February 1995

American Renaissance magazine
Vol 6, No. 2 February 1995

 

CONTENTS

Separation: Is There an Alternative?
Separation for Preservation
Book Review: For Whom the Bell Curves
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

Separation: Is There an Alternative?

What must be done to preserve Western Civilization.

by Rabbi Mayer Schiller

Union is Dissolved!

If current trends continue, some time in the middle of the next century the majority of this nation’s inhabitants will be nonwhites. As has been shown repeatedly in the pages of American Renaissance, the presence of large numbers of nonwhites irrevocably changes the character of a school, neighborhood, city or state. Most whites find these changes so disagreeable that they simply move away. However, they can do this only because there are still many areas of the country that are overwhelmingly white. What will happen if whites become a minority?

Even before whites are reduced to a minority, the shift towards a largely nonwhite population will be felt in all areas of life. Taxes, crime, and disease will rise. “Reverse discrimination” will become the norm. Ever larger parts of the country will be essentially off limits to whites, even as government resorts to ever more draconian measures to enforce integration. Legislatures and schools dominated by nonwhites will rewrite our history, belittle our heritage, overturn our monuments, and abandon the cultural norms of our civilization. This is the great crisis of our times.

As the demographic tide shifts, it will be futile to defend “the canon” of Western literature or, in the South, to try to keep the Confederate flag flying over state houses. A faculty that is largely black and Hispanic will not teach Melville; nor will nonwhite legislators assemble beneath a banner they see as a symbol of white consciousness.

Although they indicate a mood of uneasiness in the country, Republican political victories will do nothing but reduce taxes in the short run — if that. In the long run, Republicans show no desire to stop the change in America’s population. Of course, this great change renders mainstream political activity as we now know it virtually irrelevant, but to speak about race openly is to be banished from public discourse as a “racist.”

On one point I do not wish to be misunderstood. Obviously, large numbers of blacks and Hispanics are not violent, of low IQ, or disinclined to work. The question is not whether all members of a racial group behave in a certain way, but whether enough do so to make the societies they create undesirable for whites. To answer this question in the affirmative is not, as leftist moralists would have us believe, an ethical flaw. At the simplest level, it is no more than the desire to secure an orderly and safe life for oneself and one’s descendants.

Will Nonwhites Change?

The prevailing wisdom is that demographic change is not a problem because, with enough time and effort, nonwhites will become more like whites. Liberals, despite the clear evidence of the past forty years, still insist that if we give more money to minorities, discriminate against a few more whites, and suppress the cultural and historical memories of Euro-Americans, the races can be made interchangeable.

“Respectable” conservatives seem to think that the solution is to abolish welfare and establish more “enterprise zones,” where minorities can start businesses. The free market will then prevail and Republicans can find out whether shopping malls really do transform the soul of a people. (Perhaps they do, but certainly not for the better.)

It may be that the Christian Right and the “paleo-conservatives” have the least fanciful plan for minorities: A revival of religion, values, and manners from pre-1960s America — that is, from before the triumph of liberal decadence — will improve minority behavior. This is not completely wrong-headed. If our schools still used McGuffey Readers and taught virtue and discipline as they used to, all Americans would be very different.

However, there are three practical considerations that render this dream illusory. First, there is virtually no chance that inner-city schools will adopt the beliefs and practices of Middle America of the 1950s. Indeed, there is little reason to think that whites themselves have much interest in the ways of their ancestors. Second, how quickly could this revolution in values come about? What is the chance of a spiritual and moral reawakening in Harlem before nonwhites become a majority? Third, even if a return to traditional values radically reduced crime and poverty among nonwhites, it would not bridge the IQ gap. America would still face the prospect of entering the 21st century as a nation in which many people were incapable of functioning in a modern society.

At an even more fundamental level, are the symbols, myths, songs, memories, manners, and dreams of white America relevant to large numbers of blacks and Hispanics? Should they be? If not, we are back where we started; as the number of whites dwindles, Western Civilization disappears with them.

Minority Conservatives

It is important to note that there are black and Hispanic conservatives who are struggling to persuade their people to behave responsibly. They deserve the support of all fair-minded people. Their writings and movements should interest AR readers because they raise the question that all who believe in racial differences — be they genetic or deeply cultural — must answer honestly: How are we to approach those minorities who live and advocate lives of civility, who even acknowledge the European nature of our nation and live in deference to it?

We should support minority efforts at self-help. We should welcome black and Hispanic spokesmen who advocate self-reliance, religion, and the virtues of our civilization. Much could be accomplished if theirs were the dominant minority voices.

But even in the unlikely event of a triumph by minority conservatives, our attitude towards them should be no different from that toward Asian immigrants (who often show lower levels of crime and poverty than whites). We can welcome a small number of people of different races into this nation if they embrace our civilization, but we cannot allow the nation to lose its European identity. No people is obligated to abandon its national identity — in which race plays a significant part.

Any large group of nonwhites, no matter how well-intentioned, will eventually change our society in permanent ways. A nation dominated by blacks, Asians, or Hispanics, or one that is a majority-less farrago of races cannot help but be different from one that is dominated by whites. We have every right to prefer to live in a society of our own making, and we should not be compelled to open our nation and culture to the changes that large-scale racial incursion inevitably bring. For this reason, long-run demographic change demands a solution beyond anything that can be offered by minority conservatives.

Emigration or Separation?

What, then, are whites to do?

One undesirable possibility would be to abandon an increasingly third-world United States and return, en masse to Europe. This would assume that Europe had solved its own racial problems by strictly limiting nonwhite immigration. But would Europe want another 100 million citizens? In the waning days of white rule, the governments of Rhodesia and South Africa tried to prevent mass exodus by making it illegal to take assets out of the country. A black-Hispanic American government would probably do the same thing, turning most whites into penniless refugees.

Another possibility, which is nothing more than an extension of what most whites do now, is enclave existence. Today, whites pay a substantial premium to live in their own neighborhoods, free of blacks and Hispanics. They are also willing to pay for private schools for their children, in addition to the taxes they pay for public schools. For most whites, this is an acceptable exchange.

However, as the population shifts, as crime increases, and the government resorts to ever more ingenious methods of forced integration, enclaves will become precarious refuges. In South Africa, ever since the breakdown of apartheid, white neighborhoods have started hiring private security patrols. This is already happening in some American suburbs, and may become the norm in the future. Whites will develop various ways to barricade their neighborhoods against the “rising tide of color,” but will a nonwhite government allow whites to live separately and to protect themselves by private means? It is more likely that government will force “low-income housing” into all white areas; even if it does not, whites in their enclaves will still face oppressive taxation and systematic “affirmative” persecution.

What then remains? Separation. Whites should enter into serious dialogue with black and Hispanic nationalists who seek to establish racially based nations within the territory of the United States.

Opposition to this idea is most likely to come from whites. Many blacks and Hispanics already have a firmly developed racial consciousness, whether instinctual or sophisticated. Many have no interest in the study or practice of European culture, and this is neither wrong nor surprising. What remains to be achieved is a large-scale awakening of racial consciousness among whites, without which no serious dialogue can begin about the mechanics of separation.

Those who are daunted by the prospect of separation should once again consider the alternatives. Current trends will ineluctably reduce whites to minority status, and there is every sign that hostility to whites and to their culture only grows as nonwhites gain numbers and influence. Aside from emigration, the probable outcomes are some kind of violent resolution of racial conflicts or the reduction of whites to a persecuted minority in an increasingly lawless, third-world society. The former would be horrible for all people and the latter would be intolerable for the people whose ancestors built this nation.

At present, the idea of dividing the nation into racial zones seems impossible. (For fairness sake, in the interests of those who wish to continue the grand experiment, there could be a multiracial area. It would be interesting to see how many white liberals would want to live there.) However, there are still large parts of the country that are predominantly white. They could secede. This seems a wild prospect today, but as we move into the next century the burden of racial redistribution of wealth will become increasingly unbearable, and the spectacle of city after city following the path of Detroit and Washington will continue. Who is to say what the citizens of Montana or North Dakota may decide to do?

Indeed, it need not be whole states that secede. Groups of counties could declare independence from Washington. If these efforts were coordinated to occur at the same time their effect could be very powerful. How would the central government react? Given the size of the country and the notorious mismanagement of third world governments, it may not matter how it reacts.

Of course, none of this can happen without profound change in the hearts of whites and this does not now seem likely. Nevertheless, there is simmering unrest in the land. Given clear thinking and courageous leaders we may be able to move beyond the clichés that now govern us.

Cultural Secession Comes First

In order to lay the groundwork for political separation there must first be a recognition that the present government, media, schools and courts are at war with the beliefs and values of this civilization — indeed, with its very identity. Many Americans already feel this way, though not many have an articulate sense of the racial dimension of the problem. Some see the problem primarily in religious or cultural terms. They are nevertheless allies of any American who wishes for the survival of Western Civilization on this continent.

Taken all together, Americans who feel that the nation derailed after the 1950s are a significant percentage. They may even be a majority. Only for so long will they fail to see the racial aspect of the crisis. They may soon awake — but for now they sleep.

Furthermore, so much of our civilization’s crisis goes beyond race. As Fr. Tacelli wondered in the previous issue of American Renaissance, even if whites were to separate from nonwhites would their culture then consist of the likes of Madonna?

In fact, our unwillingness to defend racial identity is linked to a severing of ties to our total civilizational identity as it manifests itself in religion, culture, family, and the norms and manners that Russell Kirk aptly termed, “the unbought graces of life.” These graces once imbued us with a sense of honor, dignity, courtesy, and piety. As these were abandoned in post World War II America, we lost a clear sense of who we are and how we should live. It was this breakdown that led to a weakening of racial awareness.

Until Western Man recovers his ability courageously to assert his own identity, with all that this affirmation would entail, there will be no racial defense. This will involve a personal, familial and eventually communal immersion in the faiths, culture, rituals and manners of the West. It will demand that we shun the vast cultural apparatus of our decadent times in all its manifestations. The first stage of a counter-revolution then, is to believe, live, and teach as men of the West.

As one who has long felt a deep attachment to the various forms of Western faith, culture, and race, the need for a program of peaceful, dignified racial separation seems axiomatic. At the very least one must secede personally from the current chaos of mind and soul, while encouraging communal and eventually political secession as well.

A Mature Racial Awareness

Moreover, any serious attempt at Euro-American advocacy must be divorced from the thuggish image so dear to the media. We must constantly affirm the moral foundations of racialism and emphasize that all races have the same right to self-determination.

It is vitally necessary that Euro-Americans leave behind the hierarchical racial forms of the past. Neither colonialism, segregation, apartheid or repatriation to Liberia are in our future. Whether these systems were evil, as the common wisdom has it, or merely attempts to cope with racial realities is now an academic question.

We must convey the message in word and deed that it is not those who seek the survival of all races who are “haters.” The haters are, instead, the multiracialists who would deny men the consolation and joy of freely expressing their racial and cultural identities. They are working to destroy those identities, physically and spiritually.

Separation is the only way to preserve the uniqueness of all races. Blacks and Hispanics would be free to govern, educate, and live according to their own standards rather than those of another race. They might also be more capable of lifting themselves up once the psychological crutch of “white racism” were removed.

Finally, if whites are to have a future, it lies only in the direction of amicable disengagement. This may seem fanciful today, but events will ensure that it is the only path to dignified survival.1

Religious men may believe that the great crisis of Western Man is his loss of faith. This is true insofar as loss of faith affects our prospects for Eternity and undermines morality. However, the decline of civility, the eclipse of white culture, and the dwindling numbers of Euro-Americans represent threats that, unlike loss of faith, cannot be reversed through repentance.2

I am, nevertheless, haunted by the image of nonwhite conservatives. I feel constrained to add that racial separation need not be absolute, but might allow exceptions according to exacting standards.

Rabbi Schiller is the author of The (Guilty) Conscience of a Conservative. He teaches Bible and Talmud in New York City.

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ARTICLE

Separation for Preservation

Another perspective on the need for separation.

by Richard McCulloch

Since it began publication, American Renaissance has provided ample documentation to show that a multiracial society is detrimental to the interests of European-Americans. But it has not discussed the gravest cause for concern — the fact that in the long term a European population cannot survive in a multiracial society. Nor has it discussed the possible alternatives to the current multiracial trend. There could be many possible solutions for the minor problems of multiracialism, but there is only one effective solution for the major problem — the racial destruction of the European elements caused by intermixture and replacement — and that solution is separation.

Separation might not be necessary to solve the problems of crime, delinquency, economic inefficiency, cultural and educational decline, etc., but it is necessary for racial preservation. The reason may not be self-evident, and therefore requires some explanation.

It was reproductive isolation that brought about the existence of different races. When different populations are isolated they cannot interbreed, and consequently they evolve in different directions, developing their own unique ensemble of genetic traits. Over the course of many generations this results in the evolution of different races (and, if the process eventually results in an inability to interbreed, the evolution of different species).

Reproductive isolation requires the absence of physical contact between diverging populations. As a practical matter, this requires geographic separation. If reproductive isolation is lost, the different races will intermix and blend into one race, destroying their racially unique traits. It is a simple matter of either-or: Either there is reproductive isolation or there is racial destruction. Biologists are aware of this rule, and some have been bold enough to confirm its application to human populations, but sociologists have generally evaded or denied the implications.

Given the findings of sociobiology, it should now be a fundamental axiom of sociology that when different human races inhabit the same territory they will eventually be reduced to one race through a gradual process of intermixture and/or replacement. The more extensive the contact and interaction between the races the more rapid the process of interbreeding will tend to be, but whatever the rate — slow or fast — it will occur. This fact is either not known or evaded by far too many people, permitting multiracial conditions to proceed towards their inevitable consequences without those consequences being recognized and addressed.

Thus, too many people falsely believe that the different races can continue to exist in a multiracial society without significant intermixture, but intermixture is an unavoidable consequence of multiracial conditions. The blame for these destructive consequences should be placed on all those who promote multiracialism and oppose isolation. This is true even for people who ostensibly oppose racial intermixture, for if they support multiracialism — or oppose separation, which amounts to the same thing — they are supporting intermixture.

The presence of significant numbers of unassimilable racial elements (those that cannot be assimilated in significant numbers without noticeably changing the racial traits of a population) effectively prevents a country from being a secure homeland where a race can be preserved. To admit unassimilable elements into a nation is to accept them into the nation’s gene pool, to accept intermixture and/or replacement, and to accept the transformation of the population away from the indigenous type and toward the unassimilable types.

This is especially true for the European races, and most of all for the Northern European race, the founding and still the majority American racial type. Due to the recessiveness of its genetic traits and its low birthrate (possibly aggravated by an adverse reaction to multiracial conditions) it probably requires reproductive isolation more than any other race if it is be preserved.

For the Northern European race, the consequence of extensive intermixture is racial destruction. Jefferson and Lincoln recognized this, and made proposals for racial separation, although in their time the physical difficulties involved were great. The tremendous advances in transportation made in the past century have reduced the main obstacles to separation to a matter of attitude. Unfortunately, the emotional difficulties of separation — as well as the extent of racial destruction or loss — increase with each instance of intermixture, and will steadily worsen as long as multiracial conditions persist. Separation will only become more difficult as time passes and the process of intermixture proceeds on its destructive course.

The American Renaissance review [Oct. 1994] of my book, The Racial Compact, is titled “Thinking the Unthinkable.” My book advocates racial preservation and independence and, as a necessary means to these ends, racial separation. Unfortunately, in the present cultural context, the title is quite appropriate, for in the present culture, racial separation is regarded as unthinkable.

But why should it be unthinkable? Why should monoracial existence — the condition in which the different races were created, in which nearly all races existed until very recently, and in which the vast majority of the non-European races still live — be unthinkable? Why should the condition that the European races require for continued existence be unthinkable?

To say that racial separation is unthinkable is to say that the continued existence of the European races is unthinkable. This is, in effect, precisely what the dominant culture is saying. To oppose separation is effectively to oppose the continued existence of the European races, effectively to propose their ultimate destruction or extinction.

So why should racial intermixture and the destruction of the European races be opposed? It is a sad commentary on the present state of our culture that this question should even have to be asked, but well-meaning people do ask it whenever someone publicly expresses support for European racial preservation. For those of us who love the European races — whether because of their distinctive physical traits and beauty, or because of their unique mental traits, which have created the most dynamic and progressive of all human cultures — the reason to oppose European racial extinction is nothing more than the desire to preserve that which one loves. For people of the European race, the reason should be the most compelling of all: to preserve and continue one’s own kind. For those who believe every race has a right to exist, and thus a right to the conditions it requires for existence, the choice between racial preservation and destruction becomes a clearly ethical matter, with preservation as the moral choice.

I propose a new paradigm of racial relations that promises racial rights, preservation and independence and that opposes racial destruction. Consequently, it requires racial separation. “Realists” might consider separation to be hopelessly difficult and “unrealistic,” but in reality it is required for preservation. Social or legal restrictions on intermixture, or the reduction or abolition of non-European immigration, could slow intermixture, but not stop it. They could make racial death come slower rather than faster, but the ultimate outcome will remain unchanged. Half measures will only delay the inevitable and amount to nothing in the long run.

The European races deserve better than the choice between a fast death and a slow death. They deserve the choice of racial preservation, of continued existence for the numberless generations yet to come. They deserve a moral and non-destructive alternative that recognizes and protects the legitimate rights and interests of all races while offering them the full measure they require for long-term preservation. That full measure is separation.

Richard McCulloch is the author of The Ideal and Destiny, Destiny of Angles, The Nordish Quest, and The Racial Compact.

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BOOK REVIEW

For Whom the Bell Curves

This book, and its reception, mark an important intellectual breakthrough.

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Free Press, 1994, 845 pp., $30.00.

reviewed by Jared Taylor

Despite the blizzard of indignant reviews it has provoked, The Bell Curve is largely devoted to proving something that virtually all Americans once knew, and that many who have not had the sense knocked out of them by a college education still know: A person’s intelligence is pretty well set at birth, and is likely to make a huge difference in how he turns out. Liberals pretend not to believe this, and since they set the intellectual tone for the country, the book has caused a scandal. Let the scandal continue. It has already pushed sales past three hundred thousand, and some of the people who buy this book will actually read it. They will find that it demolishes the assumptions behind nearly every social policy of the last three decades.

The NLSY

At the heart of the book is an extensive analysis of something called the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). This is a huge study, begun in 1979, of more than 12,000 American young people who were carefully chosen to be representative of the nation as a whole. The survey seems to have been conceived according to the classic, liberal conviction that a person’s family or school background causes social pathology; the study was meant to gather information to prove it. Like almost all contemporary social research, the NLSY ignored intelligence as a possible causal factor.

IQ scores for NLSY participants were collected by pure coincidence. The U.S. Army needed to update the norms for the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), and rather than go to the bother of finding another nationally representative sample, it simply gave the test to the NLSY participants. Since the AFQT is the equivalent of an IQ test, the NLSY suddenly and accidentally made it possible to show whether intelligence — independently of family background — predicts success or failure in life.

As the authors of The Bell Curve point out in relentless detail, intelligence is the crucial variable. The graph on this page is only one of many from the book that make this point dramatically. The steep curve shows the effect IQ differences have on the likelihood of otherwise average members of the NLSY sample being poor — average in both age and parents’ socio-economic status (SES). The gentler curve shows the effect of parents’ SES on the likelihood of people of average intelligence being poor.

This graph shows that people with average IQs had about an eleven percent chance of being poor if their parents were from the very bottom of the social scale. But for people with similarly average intelligence, having the most upscale parents possible reduced their chances of being poor by only about half — to five percent.

Probability of being in poverty

Intelligence was vastly more important than parents’ SES. Among people who had entirely average family backgrounds, the least intelligent had about a 26 percent chance of being poor, whereas the most intelligent had perhaps a two percent chance of being poor. IQ — for people who came from average families — made a 13-fold difference in the likelihood of being poor. Family background — for people with average IQs — made only a two-fold difference. In similar manner, The Bell Curve demonstrates that low intelligence is by far the most important predictor for most of the other things the country is presumably worried about: crime, welfare, illegitimacy, unemployment, etc.

The difference IQ makes can be expressed in other ways. For example, 82 percent of the poor people in the NLSY sample have below-average IQs, as do 90 percent of the chronic welfare recipients. Ninety-five percent of the children living in poverty have mothers with below-average IQs. Low-IQ parents also tend to be bad parents; child abuse and neglect are overwhelmingly concentrated among the poor and unintelligent.

Data like these are tremendously important. Conventional liberalism has always taken it for granted that schools or childhood environment rather than native intelligence makes people succeed or fail. This is why liberalism has exhausted itself trying to “enrich” the households of the poor and beat a high-school education into boneheads. The Bell Curve shows that the entire uplift movement has willfully ignored the variable that matters most: IQ. Fiddling with Head Start and school lunches is largely a waste of time if it does not raise intelligence.

As the authors suggest, liberals actually know this. That is why, despite their hostility towards IQ, they trumpet the news whenever they think they have found a way to raise it. The Bell Curve carefully sifts through the data to show that not even the most intensive versions of Head Start have an enduring effect on intelligence or on school performance, despite extravagant claims by their boosters. As the book explains, this is not only because intelligence is largely hereditary, but because researchers cannot figure out what actually affects the part of it that is theoretically subject to environmental manipulation. IQ can be lowered through severe malnutrition or sensory deprivation, but within a very broad range of ordinary human environments, little can be done to raise it.

Racial Differences

As if all this were not bad enough, the authors also discuss race and IQ. Although this part of the book has received the most attention, it is nothing more than a summary of familiar data. Far more interesting is how Messrs. Herrnstein and Murray use the racial data from the NSLY. It is well known that blacks and Hispanics have lower average IQs than whites and that, as groups, their behavior bears the stigmata of lower intelligence. But what do we find when we compare people of different races who have the same IQ scores? The results are edifying.

For example, although whites are two and a half times more likely than blacks to graduate from college, blacks with a typical college-graduate IQ (114) are 36 percent more likely than whites of the same IQ to graduate from college. Likewise, although NLSY whites are 67 percent more likely than blacks to be in what The Bell Curve calls “high-IQ jobs,” blacks with the requisite IQ (117) are 2.6 times more likely than whites of the same IQ to hold such jobs. This would appear to be clear evidence that blacks benefit from racial preferences.

Despite these preferences, controlling for IQ does not make the undesirable differences in racial behavior go away. The likelihood of various forms of failure among nonwhites can be expressed as a multiple of the white likelihood for the same behavior. For example, blacks in the NLSY sample are 3.7 times more likely than whites to be poor, and Hispanics are 2.6 times more likely. What about a comparison only of those blacks, whites, and Hispanics with the same IQ of 100? The multiples diminish, but do not go away: Blacks — 1.8x, Hispanics — 1.5x. The chart below summarizes other similar findings.

Multiples of White Pathology Rates (Unadjusted, and Adjusted for IQ)
Black Hispanic
Poor 3.7x 2.6x
IQ Adjusted 1.8x 1.5x
On Welfare 3.8x 2.3x
IQ Adjusted 2.5x 1.2x
Had Illegitimate Child 5.2x 1.9x
IQ Adjusted 5.1x 1.7x
Incarcerated 6.5x 3.0x
IQ Adjusted 2.5x 1.5x

What do these data mean? Society at large — at least universities and employers — appears to give nonwhites preferential treatment. Yet many fail to take advantage of these preferences, and are more likely than whites of the same IQs to be poor, go on welfare, or go to jail. When it comes to having illegitimate children, restricting the comparison to groups with the same IQs has virtually no effect: Hispanics and blacks are still twice and five times more likely than whites to have children out of wedlock.

Whatever causes these persistent differences between groups with the same IQs probably explains why it is that when blacks and whites get the same SAT scores, the whites are likely to get better grades in college. To use the technical term, standardized tests “overpredict” black success. The data on racial multiples for social failure can be viewed the same way: IQ scores overpredict nonwhite law-abidingness, self-sufficiency, likelihood of having a legitimate child, etc. In other words, even when blacks and Hispanics are as smart as whites, they still do not behave like whites. (It would be interesting to have comparable data for Asians.)

Though The Bell Curve ducks the issue, this suggests that there is more to racial differences than IQ. There may be differences in hormone levels, willingness to defer gratification, self discipline, or any of the other areas that Philippe Rushton has investigated. These would account for greater failure levels for nonwhites compared to whites with the same intelligence.

Liberals might argue that nonwhite deviance remains high even when IQ is held constant, only because “racist” white society does not recognize the abilities of nonwhites. Yet the data on employment and college graduation suggest that “racist” white society over recognizes nonwhite ability.

There is one more complicating piece to this puzzle: According to NLSY data, whites and nonwhites of the same IQ are paid almost identical wages. This suggests equal treatment by employers, and contradicts the earlier suggestion that nonwhites enjoy racial preferences on the job. However, if the races really do differ in the many ways that Prof. Rushton has found — that is, not just in intelligence — and these differences make nonwhites less desirable employees, paying them at the same rate for the same IQ is a form of preference. At the very least, blacks are receiving equal treatment, which belies the liberal argument that “racism” explains nonwhite deviance.

Future Generations

Some of The Bell Curve’s most important and provocative findings are about dysgenics. The authors point out that dull people are having more children than bright people. They are also having them at earlier ages, so we are likely to have five large generations of dull people by the time we have had four small generations of bright people.

Since the children of NLSY women have been tested for intelligence, we now know the extent to which low IQ is being passed on from one generation to the next. For example, women in the bottom 20 percent of IQ (87 and below) produced 72 percent of the children with IQs of 80 or below.

The NLSY data also suggests that the racial gaps in intelligence are widening. The black-white IQ gap for NLSY mothers is 13.2 points; the black-white gap for their children is 17.5 points. Likewise, the Hispanic-white IQ gap for mothers is 12.2, while the gap for children is 14.1. As the authors point out, since these gaps are between mothers (not the whole NSLY population) and their children, there is no obvious reason why they should be growing wider.

Graph of Bell Curve Review

It is likely that dysgenic trends are pushing America’s average IQ down by one or two points every generation. This may not seem like much, but a small shift in the average makes a big difference. Messrs. Herrnstein and Murray statistically manipulated the NLSY sample to see what effect a three-point drop — or a three point rise — in average IQ would have on levels of social failure. The above graph shows the results. For example, lowering the average IQ by just three points increases the high school dropout rate by 14 percent, while raising the average IQ by the same amount reduces it by 30 percent.

What appear to be insignificant shifts at the average could quickly change the entire profile of our population and make it impossible to support institutions we take for granted. The long-term consequences of differential birth rates are an extremely serious matter, but one that American society resolutely ignores.

On the other hand, it is worth noting that The Bell Curve does not assume an inevitable association between low IQ and social pathology. It points out that the explosion of crime and illegitimacy in the 1960s was so sudden it cannot have been caused by dysgenic drift. Before that decade, people of low intelligence were coping with life better than they did after it. The social forces that were loosed upon the country — and the authors are candid about not entirely understanding them — hit all Americans, but they hit people with low IQs hardest.

A Wide-Ranging Work

This review has touched on only a few of the subjects that The Bell Curve covers in fascinating detail. For example, the book describes how the demands of a modern economy are segregating smart people from the rest of the population, both occupationally and residentially. It shows that the best and easiest way for an employer to get a good work force is to give job-seekers a 12-minute intelligence test. It discusses the damaging effect of massive immigration from low-IQ, nonwhite countries. It describes the tyrannical consequences of government attempts to force equality upon unequal people. It includes an excellent summary of how affirmative action really works, and it describes how schools lavish so much attention on dimwits that gifted children are shortchanged. The book is stuffed with hard data and good arguments.

So where do we go from here? Most of the book’s recommendations are “controversial” but obvious: abolish affirmative action, restrict immigration, end welfare, beef up programs for gifted children. One cannot expect these authors to go any further than this.

As for race, they seem to think it is nothing more than a statistical artifact. They write that if the country stops counting by race and treats people as individuals, “group differences can take their appropriately insignificant place in affecting American life.” This naive view is perhaps obligatory even for people who break other taboos, but it need not overly trouble us. The Bell Curve is a great leap forward in the debate about the forces that are grinding our country down. It is a remarkable achievement, a milestone on the road back to national sanity.

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IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

A Story You Didn’t Hear

Auburn Calloway joined the Navy through an affirmative action program. He became a pilot, but had problems with the job, and left to work for Flying Tigers. He was dismissed for poor performance not long before the company was acquired by Federal Express. The new owners rehired the black pilot. However, his work and his attitude were still so bad that Federal Express scheduled a termination hearing for April 8, 1994.

Mr. Calloway decided to strike first. On the 7th of April, he was to fly as co-pilot on a DC-10 out of the Memphis airport where Federal Express has its headquarters. The captain was a small white man, and the second officer was a white woman. Once the plane was airborne, Mr. Calloway planned to murder the two whites, turn back to Memphis, and crash the plane into Federal Express headquarters. There are often hundreds of aircraft on the Fed-Ex tarmac, many of them being fueled. Thousands of employees work in and around the headquarters building. If a fully-fueled DC-10 had hit the area it could have been a massacre of spectacular proportions.

What didn’t happen

Fortunately, the staffing for the flight was changed, and three white men were assigned as crew. Mr. Calloway was no longer needed on the flight, but he was not to be denied his holocaust. He requested permission to fly with the crew as a passenger, and this was granted. He boarded the plane with a guitar case.

As the DC-10 climbed through 18,000 feet, Mr. Calloway opened the case and took out two sledge hammers, two claw hammers, a spear gun, and a combat knife. He attacked and injured all three crewmen before they could react. The co-pilot then put the plane into a dive, which pinned Mr. Calloway to the ceiling of the cockpit. He turned on the auto-pilot, and the three battled Mr. Calloway as the plane headed back towards Memphis. Mr. Calloway is a large man and holds a black belt in karate. He was not fully subdued until a ground crew boarded the plane, and even then he tried to kill a paramedic.

As a result of the struggle, the co-pilot is paralyzed on his right side and cannot work. The pilot’s left ear was cut off. The second officer’s wounds have healed, but his head is misshapened. At least they are alive, as are untold numbers of Federal Express employees who would have died if Mr. Calloway had carried out his plan. [Roy Wayne, Federal Express — an epic survival tale, The national Educator, Nov., 1994, p. 1.]

We would be curious if any readers have heard this astonishing story, which comes to us via a newsletter called The National Educator (Box 333, Fullerton, CA 92632).

What’s in a Word?

Raymond Tittman is a white American whose ancestors lived for several generations in Tanzania. He applied to Georgetown University Law School as an African-American, and was accepted. When he arrived on campus, Georgetown refused to enroll Mr. Tittman, claiming he had lied. African-American, they explained, means black. [What am I?, Counterpoint, Nov. 1994, p. 23.]

Never Forgiven

The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced a grant of $340,000 to the American Library Association so that it can mount a traveling exhibition called “A More Perfect Union — Japanese Internment During World War II.” [Commint, no date] Even worse than the exhibition’s incongruous name is what it symbolizes. The nation has already apologized to the Japanese; it has even paid survivors $20,000 each; but the sins of the white man must not be forgotten.

The National Park Service is also helping to keep the memory alive. In 1993 it opened Manzanar National Monument, at the site of one of the detention camps in central California. [Frank Clifford, Ethnic Imbalance threatens to erode U.S. National parks, SJ Merc News, 11/28/94, p. 1A.]

Gone With Apartheid

The demise of white rule has brought some rarely publicized changes to the moral tone of South Africa. The white regime was so closely associated with the Dutch Reformed Church that the latter was often called the National Party at prayer. Christianity underlay the government’s strict bans on pornography, prostitution, and homosexuality.

The new, black regime has cast all this aside. Streetwalkers now openly ply their trade, “swingers” clubs have opened, hard pornography is on sale, and homosexuality is sympathetically portrayed on national television. South Africa could become the first nation on earth to legalize homosexual marriage. [Bill Keller, Apartheid’s Gone, and anything goes, NYT, 12/28/94, p. A7.]

The country is also on a name-changing binge. The names of Jan Smuts and Hendrik Verwoerd have disappeared from streets, airports, schools, and buildings. World-famous Kruger National Park is likely to be renamed, and the names of whites were recently removed from 12 dams and waterworks. The South African Broadcasting Corporation and South African Airways are reducing their use of Afrikaans. [This Week in South Africa, Nov. 29-Dec.5, 1994, p. 2.]

Purity Amid the Pines

The Scots insist on racial purity — at least for pine trees. The Scots pine is a stately conifer that flourishes all over Europe. Everywhere they look alike, but analysis of organic chemicals in the sap has revealed slight genetic differences between the strains that grow in Scotland and those in Lapland or Norway. There are even small differences between pines that grow in different regions of Scotland.

Scottish law now requires that all different subspecies be kept separate. Anyone who wants to grow a Scots pine must plant not just a native one, but the correct regional variety. [Morally pineless, Economist, 10/22/94, p. 101.] Separation for preservation.

Judge for Yourself

A federal appeals court judge in San Francisco has struck down an Arizona law that required state employees to speak and write only English when doing government business. In his decision the judge wrote, “the diverse and multicultural character of our society is widely recognized as . . . among our greatest strengths.” [English-only law fails court test, SJ Merc News, 12/8/94, p. 14A.]

Young Murderer Goes Free

In the Nov. 1994 issue we wrote about a 10-year-old Chicago black boy who broke into the home of an 84-year-old white woman, beat her, tied her up, and slit her throat. He claims he did this because she used to call him “nigger.” The boy, whose name cannot be released because of his tender years, has since been convicted of first-degree murder, put on probation, and released to the custody of his grandmother. People in the Lithuanian neighborhood in which the victim lived are furious.

Although a new law that took effect in January of this year would have provided for the boy to be put in a locked juvenile home, his sentencing took place in December. The judge had only the option of sending him to a mental institution, but experts found the lad entirely sane. [Courtenay Edelhart & Susan Kuczka, His hands tied, judge lets 11-year-old killer go free, Chi Trib, Dec. 9, 1994, p. 1.]

Into the Dark Ages

Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian novelist who has won the Nobel prize. He has publicly criticized the Nigerian military government, so the soldiers decided to arrest him. Mr. Soyinka was tipped off just in time and fled to France. “It’s very strange for those of us who thought Nigeria was the great black hope of Africa,” he observed sadly at a press conference; “Nigeria is going backwards, retreating into the Dark Ages.” [AP, Nobel prize winner flees, Post and Courier, 11/22/94, p. 18A.]

D is for Dinkins

David Dinkins, former Mayor of New York City, teaches a graduate course in public policy at Columbia University. Students do not consider him a success. “He reads his lectures as if they were political speeches — and they are,” says one student. “It’s two hours of Reagan-bashing,” says another.

A typical class involves a 20-minute lecture by Mr. Dinkins — usually a defense of his actions as mayor — followed by a talk by a former aide. Rosco Brown, a former assistant, started his talk by saying that the Republican “Contract for America,” should be called the “Contract to Get Rid of Black People.” [Gersh Kuntzman, Prof. Dinkins gets an ‘F’ from Columbia students, NY Post, 11/29/94, p. 18.]

O Tempora!

Rosa Parks is the black woman who refused to sit in the colored section of a Birmingham bus in 1955. This led to a boycott of the bus system and eventual integration.

George Wallace, former governor of Alabama and one-time foe of integration recently sent Mrs. Parks an 8-by-10 glossy photograph of himself. On it he had written: “To Rosa Parks. You are a great lady.” [Jim Schaefer, It’s the thought that counts, Detroit Free press, 12/23/94, p. 2B.]

Black Flight?

Connecticut has many small school districts, so it has been easy for whites to flee the cities and attend good public schools. The result has been that in Hartford, for example, 93 percent of the public school students are nonwhite (and three fourths are poor). Segregation of this kind cannot be permitted, so the state has been trying to establish voluntary integration plans before a judge orders integration across school district lines. The voluntary plans are likely to fail because so few school boards support them. Who are the staunchest defenders of the status quo? Schools with nonwhite majorities, the very ones that integration is supposed to help. [George Judson, Few Volunteer to Desegregate, NYT, 11/26/94, p. 1.]

Competent to Stand Trial

Colin Ferguson, the black man who is accused of killing six people on a Long Island Rail Road train late in 1993, has been found mentally competent to stand trial. He has also decided to represent himself, despite being warned by the judge that this was “a very foolish thing to do.” This will put Mr. Ferguson in the curious position of cross-examining some of the very people he wounded in the attack.

Ronald Kuby and William Kunstler, who had been defending Mr. Ferguson, had crafting a “black rage” defense, justifying the killings as a reaction to white racism. They are now off the case. They have maintained from the start that Mr. Ferguson was not competent to stand trial, and perhaps they are right. After he was allowed to represent himself, Mr. Ferguson said, “I believe I can prove my innocence and I feel I can be acquitted.” [John McQuiston, Suspect in L.I.R.R. killings ruled competent for trial, NYT, 12/10/94, p. 29.]

EEOC Bogs Down

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to curtail the right of employers to hire whomever they please. Since the number of people in protected classes is huge and growing — it includes women, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, and old people as well as nonwhites — the staff cannot keep up with the complaints. The commission hears nearly 100,000 cases every year and has a blacklog of about 200,000. Even the staff concedes that most of the cases are frivolous. About 60 percent are rejected for lack of evidence, and 25 percent are closed because the worker withdraws the complaint, does not cooperate, or disappears.

It is always a struggle to find someone to run the EEOC. The person must be nonwhite, of course, acceptable to minority pressure groups, and at least minimally competent. A 41-year-old black lawyer named Gilbert Casellas got the job last November, after am arduous search. He would like a 25 percent increase in the commissions $233 million budget, but a Republican-controlled Congress may not go along. [Peter Kilborn, Backlog of Cases is Overwhelming Jobs-bias agency, NYT, 11/26/94, p. A1.] A sensible Congress would abolish the commission.

King Dream Lives On

Martin Luther King’s youngest son, Dexter, has been chosen to succeed his mother, Coretta, as head of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. The job was kept within the family despite misgivings by board members, after Mrs. King insisted on the 33-year-old Dexter. Another King child, 39-year-old Yolanda, oversees the cultural programs for the $5 million-a-year King Center. [Ronald Smothers, Living and shaping legacy of civil rights leader, NYT, 11/24/94.]

The King family has recently been at odds with the National Park Service, which runs the five-block-long Martin Luther King National Historic Site (which surrounds, but is different from, the King Center). The Park Service recently bought land on which to build an $11 million visitors center that would be the gateway to the Historic Site. The King Center would like to build a high-tech, multi-media museum at the same location. Even the fastidiously liberal Atlanta Constitution has editorialized against the museum, calling it “a sort of I Have a Dreamland to make a profit off of a Disney-esque trip through the civil rights movement.”

It all boils down to who controls the official expressions of adoration. Says Dexter King: “We feel strongly that the heritage of the civil rights movement is too important to be controlled by a government agency which has only superficial familiarity with the internal dynamics of our freedom struggle.” The Park Service chief of the Historic Site says that “[the King] dream and legacy belong to the whole world.”

Whoever gets to superintend the legacy, taxpayers will foot a large part of the bill. Trustees of the Ebeneezer Baptist church, where Dr. King preached, are in the final stages of negotiating a deal to lease the building to the Park Service so it can be turned into a full-time shrine. In exchange, the Park Service will give the trustees land nearby for a new church. [Ronald Smothers, King Family Feels Pushed Aside by park service, NYT, 12/23/94, p. A14.]

No Affirmative Action Here

Vergie Muhammad is the principal of a junior high school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She was recently asked by reporters about a theft from her school. The press reported her reply:

There ain’t no missing books and no books has been lost . . . I always be above board, brother. The one thing I do is make sure I don’t bother these folks, you know, goods and nothin’ like that. And when everything go wrong, I report it. I’m not responsible for everything, but I am responsible for reporting anything that I know. And I haven’t heard nothin’ ‘bout no goin’ out no back door.

[Ed Koch, Some post-thanksgiving advice and reflections, NY Post, 11/26/1994.]

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LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — In your reply to my article in the January issue, I was disconcerted to find myself described as “in important respects . . . a racialist” — especially since the last third of my talk had been an explicit rejection of racialism. You say that “to acknowledge [i] a preference for one’s own kind and to observe [ii] that nonwhites, in sufficient numbers, transform society in unacceptable ways are clear expressions of racial consciousness.”

At the risk of spurning what I know was intended as praise, let me state for the record: (i) the “kind” I happen to prefer is not in the first place determined by race; and (ii) the observation about “nonwhites” is not mine. What I did observe in my talk was rather different: Many of those to whom AR appeals are first-hand witnesses of social and cultural collapse, and their experience has linked this collapse to the presence of blacks — not just “nonwhites” — in sufficient numbers. The point was: These are not racialists filled with “white pride,” but simply people who have come, often bitterly, to fear and dislike blacks. Since AR seems to justify these feelings, that is why it is open to the charge of animus.

For the rest, your readers can decide for themselves.

Fr. Ronald K. Tacelli, S.J.

Sir — Father Tacelli asks for help in responding to the argument that knowledge of racial differences may lead to Hitlerian eugenics policies. I would suggest that truth is a tool, and like any tool, it has the potential for misuse. This does not mean we should suppress the truth; we do not deny knowledge of fire in order to prevent arson.

Fr. Tacelli also expresses misgivings about racial consciousness for fear of the unsavory audience such a philosophy attracts. This appears to be an inverted ad hominem argument. Just as an idea cannot be judged by its source, neither can it be judged by its audience. An idea stands or falls on its own merits, like a work of art. A painting becomes no less beautiful if its painter cuts off an ear, or if it is appreciated by Nazis. I would respectfully remind Fr. Tacelli that Christianity attracts its share of squirrels; we don’t discount it for that.

We cannot build a society on lies, however well-intentioned. Ugly truths are comely when compared to pretty lies.

Name Withheld, Fla.

Sir — With regard to Fr. Tacelli’s article, the awakening of our consciousness and identity are vital for our survival. At the same time, we need transcendent moral, spiritual, and ethical values and an emphasis on the interdependence of individual and community.

I believe that the universalist-egalitarian aspect of Christianity is devastating to us, but it is important to retain the essential aspects of our Judeo-Christian heritage as a connection with the past. We therefore need a church to affirm, support, and encourage our group. What about a Caucasian Orthodox Church? It sounds funny, but only until you think of Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Korean Christian churches, etc.

Kelly Richards, Salt Lake City, Ut.

Sir — I appreciated your reply to Fr. Tacelli. I would add only that the S.J. boys were not too squeamish about hurting people during the Counter Reformation.

James DeWitt, Opelika, Al.

Sir — Though Fr. Tacelli made many excellent points about morality, I think Mr. Taylor’s responses improved most of them. It seems symbolic of Fr. Tacelli’s approach that in commenting on the decay of the outdoor statues at Oxford he implies that no one seems to know why they are being eroded by “a kind of stone-ravaging leprosy.” The explanation is simple: The atmosphere is loaded with sulfurous acids produced by the “dark Satanic mills” William Blake complained of in 1809.

That a cleric educated in the humanities should appear to be unaware of this is symptomatic of the gulf between the humanities and the sciences. Perhaps it is only historical accident that created this gulf, and has thereby produced a humanistic elite that thinks “liberalism” means the denial of racial differences.

Mr. Taylor repudiates this connection, pointing out that Europeans can serenely accept the fact that, statistically speaking, whites are inferior to Orientals in terms of IQ. Why, then, cannot blacks accept what time and fate has given them? In any case, the average individual, of whatever race, has to accept the fact that there are hundreds of millions of people who are superior to himself. Every individual must live with his deficiencies.

In the long run it is possible that a determined race can substitute will for fate. Which genetic variants survive in greater numbers is determined by selection, and human beings can consciously influence selection, if they have the will to do so. The willing may be unconscious of its most important consequences.

To cite an illustration: If society pays for the birth and rearing of all children — even paying for fertility treatments for those who are unemployed and relatively less competent at urban living — then we can expect that groups that are parasitic on society will become steadily more numerous and less competent. When we decide to support incompetent people generously we thereby help create a posterity that will be less competent — by whatever standards we have decided to judge “competence.”

During the 20th century, liberals have acted as the fate that defines competence, thus influencing the direction of human evolution. Has the definition of competence been wise? Does the present direction of human evolution favor the long-term survival of the human species?

Garrett Hardin, Santa Barbara, Cal.

Sir — While I agree completely with Fr. Tacelli that AR articles and readers should not show animus towards anyone because of race, that does not exclude a certain degree of hostility — at least an absence of hospitality — towards groups by which we are threatened.

As for Fr. Tacelli’s inability to deal with liberals who argue that beliefs in racial differences inevitably lead to “the scent of Zyklon B,” one need only point to the far greater numbers exterminated by Stalin and Mao in the pursuit of egalitarianism.

Fr. Tacelli notes that Afro-centrists depend on “not merely an equality yet to be, but on a superiority that already was and has somehow been stolen away.” Of interest in this regard were the Russian Communists’ perennial (but false) discoveries of things that had been invented first in Russia. This is the sort of thing to which the pursuit of radical egalitarianism leads.

Name Withheld, Crawfordville, Ga.

Sir — I did not subscribe to AR to read religious dogma. If you publish any more religious propaganda I will cancel my subscription.

Fritz Fredrickson, Richmond, Cal.

Sir — I can no longer continue to subscribe to AR. I am nearly 70 years old, physically and mentally ill. The racial changes you describe do not help my mental condition.

Fr. Tacelli’s article was wonderful, but the opening passages were chilling. In your excellent reply, you described the feeling of bitterness of one who returns to see the wreck that nonwhites have made of the formerly-white neighborhood of his childhood. I know that feeling all too well.

Best wishes in your new endeavors. I take comfort in knowing you will continue the struggle, though others may fall by the wayside.

Ralph Singer, Bronx, N.Y.

Sir — I do not see racialism and Christianity as compatible, although obviously many do. In any case, as David Lane has said, “It does not matter whether you believe Nature’s laws are the work of God, or of gods, or that we are an accident. Those laws exist and we are subject to them.”

With respect to your quote from Jefferson on the masthead, I might cite the 2nd Century church father, Clement of Alexandria: “Not all things that are true need be made known to all men.”

Edward Novak, Massapequa Park, N.Y.

Sir — I would like to add to your report on the results of the vote on California’s Proposition 187 [to strip illegal immigrants of public benefits]. Before the election, most polls said it was “too close to call,” yet it passed easily, with a 59 percent majority. The measure was intensely and continuously denounced in the press and only very limited coverage was given to supporters of a “yes” vote. Also, advocates of a “no” vote claimed that “white supremacists are behind Proposition 187.” Many voters must have been intimidating into lying to pollsters.

Many supporters of the issue went to great lengths to “prove” they were not “racists.” They frequently pointed out that poor, nonwhite Americans are often the ones who are hurt by illegal immigration. Nevertheless, the voting showed that like almost everything else in a multiracial society, the proposition was a racial issue. As you reported, whites were the only group that voted in favor, and if whites were not the overwhelming majority of voters (81 percent of voters though only 57 percent of the population) the proposition might not have passed.

Other interesting figures are that although 60 percent of all men voted for the proposition, only 56 percent of women did. Despite strong opposition from Catholic groups, white Catholics supported the measure about as strongly as other whites. Jews voted against the proposition, 55 to 45 percent.

Lynn Young, President
South Bay Citizens For Immigration Reform
Box 160291, Cupertino, Cal. 95016

Sir — In your acknowledgement of my most recent contribution you state, “There’s no joy in writing checks . . .” You could not possibly be more wrong. I know there are many brave men, who are better writers and more fluent speakers than I, who are “doing something” for our race. These trench fighters need all the help they can get. Until things change, the greatest thrill, the most lasting satisfaction I can get is to provide a unit of support to the frontline activists, because I know — and this is elementary — that with more they can do more. The smoke has not yet cleared from the field.

Harry Dace, Alvin, Tex

Sir — There is a serious error in your January “O Tempora” column. You wrote that Cincinnati congressman David Man, who made a blatantly racial appeal for black votes, is black. He is white.

The more accurate focus of your article should have been on the lengths to which white liberals will go to denounce their own race in order to win the votes of nonwhites — who usually lap up rhetoric of this kind.

Gary Brock, Highland Heights, Ky.

Others wrote to say that we misspelled Deutschland, Colombia, Hialeah, and Skrewdriver. It was a bad month for proper nouns. — Ed.

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