if whites, in their guilt-ridden attempt to compensate for past injustices, were doing every thing within their power to encourage blacks to hate whites.

Having given many blacks a motive for hatred, left-liberal ideology then gives them a license to express that hatred. First, blacks are exculpated from their own racism by the bizarre notion that only whites can be racist — because only whites have “power.” Next, society legitimizes behavior by blacks that would never be permitted to whites. When Ivy League schools invite the hate-mongering Louis Farrakhan and his followers (who believe that whites are “devils” created by a mad scientist) to address their students, they send the message that it is socially acceptable to demonize whites.

We have thus arrived at a moral double standard so blatant and systematic that it amounts to a new kind of racial hierarchy. Anything a white says or does that offends militant blacks is seen as a manifestation of deeply embedded white supremacy, to be extirpated by public confession, mandatory “racism-awareness” sessions, and the loss of employment; the white editor of New Jersey’s Burlington County Times prints a routine piece criticizing a black state legislator for “double-dipping,” and he is instantly forced out of his job by the paper’s owner to appease angry blacks.

But no matter what blacks do, whether they steal entire issues of conservative college newspapers, or spew racist mythologies, or record rap songs calling for the murder of white police officers, or even burn down a city, a sizable number of white liberals and blacks will describe their behavior as an “understandable” expression of the pain blacks feel in a racist society. An appeal for “understanding” that consistently goes only one way should be recognized for what it is — an attempt to disarm whites morally while continuing to unleash black aggression.

Thus, while liberals see the massacre on the Long Island Rail Road as a further argument for gun control, they continue to ignore the real gun control problem in this country: that it is the liberals themselves who have helped place the loaded gun of racial hatred and vengeance in the hands of blacks. And when a black fires that gun, the liberals, with a philosophical shrug, call the act “unfathomable.”

Mr. Auster lives in New York City. He is the author of The Path to National Suicide: an Essay on Immigration and Multiculturalism.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

ARTICLE

Another Reply to Doubters

A reader defends racialism and AR.

by John Kelly

As a faithful reader of American Renaissance, I must say that I was taken aback by the “dissenting voice” of Malcolm Meldahl in the December issue. Accordingly I wish to say a few things in response to his letter to Jared Taylor.

In particular, I wish to take issue with Mr. Meldahl’s claim that AR’s agenda is somehow devilish or reptilian, and that it excludes “religious possibilities” He means, I take it, that AR’s racial concerns cannot be squared with the demands of ethics, and cannot be incorporated into a genuinely religious view of the world.

Granted, racialism can provide an excuse for wrongdoing. So, for that matter, can any number of causes, such as nationalism, or economic reform, or the advancement of science. And indeed as racialism becomes more a part of the white consciousness, perhaps it will be used as an excuse for the horrors that Mr. Meldahl envisions. In this respect, I, too, have misgivings. And I will have little use for the mediocre white man — the bully, for one, or the band-wagoner — who joins our cause in fifteen or twenty years time because some of his neighbors are doing it. But I fail to see why this should discourage anyone from racialism per se, especially when one considers the alternative of surrender, which Mr. Meldahl himself seems to favor.

Is racialism inherently wrong? A few years ago I horrified a dear female acquaintance by confiding to her my interest in white activism. Within hours she had finished a lengthy handwritten letter, telling me that she could not be a party to any such “fascist” thinking as mine, and that such things as hatred, ignorance, and bigotry were “our real enemies.”

This is a plausible sentiment, one perhaps that Mr. Meldahl shares. Practically everyone has had, say, a lovely black or Hispanic friend. Why, then is race such an issue? Rather than draw the line between the races, why not draw it across them, so as to make evil our enemy, and forget about race altogether?

To be sure, the lines of race are not those of good and evil. But it does not follow, I think, that a race-neutral ideology is best. The problem with the contrary view is that it fails to take into account one crucial fact about our current situation, namely that we ourselves — those descended from the peoples indigenous to Northern and Western Europe — are presently under a siege that is itself fiercely racial. This fact is amply documented each month in AR, and it is present daily on our streets to those of us who have eyes to see it.

Failure to address this fact will not make the world a more peaceful place. It will instead result in our continued victimization. Ultimately it will mean the destruction of our race and our civilization. Whether we admit it or not, we are hated. And we are targeted. The present encouragement of our racial decomposition can soon be its enforcement. If we wish to survive, we must know what we are up against.

Our task is not an easy one. The average white American walks around today virtually immune to the thought that he himself may one day be the object of hatred, or that he or his progeny might one day be victims of oppression. He has been trained to think that such notions are fear-based, even paranoid — the product of nothing save ignorance and insecurity. But in fact, the white race is the daily object of ridicule, misrepresentation, state-approved robbery, and even outright physical savagery. One needs no mythology of “good” and “evil” races in order to see this. One needs only honesty.

Not Race Neutrality

The appropriate response to the problem, I submit, is not race neutrality, but race consciousness. If the truth about race is being suppressed, it is our task to lift it up. And if the focus of AR is narrow (Mr. Meldahl claims that AR’s purported truths are “all arranged in one vector”), it is not because anti-white criminality is the world’s only wrong. Rather it is that such criminality is indeed an evil, and a danger, and that it cries out for the honest acknowledgment that it is purposely denied nearly everywhere else.

Apparently Mr. Meldahl is sympathetic in some measure with AR’s position. Toward the end of his letter, he says that he approves of its war on cant and duplicity. So he approves, I take it, of AR’s effort to expose anti-white deception of the kind that is practiced in the public mainstream. But why stop here? What if the question is not merely honesty, but self-preservation? If one were being attacked by an unthinking creature bent upon destruction, one would be justified, I think, in resisting the attack by any means possible. How, I ask, is it different in the case where the attack is both malicious and deliberate? Mr. Meldahl says that he is disturbed by the prospect of a blood bath. So am 1. But the blood is already running, and folding the AR enterprise, and ones like it, will not make it run less.

I also dispute the claim that AR’s position (and, I take it, racialism in general) is somehow at odds with genuine religion. One’s view on this will depend, of course, on what one takes religion to be. The heart of religion, I believe, is not a particular dogma concerning the creation date of the human race, or the exact nature of divinity. True religion, in my mind, is the recognition of our own spirituality.

The details of this are a subject for another time. Suffice it to say that I believe that religion means, before all else, a respect for the truth, and a confrontation with evil where one finds it. At its core, I think, lies the conviction (shared by our ancestors) that life presents moral challenges on an immortal Way. And in looking around, I can find no cause that is greater, harder, or more heroic than that of racialism. Its struggle is perilous, and for the most part it is hidden; when brought to public attention it is caricatured by media burlesque. Thus it is a resistance that is carried out, as it were, from beneath an avalanche, a battle without cheer or support.

Unsung Heroism

Racialism dares to strike against the edifice of opinion manufactured by a small minority. In this struggle I find unsung heroism. In it I find the nobility, the independence, the admirable resistance to surrounding irrational forces, that was so famously present in Galileo. Our cause is not thuggery. It is the preservation of our own life blood. It is the willingness to pursue truth even at the expense of respectability. Speaking for myself, I have never felt more purposeful, more engaged, more spiritually alive, or more fully in possession of my faculties, than when engaged in this very task.

Last, I wish to say something in connection with Mr. Taylor’s own reply to the dissenting voice. In it, and drawing apparently on a long-time personal acquaintance, he speaks of some of the things that have won Mr. Meldahl’s passion. These are poetry, integrity, beauty, and work well done. Mr. Taylor says that Mr. Meldahl would not regard these things as having “religious possibilities,” but would still count them as important. But to the contrary, I suggest to Mr. Meldahl that these are just the things — some of them, at least — that do express our spirituality. And the honest investigation of race, however impolitic, is itself an instance of work well done.

While Mr. Meldahl does not like this publication, he apparently prizes integrity. Yet where might he find a more splendid example of integrity than what he finds in these pages, and others like them, written by those who stand up against all the weight of contemporary media and higher education in order to say what needs to be said? Such men and women are those of the racialist cause. Their message, lest it be misread, is not that race somehow overrides ethics, but that racial self-defense is justified by the best ethic that the moral consciousness discloses. Far from compromising the higher instinct, racialism may well, under present conditions, be its finest expression.

John Kelly is a veteran college instructor and freelance writer. He lives near Logan, Utah.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

BOOK REVIEW

White Might, Black Fright

A study of the preposterous, anti-white beliefs common among blacks.

I Heard it Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Culture, Patricia Turner, University of California Press, 1993, 260 pp., $25.00

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

Few whites are aware of the nonsense that circulates about them among blacks. Ever since the days of the slave trade, when Africans were convinced that whites planned to eat them, to the present, when more than half of all blacks think that illegal drugs may be part of a genocidal plot, blacks have believed all sorts of foolishness about whites.

Patricia A. Turner

Prof. Patricia A. Turner

Patricia Turner, a black associate professor at the University of California at Davis, has looked into today’s anti-white rumors and tries to explain why blacks — even successful, college-educated blacks — — believe them. She says that they naturally expect the worst from whites because American society is so hopelessly racist that virtually any sort of white wickedness is plausible. Her book is therefore not just a study of credulity but also an exercise in it.

The Almighty Klan

One of the most persistent themes in the world of black rumors is the fearsome powers of the Ku Klux Klan. For example, during the 1980s and even up to the present, many blacks firmly believed that the Church’s Fried Chicken fast food chain was owned by the Klan and that its food was doctored to sterilize black men. In 1984, a congressman actually had the FDA conduct mass spectrometry and gas chromatography tests on Church’s chicken to see what was in it. Naturally, the FDA found nothing suspicious, but these results did not satisfy “the folk,” as Prof. Turner often calls blacks. Some of her informants explained that the Klan would have had no trouble persuading the FDA to lie about the tests.

Another recent Klan enterprise is said to have been the Troop Sport clothing company, which was founded in 1985 and sold 95 percent of its clothes to blacks and Hispanics. The Troop name reportedly stood for “To Rule Over Oppressed People,” and the linings of shoes and jackets were supposed to contain messages like “Thank you, nigger, for making us rich.” Some young blacks who wore Troop clothes despite the rumor and subsequent boycott were attacked as traitors by other blacks.

Troop spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to fight the rumor. It hired the black singing group Gladys Night and the Pips to improve its image and posted anti-Klan posters in stores. The campaign failed and Troop went bankrupt, though the company denied that the boycott was the cause.

Prof. Turner tells us that the most recent alleged Klan front has been the Brooklyn Bottling Company, which sells a soda called Tropical Fantasy. Like Church’s chicken, the soda was said to be laced with a drug that would selectively sterilize black men. There is no odorless, tasteless substance that sterilizes anyone, much less only black men, but the FDA duly trotted out its mass spectrometers and cleared Tropical Fantasy. The rumor was unaffected and caused serious losses for Brooklyn Bottling. It also provoked violence; blacks attacked delivery trucks and roughed up storekeepers who stocked Tropical Fantasy.

“The folk” credit the Klan with many achievements. It is said to have killed John Kennedy and to be deeply involved in the tobacco business. The eponymous founders of Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds are both said to have been important Klan members (despite the fact that Philip Morris was British), and Kool menthol cigarettes are suspect because of the brand’s ominous misspelling.

The Klan is likewise thought to have killed Martin Luther King, though the government may have helped. As one informant said, “I heard it was the FBI or the KKK — one of those groups.” Prof. Turner notes that for many of “the folk,” there is no real difference between the two.

Genocidal Government

If the Klan has fearsome powers, those of the United States government are more fearsome still. As noted earlier, more than half of all blacks are either convinced that the government supplies illegal drugs to blacks or that it might well be doing so. Many blacks think it was Ronald Reagan who started spreading guns and crack cocaine in black neighborhoods out of a deep-seated hatred for blacks.

One reason many of Prof. Turner’s informants give for believing that the government is spreading illegal drugs is their complete confidence in its ability to keep them out of the country. Since there are drugs in America it must mean that the government lets them in so that blacks will take them and kill each other.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), was said to be behind the Atlanta child murders of the late 1970s and early 1980s. During that period 28 young blacks were killed before a black was finally convicted of the crimes. Even today, the conviction is commonly thought to have been a frame-up. The CDC employed the FBI to do the killings, because an essential ingredient for the manufacture of wonder drugs could be obtained only by extracting it from the sex organs of young blacks. The comedian Dick Gregory helped promote this rumor.

Many blacks, including the actor Bill Cosby, also believe that AIDS was invented by the government in order to kill blacks. Prof. Turner herself isn’t quite sure what to believe. She finds it ominous that when government agencies deny that they invented the virus they argue that bio-engineering is too primitive for that. She hints darkly that this may mean that the government might just spread deadly diseases among blacks if only it knew how.

Suspicions about drugs and AIDS are so widespread and so ridiculous that they have broken into the news but there are always other rumors on the go among “the folk” that whites rarely hear.

The Reebok shoe company funnels its profits to South Africa to prop up apartheid. Whites adopt Latin American babies to kill them and harvest their organs for transplants. George Bush started the Gulf war because there are so many blacks in the military. Colonel Sanders stole his Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe from a black cook who worked for his parents. The offices of Planned Parenthood are located in black neighborhoods to keep blacks from reproducing. The police deliberately let the Los Angeles riots get out of hand so that blacks and Hispanics would look bad on television. Clothing designer Liz Claiborne said on the Oprah Winfrey television program that she didn’t like to see black people wearing her clothes. Miss Claiborne has never been on that program, but many blacks threw out their Liz Claiborne dresses. Whites are always up to some kind of mischief.

Explanations

Why do blacks believe this nonsense? Whites usually look for a rational explanation. When a company is said to be trying to sterilize blacks, its officers suspect that a competitor is trying to do them down. When the government is accused of wanting to kill blacks, the CIA and the United States Information Agency go looking for Communist propaganda.

Prof. Turner is probably right to argue that this sort of thinking is a waste of time. “The folk” are sufficiently credulous and sufficiently ill-disposed towards whites to cook up and swallow rumors without any outside help. Prof. Turner does not quite put it this way. She says that whites have been and continue to be so implacably racist that any kind of anti-black evil is plausible even if scientifically impossible.

The first part of her book is therefore full of ancient Klan atrocities that are supposed to justify today’s delusions, and the rest is sprinkled with the usual assumptions about contemporary white wickedness: random blacks are often beaten up while the police look the other way, television promotes anti-black stereotypes, the government is hostile to blacks, whites won’t hire blacks, the police persecute blacks, etc. In Prof. Turner’s world, affirmative action does not exist and it is always necessary to assume that whites are racists.

Her assumptions about sex take us deeper still into the world of black delusion. For example, we learn that the early Ku Klux Klan was primarily motivated by a sense of sexual inferiority coupled with latent homosexual desires for black men. Southern whites called blacks “boy” in unconscious acknowledgment of their Ganymead attractions, and lynched them because of this unbearable, suppressed homosexual lust. We also learn that Ku Kluxers stuffed wads of paper down their pants before they went calling on blacks so as not to appear insufficiently endowed.

Current anti-white rumors, Prof. Turner repeatedly points out, are filled with sexual elements: the KKK is trying to sterilize blacks, AIDS will exterminate blacks because it is sexually transmitted, white doctors need to extract something from black sex organs, etc. She stops just short of saying that all this is evidence of sexual obsessiveness on the part of whites.

Prof. Turner cannot bring herself to admit that black beliefs are aberrant or deplorable. Though she concedes that they may be tough on innocent companies that are smeared, she thinks goofy rumors are good for blacks. Believe it or not, rumors are “tools of resistance” because the catharsis of naming oppressors — such as the Klan and the FBI — gives blacks “a sense of power” and “contributes to an atmosphere of communal problem-solving.” “Sharing the rumor and joining the boycott,” says Prof. Turner, “enables individuals to perceive themselves as powerful.” What must Prof. Turner think of blacks if she really believes that swallowing preposterous nonsense “contributes to an atmosphere of communal problem-solving”?

The truth about these rumors is more stark and unpleasant than Prof. Turner seems to think. If today’s blacks think their government is trying to kill them or that the KKK can tell the FDA what to put into a report, they will believe anything. Of course, foreign correspondents in Africa stagger back to civilization with reports more amazing than these: sorcerers who can steal a man’s genitals with a handshake, religious fanatics who believe they can walk on water — and then drown en masse, witches who call down lightening and must be burned to death. Africans are champions of credulity, ripe for rumor, superstition, and nonsense.

Another element in these rumors that escapes Prof. Turner’s notice is the implied omnipotence of the white man. Whites could stop illegal drugs if they wanted, or invent viruses, or sterilize black men, or prevent riots, or just about anything else. “The folk,” on the other hand, are dolts who, with a little coaxing, can be made to buy shoes, eat fried chicken, take drugs, shoot each other, and get AIDS. This is powerful commentary on how blacks really see themselves.

Finally, a message that whites ignore at their peril is the implication of what blacks would want to do to a minority in their midst. Do not their delusions of genocide reflect their own desires and fantasies? Whether it be Idi Amin’s massacres or South African necklacings or corpses by the truckload in Burundi, Africans often make short and bloody work of their tribal enemies.

Much as she tries to blame “the folk’s” fantastic beliefs on white racism, Prof. Turner unwittingly points to the depths from which they flow.

SIDEBAR

Healing the Folk

H.L. Mencken noted in his diary that his superstitious maid “belongs to the Afro-American race, and shows many of its psychological stigmata.”

What might he have thought of the classified ads in black America’s best known weekly, The New York Amsterdam News?

The issue of December 18th contains 13 ads for astrologers and eight for spiritualists. One of the more flamboyant advertisers is Rev. James, whose motto is “See him in the afternoon, be happy at night.” He claims to have helped “many thousands of people who have been crossed, have spells, can’t hold money, want luck, want their loved ones back, want to stop nature problems [?] or want to get rid of strange sickness.” “Satisfaction doubly guaranteed,” says Rev. James, who promises results in 24 hours.

People in a hurry might prefer Rev. Prince Edwards — “man of many Mysteries, he reveals to you the secrets beyond the grave” who claims that his cures are “positively guaranteed in 12 hours.” But even the man of many Mysteries cannot keep up with Rev. Evette who says she “does what others claim” and offers immediate satisfaction.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Contented Colonies

Representatives of most of the world’s remaining colonies met in London recently to discuss how to maintain their status. “No country that moved to independence in the last 30 years has any success stories,” said Thomas Jefferson, an official from the Cayman Islands. “We see no benefit in moving on.”

Millions upon millions of people would be better off if they had not shucked European rule. South Africa has enjoyed more years of growth and prosperity under European rule than any other part of Africa. There will be no benefit in majority rule.

‘One Bad Dude’

P.K. McCary of Houston, Texas, thinks she has found a way to get ghetto blacks to turn to Jesus. She has translated the first five books of the Bible into street slang. Some samples from Black Bible Chronicles:

Now when the Almighty was first down with His program, He made the heavens and the earth. The earth was a fashion misfit, being so uncool and dark, but the Spirit of the Almighty came down real tough, so that He simply said, ‘Lighten up!’ And that light was right on time.

Now the serpent was one bad dude, one of the baddest of the animals the Almighty had made. And the serpent spoke to the sister and asked ‘You mean the Almighty told you not to eat of all the trees in the garden?’ And the sister told him, ‘Yeah, snake, I can eat of these trees, just not the tree of knowledge or the Almighty said I’d be knocked off’ And the bad of serpent told the sister, ‘Nah, sister, he’s feeding you a line of bull.’

As it happens, Miss McCary’s Black Bible Chronicles faces competition from something called the Original African Heritage Bible, published by Dr. Cain Felder, Dr. Felder sticks to the King James version, but words spoken to or by Africans (loosely defined) are highlighted. The text is accompanied by a commentary that gives “the African perspective,” and by illustrations and photographs of Africans and American blacks as Bible figures. Dr. Felder scoffs at the street slang Bible, which he calls the “Amos “n’ Andy Bible.”

Alas, some people do not like Dr. Felder’s Bible either. One black divine complains that “the King James version is the most racist version there is,” and speculates that Dr. Felder uses it because the text is off copyright and can be reprinted without royalties. Another black colleague complains that the accompanying commentary lacks a “womanist” [?] perspective.

Miss McCary floats serenely above the fray. “If you have a problem [with my slang Bible]” she says, “go complain to God.”

Anthrax Returns

Anthrax is a disease that people catch from sick cows. It is so contagious and deadly that several armies stockpile anthrax spores as a biological weapon. Anthrax is now on the loose in Haiti.

The disease can be easily eliminated in any minimally-functioning society. There is a 100-percent effective vaccination for cows and if people get anthrax they can be quickly cured with antibiotics. In recent decades, only Haiti and a few African countries have let public health deteriorate to the point that people started dying from anthrax. No one knows how many people have died from the latest outbreak in Haiti.

Black Christmas

Kwanzaa is an “African” festival that was invented by an American black, Maulana Karenga, in 1966. It is a mishmash of various African harvest festivals and runs from December 26th to January first. It competes with Christmas for the allegiance of blacks.

Mr. Karenga claims that 18 million blacks now celebrate Kwanzaa (that would be 60 percent of all blacks) and the idea does seem to be catching on. For the second year running, Hallmark sells Kwanzaa cards, and Woolworth’s promotes Kwanzaa in its stores. Last December, a Kwanzaa Holiday Expo was held in New York City’s Javits Convention Center and attracted about 300 exhibitors. It was not just vendors of African trinkets and colored hats who paid $900 apiece for booths. Pepsi-Cola, AnheuserBusch, Revlon, Chemical Bank, A.T.& T., and Time-Life Books were all there helping celebrate.

The Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company — temporarily renamed Harlem Ben & Jerry’s — was pushing Miz Jelena’s sweet potato pie ice cream, and the four attendants who ran the booth were moved to prayer. On the first day, they joined hands while one lifted up his voice and said: “Lord, give everyone who comes a hungry thirst for this ice cream.”

This was a worrisome appeal for some Kwanzaa adepts, who decry commercialization, but the festival spokesman, Cedric McClester, tried to reassure them. Commercialization is fine, he explained, so long as it is blacks who make the profits.

In the meantime, the white mother of a mulatto child was asked to leave a Kwanzaa celebration at the Roxbury Boys and.Girls Club in Boston. “We’ve had a tradition of it being an all-African event for people of color,” said Sadiki Kambon, who organized the affair.

Secession Can Start Small

The 2,500 people of Hemingway township in South Carolina want to cut their ties with down-at-heel Williamsburg County and attach themselves to up-scale Florence County. The township is 80 percent white while Williamsburg county is 65 percent black and this has all the usual consequences: Hemingway is snug and prosperous while the rest of the county is a pot-holed slough of tin-roof shacks. Florence County, which Hemingway would like to join is, like the township, well-run and predominantly white. A vote on the move was scheduled for January but has been postponed because of law suits and cries of racism. Residents of Hemingway insist that it is the lack of county services, not blacks, that they wish to leave behind.

Dining Out

Late last year, two teen-aged blacks were sitting in a Milwaukee fast-food restaurant wondering whom to rob. They decided on Christine Schweiger because she was white, and they figured that a white woman was less likely to carry a gun than a black. They accosted Miss Schweiger and her ten-year-old daughter on the way to their car and ordered Miss Schweiger onto her knees. She complied, but explained that she had no money. In reply, the blacks blew her brains out with a sawed-off shotgun. As Samuel Francis has pointed out in a recent column in The Washington Times, Milwaukee’s reaction to the killing has been 100 percent wrong: The city is screaming for hand gun control. Miss Schweiger was killed with a shotgun, but never mind. If Milwaukee succeeds in disarming all its law-abiding citizens, cut throats can be certain that potential victims will be unarmed.

The Human Wave

The United Nation’s Fund for Population Activities reports that 100 million people, or nearly two percent of the world’s population, are immigrants. During the 1980s, about 7.4 million immigrants entered the United States legally, and perhaps another 10 million may have entered illegally. The U.N. estimates that ten percent of Mexico’s labor force now lives in the United States. During the same decade, about 15 million people migrated to Western Europe, mainly from North Africa, Turkey, and Eastern Europe. Immigrants send about $66 billion a year back to their homelands, making their remittances second in value only to oil in world trade.

Lunatics Run Asylum

The city of Chicago manages 1,100 rent-subsidized buildings for poor people and spends nearly $70 million a year on guards and security. It appears to be $70 million largely wasted. In many buildings, drug gangs control the buildings, ignoring guards and sometimes relieving them of their weapons. A spokesman for one of the companies hired by the city, T-Force Security, concedes that gangs control many of the buildings. “They’re not going to allow two security officers in the lobby of a building to . . . stop the[drug] money that’s coming in there,” he says.

Baby-Making Machine

Darcus Howe is a black television talk-show host in Britain. Mr. Howe, who has fathered five children by three different women, recently caused a stir when he explained, “I am a West Indian. That means I make children all the time:” Statistics bear out his low regard for marriage. Forty-three percent of black families are headed by a single parent — three times the figure for whites.

Standing Firm

Ken Hamblin, a black radio talk show host in Denver, shows more grit than any white in standing up to the black establishment. When the National Black Caucus of State Legislators held its 17th annual convention in his city, Mr. Hamblin called them “spooks” and “do-nothings.”

When asked to apologize, Mr. Hamblin refused, calling the state legislators “consummate losers.” “Spare me your pain,” he added, “I’m bored with it.” Is there a single white public figure who would have stuck to his guns so firmly?

In the meantime, the Denver police have compiled a list of 6,500 gang members and potential gang members whom they plan to monitor. Blacks are five percent of the population but account for more than half the names on the list. Hispanics are 12 percent of the population and are about a third of the list. The usual busybodies are outraged by the disproportions, but the police are unruffled. They explain that the list simply reflects reality.

A Fat Settlement

A Boston court has ruled that the 1992 Americans With Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination because of obesity. It upheld a jury award of $100,000 to Bonnie Cook, a woman who was denied a job because she is fat. The defendant, which is the state of Rhode Island, pointed out that obese people are more likely to get sick and need expensive workers’ compensation. The state also argued that obesity can be controlled and therefore should not be treated like disabling conditions that cannot be cured. The judge thought otherwise.

Mrs. Cook is 5 feet, two inches tall, and weighs 320 pounds. She was urged to file the suit by her husband, who is blind.

French Folly

In 1980, the French welfare system was ordered to respect the polygamy of African immigrants. Payments rise with every wife and child, so a man with two wives and 10 babies collects about $23,000 a year from the state. The Washington Times (Dec. 1, 1993) reports that this has created a huge demand for mail-order African brides for immigrants who want higher incomes.

The preferred age for new brides is about 14. Young women are traditionally offered to whoever proposes the highest bride price, and $70 to $100 has been the going rate. Now, in some markets, agents for emigres have bid up the price for an unspoiled adolescent to an unprecedented $7,000-a sum that can be recouped easily if the woman produces babies. Locals are furious, and the multiple wives are not happy either. They are reportedly illiterate, do not speak French, hate their co-wives, and frequently try to poison each other with magic philters.

American Justice

Ernesto Mota was recently arrested for drunken driving in the Oak Forest suburb of Chicago. After police took him to the station they found that he had a lot of cocaine in his pocket. Mr. Mota tried to destroy the evidence by eating it and managed to consume a fair amount before police could stop him. He later went into convulsions and the police called the town’s medics, who barely saved his life.

Mr. Mota is an illegal alien from Mexico, who has been arrested for armed robbery, kidnapping, drunken driving, and drug peddling. Ever since his cocaine lunch, he says, he has not been quite right. He claims that his vision is poor and that his brain has been damaged. A lawyer has agreed to represent him in a $7 million claim against the town for not calling the medics quickly enough.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

The job of the U.S. Merit System Protection Board is to ensure that federal employment follows a strict merit system. According to a new policy, any manager will henceforth be evaluated according to whether he “Promotes, values and demonstrates respect for diversity in the workplace.”

The guidelines do not explain how promotion of diversity is to be squared with the merit system.

Nice Neighbors

Mexico constantly complains about any attempt to restrict free immigration to the United States, but how does it treat Americans? To stay in Mexico for more than 72 hours, an American requires a “visitor renter’s permit,” which requires a formal letter written in Spanish, six passport photos, and a valid passport. All communications with the government must -be in Spanish.

A single person who wants to live in Mexico must prove he has an income of $1,000 a month; married couples must make $1,500 a month. Applicants must also have a Mexican bank account with about $1,500 in it and the account is checked every year. On top of this, Americans must pay the government $71 every year to keep their residency privileges, which do not include the right to work, attend university, or own property. A work permit requires yet more application procedures — all in Spanish, of course — and permission is usually granted only if no Mexican national can be found who can do the job.

No More All-American

The ABC television network has hired Mary Lyn Henry to cast more non-whites for its four soap operas, “All My Children,” “General Hospital,” “Loving,” and “One Life to Live.” “We’re looking to fill a lot of roles with Armenians, Israelis, Hawaiians, Jamaicans,” she explains. “You can’t think ‘all-American’ anymore. I love exotic-looking people. I love to see their origins. I love these mixes.”

Conundrums of our Era

When is a non-white not a minority? Is an immigrant from Nigeria or the Dominican Republic entitled to the race-based privileges of affirmative action? Stanford University has cleared its throat uncomfortably and decided that they are not. Henceforth, foreign-born nonwhite faculty members will not be counted when the university hands out financial rewards for affirmative action.

According to the old policy, any time a department hired a black, American Indian, Puerto Rican, or Mexican, it got a bounty of $35,000 or so (Asian scalps were worth nothing because Stanford has no trouble finding smart Asians). It did not matter if the protected minorities were immigrants, and slightly more than half of the school’s minority teachers were born outside the United States.

Now Stanford has decided that foreigners aren’t quite the role models they had in mind. Kathryn Gillam, assistant provost for faculty affairs, explains that “we do value diversity . . . [but] having somebody who’s born in Zaire doesn’t help them [students] if they were brought up in Chicago.” Now, only if a department hires an American-born protected minority will it get the swag. “Outrageous,” “nativist,” and “blatantly unlawful,” say the immigrant advocates. As usual, there has not been a peep out of the whites (and Asians) who suffer under the policy.

Frank Morris, president of the Council for Historically Black Graduate Schools, should be pleased with Stanford. He has been yelling for the opposite reason: Private employers can report immigrant non-whites to the EEOC as affirmative action successes. “I think it’s an outrage,” he says; “In many cases, our foreign visitors . . . are not disadvantaged.” The poor bloody white man simply can’t get it right.

Chinese Eugenics

China is likely to approve a new eugenics law to reduce the number of “abnormal births.” The draft law would make marriage illegal for anyone with diseases like hepatitis, mental illness, or venereal disease that can be passed on to children. Pregnant women who have been diagnosed with certain hereditary diseases or whose fetuses have been found to be abnormal will be advised to have abortions. The government says that there are ten million “disabled” Chinese living today whose births could have been avoided.

Sore Losers

Every year Walker High School in Jasper, Alabama holds a beauty contest. Competition is keen and feelings run high, so the school chooses judges from outside the community. This year two whites and one black woman judged 33 white and seven black contestants. When the judges chose ten whites as semifinalists, black members of the audience raised a protest and walked out.

Later, Dwight Ingram, who represents 21 local black ministers, complained about the results: “If there had been a bunch of ugly women up there, I’d say OK, but these were the best our black community had to offer. At least two were as qualified as the ones picked to be finalists.” Rev. Ingram’s daughter was one of the contestants.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •


LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I received my January AR and have two comments: (1) You could be America’s greatest patriot since Thomas Jefferson. (2) If I had one wish it would be that you could be elected the next president of our (once) great nation.

Edward Schaefer, Arlington, Va.

Sir — I have received the November and December 1993, and January 1994 issues of American Renaissance and have perhaps two preferred articles: the well done commentary about the book Race, by John Baker, and your enjoyable answer to Mr. Meldahl in its first part — but only in its first part.

Considered as a whole I accept almost completely your racial ideas. But, Mr. Taylor, I cannot accept it when you speak about Mexicans as “non-whites.” The concept of Mexican is historical and cultural; it is not a racial concept. There is almost a 10 percent white Mexican population, the other 90 percent mainly composed of American aborigines and Mestizos. My mother was one of these 10 percent white Mexicans and she was proud of her Mexican fatherland. My father was a Confederate from Tennessee, and I was born in Memphis, living in Mexico since my seven years old, and in Spain since my twenty of age.

You can compare my pride of being partially Mexican, and white, with the pride of a white South African (English or Boer). There are ten percent whites in Mexico, 10 percent whites in South Africa. I pray you: do not speak against “Mexico” and “the Mexicans,” but against the illegal Mexican migrants and against the process of miscegenation in Mexico, as in any other nation. To insult Mexico is like to insult South Africa.

Let us work together — Canadians, Yankees, Confederates, Mexicans of white race, all of whom are Americans — against the invasion.

Peter Stoneman, Madrid, Spain

Sir — In the January issue you note that Jesse Jackson has backed away from his former blame-whitey-for-everything position and is now encouraging young blacks to behave responsibly. As your readers may well know, he has now been quoted as saying, “there is nothing more painful to me . . . than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery — then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.” I am glad to see that this recent remark has been much more widely quoted than his confession that when he worked as a waiter he spat in the food he served to whites.

Tony Collins, Mobile, Ala.

Sir — I was pleased to see your Nov., 1993 article about the rise of Islam in America. I have been following the Nation of Islam for some time and would like to pass along some recent news. On November 29 of last year, a spokesman for Louis Farrakhan named Khalid Abdul Muhammad received $2,650 for a speech at Kean College in Union, New Jersey. He said that when blacks gain political control in South Africa, they should give whites 24 hours to clear out and then kill any who stay behind:

We kill the women. We kill the babies. We kill the blind. We kill the cripples. We kill them all . . . When you get through killing them all, go to the goddamn graveyard and dig up the grave and kill them a-goddamn-gain because they didn’t die hard enough.

Please note that although this killing is supposed to be going on in South Africa, the subjects of these sentences are “we” and “you.” The crowd laughed and applauded at these exhortations.

On December 18, Louis Farrakhan himself addressed a crowd of nearly 25,000 in New York City. When he mentioned Colin Ferguson, the black man who killed six people and wounded many more on the Long Island Rail Road, the crowd erupted in whistles and cheers.

I also note in passing that on Dec. 3 the U.S. Army acquired its first Muslim chaplain, Captain Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad. Captain Muhammad was born Myron Maxwell, the loth of 11 children. He says that at one time he was a black separatist but he is now a follower of the more moderate W. Deen Mohammed.

M. Landrum, Brooklyn, New York

Sir — Your exchange with Mr. Meldahl raises the fundamental question: How is one to defend one’s group interests without malice? When I read that children of European descent are a minority in the California school system may I at least wonder out loud what effect that will have on my grand daughter? I am an airline pilot and have learned that a large airline uses the following employment criteria: 3,700 flight hours for white men versus 800 hours for women and minorities. How am I to voice my views without expressing “hatred or malice”? Would it make any difference how I put my objections?

I have been assigned a Nigerian copilot one month and a Caribbean black the following month. The same month I met a young white pilot with a family of attractive children, working for peanuts for a small feeder airline out of Nebraska. My company won’t even look at him. This kind of thing is going on all over the country. How am I to express myself without “malice”?

Harvey Taylor, East Nicolaus, Cal.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •