May 1997

American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 8, No. 5 May 1997

 

CONTENTS

A Certain Trumpet
Having It Both Ways
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

A Certain Trumpet

Our people now face their greatest challenge.

This is an abridged version of the closing address to the May, 1996 AR conference, which took place despite vigorous efforts to shut it down.

The title of my remarks is drawn from First Corinthians, Chapter 14: “For if the note of the trumpet be uncertain, who shall prepare himself for the battle?”

At this conference we have had speakers who have served as trumpeters, sounding a clear and certain note, and the battle to which the trumpet calls is likely to be the decisive one for our people.

As most of you know, the militant advocates of racial equivalence and racial integration tried to prevent this conference from taking place. It was their intention to prevent our ideas from being heard, and to keep in place an iron curtain sealing off any discussion of racial differences. Their campaign failed and, I would note, their failures have not been limited merely to one momentary failure here in Louisville. Their failures have been consistent.

When the theory of racial egalitarianism had not yet been put into practice, it did not have the disadvantage of a track record that could be examined to test the validity of their hypotheses. Thoughtful people — those who opposed the integration of the school systems in the 1950s and other subsequent proposals to force racial mixing — predicted correctly that these policies would fail. However, they had no examples to point to as proof of the inevitable failure of racial egalitarianism.

The advocates of integration had the advantage of a theory that appealed to human emotion and that promised to accomplish great things. We were told when the liberal program was in its infancy and was then called “desegregation,” that if the races were mixed and white control of our society removed, poverty would be abolished. Blacks would rise to the academic levels of whites. Crime rates would drop. Schools would improve. As blacks were elevated academically, welfare would decline. Since the theory had not been put to the test, such prospects were very alluring.

Despite the warnings of such men as Lothrop Stoddard, Madison Grant, and Carlton Putnam, the racial liberals had their way. They triumphed — temporarily, of course — but they triumphed. The policies they advocated have been implemented all across America, and indeed throughout the entire European world. In every case they have failed. Who can name an integrated community that has succeeded? Where has integration led to greater prosperity, higher academic standards, reduced welfare and less crime? “Success” exists only in the imaginations of liberals, who are always willing to try their failed experiments yet again.

It is perhaps significant that the liberals themselves speak of their policies as “experiments,” yet they are unable to draw any lessons from the results. As each liberal program fails for the umpteenth time, the liberal diverts his gaze and focuses on the horizon where he sees his utopia hovering somewhere out there; where everyone of every race and hue will be exchanging comments in their bathrooms — as they do on television — over the wonders of respective brands of toothpaste or shampoo.

The fact that the liberal racial program has failed consistently for 40 years does not phase or deter the liberal. He remains convinced that he is only one more civil rights law, only one more government program, only one more Supreme Court decision away from reaching his dream. The liberal reasons: “It didn’t work in Miami, but we are going to make it work in Jacksonville. Maybe it didn’t work in Atlanta, but we are going to make it work in Louisville.”

The only concession the liberal seems to make to the reality of his program’s terrible record is that he cleverly gives the same policy different names. We note that the egalitarian product has been constantly repackaged, as the public comes to associate the name with its failed results. Thus does the name keep changing, from “desegregation” to “integration” to “multiculturalism” to “diversity.”

What is truly appalling is how slow this country is to catch on to the failure of the experiment. It took the United States only about a decade to recognize that Prohibition was unworkable. Prohibition was correctly described by Herbert Hoover as “the noble experiment,” but it failed. The country soon realized that the costs of Prohibition outweighed the benefits. And unlike desegregation/ integration/multiculturalism/diversity, Prohibition could show some successes. Alcoholism and its attendant tragedies declined. Nevertheless, Americans by and large, after only one decade, recognized that the cost to society in the form of organized crime outweighed this benefit, and that Prohibition should be abandoned.

Today, Americans seem to be slow learners.

When the grip of the Communists began to slip in the Soviet Union a few years ago, opponents of that cruel system, who had previously been silenced by the secret police finally were able to demonstrate openly their disdain for the failed Marxist state. In the first anti-Communist demonstration in Red Square in Moscow, Russians marched with placards bearing a wise and clever slogan: “70 years on the road to Nowhere!”

I could not help but notice the absence of any similar slogan or demonstration here in the United States two years ago on the 40th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Where were the demonstrators bearing signs reading, “40 years on the road to Nowhere!”?

One also wonders how it is that our people ever succumbed to the nonsense of racial equality. People have known the truth about race for centuries. They did not need the research of Arthur Jensen or Philippe Rushton. The truth about race was obvious to virtually all people until very recent times. Now is it not odd that the burden of proof has been shifted to us to prove a negative — that the races are not equal?

Two clear examples come to mind immediately to show how preposterous is the liberal position. The first is the evolution argument. Most liberals believe in evolution, as do I. Yet the position of a liberal who believes in evolution can be summed up as follows:

After a period of hundreds of thousands of years, evolving under different climatic conditions, encountering different challenges such as the Ice Ages, suffering different epidemics, subjected to different catastrophes and good fortune, all races magically ended up equal.

It would appear unlikely and hard to believe that after such an enormous length of time and under such different circumstances every group would end up at the same point, but this is the theory the liberal has to sell to intelligent people. Astonishingly, they seem to buy it.

The other example of a liberal position that seems impossible to defend is the view that the human brain is the sole exception to the laws of heredity. It is now indisputable that heredity governs many facets of human life. It is admitted even by the liberal that heredity governs height, eye color, and hair color. The liberal will concede that heredity governs all forms of plant and animal life. Nor will it be disputed that it governs every organ of man — except for the human brain.

The egalitarian’s position may be summarized as follows:

All creation, including plant and animal life, is subject to the laws of heredity. Every organ of the human species is likewise governed by the laws of heredity. The human brain stands alone as the only object of creation whose functioning is unaffected by heredity and is controlled strictly by environment.

Amazingly, this goofy theory prevails in our greatest universities, and its opponents have to explain scientifically why such a preposterous theory is fallacious. And those who refute the theory of racial equality have to do so at the risk not only of their financial security, but sometimes even of their physical safety.

This situation has been brought about in part by the strategic use of guilt. The only people who outperform Christians in the business of guilt are liberals. And I will concede that when liberals decry the white race as the cancer of history, they are right about one thing: It was our race that gave the world liberalism and for that we should feel guilty.

White Racial Weaknesses

Our race has many fine qualities. We have given the world great things — a magnificent literature, incomparable music, the world’s greatest architecture, the breakthroughs in science and medicine that have made humanity’s lot so much better. But while we may take pride in the achievements of our race, we would be foolish not to recognize that our race also has its peculiar weaknesses.

We are already able to warn individuals of genetic susceptibilities they may carry. We will soon be able to determine, for instance, if a child has the genes that dispose him toward alcoholism or Alzheimer’s disease. We would be similarly advised to look at ourselves to see if there are any peculiar weaknesses we have as a race that put our survival at risk. Specifically, we need to determine if there are any particular factors that make whites vulnerable to the preposterous but fatal theory of racial equality and even equivalence — the theory that whites could be displaced, without much loss, by people of any other race.

One notes at the outset a peculiar phenomenon — the more gifted and well educated a European is, the more likely he is to succumb to this fantasy. It is a commonplace observation that the average truck driver in America has a far better understanding of race than the average professor. Anyone who has talked with cab drivers in London knows that they have a much better grasp of racial problems in England than does Prince Charles with his Cambridge education.

We can partly excuse the academic and the Prince of Wales because of their relative lack of exposure to racial realities. Certainly, Prince Charles knows little more about race than what he has been told. But how is it that the leading minds of our people have succumbed to the fallacy of egalitarianism? Observations of this kind are admittedly speculative, but I think the explanation lies in our genetic weaknesses, weaknesses that are the unfortunate “other side” of our virtues.

The excessive sense of “fair play” of which Mr. Taylor spoke in his talk can be a severe and crippling weakness in the struggle for self-preservation. Blacks are, I believe, less hampered by such feelings. For example, they vote far more intelligently than whites. Whites vote to please their college sociology professor, their newspaper editor, their priest, or their fellow yuppies. Whites therefore do not vote for what is good for themselves, their people, their progeny, or their country. Blacks are not so befuddled. They go to the polls in election after election and return an overwhelming vote for candidates and policies that favor them, their race, and their children.

Only a tiny number of whites are able to think coherently about their survival as a group. Even we in this room are often unable to think consistently; we must concede that we, too, can be victims of liberal guilt feelings foisted upon us. Recently, American Renaissance published an elegant essay in two parts written by Michael Masters, (Part 1; Part 2) explaining in most convincing terms why it is moral for whites to survive, why it is moral to resist the forces that are reducing us to a racial minority here and, eventually, even in Europe.

One would think that even an amoebae would know that survival is better than death! With our people, however, one has to argue them into surviving. This situation is comparable to being sent onto the playing field, huddling with the team, and having to explain the exciting new idea that it is better to win than to lose. It is breathtaking, absolutely breathtaking, that our race is so tripped up in abstractions about racial equality and equivalence that we can now be objective about our own survival. To have to argue the men and women of our race into survival is like going hunting and having to carry the hound.

It could even be said that the prevalence of such fuzzy thinking about racial survival is an argument in favor of those who dispute the theory of evolution and believe in creation. The scientists among us are forced to explain how genes that permit abstract speculation about our own survival could possibly have survived the millennia. One would think that the genes of people this befuddled would be found only by scientists doing DNA research on the fossilized dung of saber tooth tigers!

Squanto and Ephialtes

When I was a child, my parents were not great believers in television. The first television program we were allowed to watch was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, which we were marched up the street and ordered to sit and watch. Since I had thought from what my friends had said that TV was some sort of sinful treat, I was surprised to see what appeared to be nothing more than another boring church service, with adults walking around in robes and reading the Bible.

The lack of television meant that I did a lot of reading, much of which was from the tales of antiquity and novels by the Victorian writer, G. H. Henty. One of these stories was that of the pass at Thermopylae. Like generations of Europeans before me, I sentimentally identified with the men of Sparta who died “obedient to her laws.” One main character in that story, however, fails to stick in most people’s memory. You will remember that a Greek shepherd showed the Persians a mountain path around the pass by which they could ambush the Greeks from the rear. That man was Ephialtes the Malian.

As a child I read about Ephialtes and imagined that he must have been the most shocking sort of out-and-out traitor. However, in my old age, having had much experience with liberals, and especially with Christian liberals who believe that Christianity enjoins more concern for other groups than for our own, I have changed my image of Ephialtes the Malian. I no longer see him as simply a traitor, pure and simple, but as a much more complicated psychological type.

I see him looking at the Persian “immigrants” as they come to take his people’s homeland. I hear him saying, “Oh, look! Here come those poor Persians looking for a home. I bet they have interesting things to eat. Maybe they will open up a Persian restaurant. We’ll have diversity. Why, look at that one there; he might want to marry my daughter. Poor things. They look hungry and thirsty. Maybe I can help them. It’s what Zeus would have us do.”

Likewise I thought for some time that only our race produced renegades like Ephialtes. However, I then recalled the story of little Squanto. Some of you will remember Squanto, the kindly Indian boy who showed the Pilgrims how to fertilize their corn by planting a little fish in the ground with each corn seed. Most of us were told the Squanto story in 5th or 6th grade, as the schools were already softening us up for multiculturalism and laying the ground work for guilt feelings we were supposed to have for mistreating the noble, kindly Indians, especially when whites should have been grateful to clever Squanto for teaching them how to plant crops.

In the light of later history, it certainly seems that Squanto and his female predecessor, Pocahontas, were both unlucky draws of the cards for the Indians. When one reflects that the Indians generally sired brave heroes like Geronimo and Sitting Bull, who defended — albeit without success — their people’s patrimony, how unlucky for them that at the precise moment when they most desperately needed a Geronimo or a Sitting Bull they got a Squanto and a Pocahontas!

Our own race has gone from a situation in which our equivalent of Squanto, Ephialtes the Malian, was the rare exception to one in which we have almost nothing but Squantos in churches, schools, colleges, newspapers and labor unions helping the alien colonizers plant the corn. I wonder if any of them ever reflect on how the descendants of Geronimo and Sitting Bull today — cooped up on reservations, having lost their native languages and culture — must gnash their teeth and curse the day when Squanto and Pocahontas were born.

If a fate for our people different from that of the Indians is to be avoided, it will require brave and intelligent leadership. When I was a child, one of my favorite chapters of history was the story of the Spanish Armada. I read and reread the G. H. Henty novel on this episode in British history, Under Drake’s Flag.

Under Drake's Flag

Most of you remember the story. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, England was a poor little island on the fringe of Europe. It was one of the last citadels of freedom left, as the Spanish Empire had crushed nation after nation beneath the weight of royal absolutism and the Inquisition. Everyone knew that there would eventually be war between the colossal empire of Spain and little England. For years the government of Queen Elizabeth had scrimped and saved, pouring what little revenue was available into preparing the fleet for the inevitable war and into succoring the hard-pressed Dutch patriots. Every loyal Englishman knew how high the stakes were, because he could see across the Channel what the results of Spanish despotism were.

At last, after years of waiting, came the long anticipated declaration of war from Spain. The greatest fleet in human history was preparing to sail. All the forces of Spain, the Inquisition, and the Counter-Reformation were descending upon England. Every Englishman knew what the fate of his country would be if that Armada were ever able to escort to an English port the Duke of Parma with his dreaded Spanish tercios, the unrivaled Spanish military formations that had never known defeat on land. No nation had ever stood up to the Spanish infantry. The only hope was to imitate the Dutch, who had opened the dikes, flooded their land, and defended themselves at sea. At all cost the Armada had to be stopped.

All during the spring and summer the sentinels had stood on the rocky promontories along the southern coast of Britain, straining their eyes south for the first sight of the Spanish sails. Finally, the word came to The Lizard, the southernmost point in Britain, that the Armada had been sighted and was now bearing down on the little island. The bonfire was lighted at The Lizard and then as planned all across southern England bonfire after bonfire was lighted as signals to send word to London and the Queen that the Armada was coming.

The Queen, knowing the mortal threat to England’s very survival, made a royal inspection of her army, gathered at Tilsbury for the nation’s defense. After riding slowly through the ranks, she made a magnificent declaration to the men, which was met with a thunderous ovation. It still speaks movingly — or should — to every Anglo-Saxon wherever he lives.

My loving people, I have been urged by some to take care how I expose myself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery [there had been assassination attempts]. But I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear their people. I have always so governed that, next to God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects. Therefore, I come amongst you at this grave hour as you see, being resolved in the midst of the heat of battle to live or die amongst you all for my God, for my kingdom, for my people and in defense of their religion and liberty. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms.

One can imagine the impact of this proclamation on the English. Spain was defeated by the superior seamanship of the British sailors as well as by a stroke of good luck in the form of favorable weather (the “Protestant Wind”), which scattered the Armada at a crucial moment.

Today, as an adult, having read more widely, I know that the story is not quite so pat as this. While England was freedom’s hope, her freedom was not all that it could have been. Catholics and the Irish did not enjoy that freedom, although in time they would come to do so. Nevertheless, I do not regret having enjoyed a boy’s view of such events, free of qualifications.

The Drakes of Today

As a boy I dreamed of being involved in such a cause. I would read such stories by Henty and other writers and I would imagine what it must have been like to have sailed with Drake. I never dreamed, however, that during my own lifetime there would arise an issue the stakes of which would dwarf to insignificance the stakes at issue in the battle between Sir Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada. Today we stand at a turning point in the history not merely of our country or even of our race, but of civilization itself.

Sir Francis Drake

Sir Francis Drake

We are the Drakes and his seamen of this later age.

Most of us can see three worlds. We can look back to the world of the America-that-was, the America of our childhood — which is a laughing-stock to liberals — the “Eisenhower era” America. That America was already not what it had been earlier or should have been. It already bore within itself the seeds of its own decline. Nevertheless, we remember it with fondness as a happy America of safety and confidence. That America is gone. It will never return.

When we look forward, there are two worlds in the future. We see one world in the chasm and one at the summit. Our species can take the road to either of these worlds. If we continue on our present course, we will use our marvelous scientific advances to encourage the procreation of the sorriest sort of our species and drag ourselves down into a debased humanity.

Or we could use the knowledge science has given us to carry our people and humanity to greater heights than have ever been dreamed of. We have it in our capacity to bring forth brilliant people who will be free of hereditary physical and mental diseases, people who will surpass the great geniuses of Pericles, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Tolstoy.

If we continue our present dysgenic policies (for we do have a national genetics policy — a policy of subsidizing the incompetent at the expense of the competent), we can continue to increase the number of problem causers and diminish the number of problem solvers with each generation. This policy can be pursued until we have debased the human race and are bereft of genius.

If we are to pursue the path to a higher, greater humanity, it may be in no small measure due to the work of many of you in this room today. We are the Drakes and his seamen of this later age. It is up to us. No one else is going to do it, not even among conservative groups not represented here today.

For our opponents are not limited to liberals. Indeed, some liberals, a very few, are not totally lost to the cause of the survival of our race and the development of our species. Some liberals, who see the cessation of immigration as the sine qua non of a sensible environmental policy, can be welcome allies. Most liberals are quite otherwise. But while we condemn liberals, let us not forget that many conservatives are equally if not more to blame for our circumstances.

On the right you find many “responsible conservatives,” like the Bill Bennets, the Ralph Reeds, the Jack Kemps. You find many people on the right who believe that it is immoral to work for the survival of our race. Such conservatives firmly believe that it makes no difference if whites are displaced by non-whites. Admittedly, this is a strange mind-set, the “anti-racist” conservative, but it is a common problem. Indeed, such people are more dangerous to us at this stage than liberals. Through such conservatives the establishment is able to choke off debate on the crucial issue of race. The thought control begins with those conservatives who are in essential agreement with liberals when it comes to race.

Leadership on the race issue will have to come from the Right. Although there are some few liberals who may come to our cause, they will always be a minority. The Left can never part from its commitment to egalitarianism, which is the warp and woof of Leftism of all stripes. It has been the Right, which historically has accepted the fact of human inequality. A belief in the inequality of individuals and of races was the faith of the American Right from Jefferson, to John Randolph, to John C. Calhoun right down to the Taft Republicans and Southern statesmen like Senator Richard B. Russell only several decades ago.

Only in the last decades has the leadership of the Right been usurped by those who call themselves “conservatives,” but who are actually committed egalitarians. The establishment has succeeded in co-opting the legitimate Right and replacing it with an opposition that opposes nothing of consequence.

Jack Kemp or Ralph Reed appear as purported conservative spokesmen yet they promote egalitarianism and denounce opposition to the establishment’s racial program as “evil.” The unsuspecting white who looks upon them with a measure of trust is confused and misled into accepting the idea that it is somehow immoral to oppose the reduction of whites to a minority. This is especially true because the leftist view on race being promulgated by Mr. Kemp and Mr. Reed is seasoned with free enterprise economics by the former and a shallow, trendy theology by the latter.

It is up to us to break through the Iron Curtain imposed on the honest discussion of racial issues and it is time to get on with the task. When Joan of Arc finally found someone who offered to lead her to the King of France, he asked her when she would like to go. She replied, “Better today than tomorrow. Better tomorrow than later yet.” How then are we to get on with the task which history has laid before us? First by having the trumpet sound a certain note, “for if the note of the trumpet be uncertain, who shall prepare himself for the battle?” If we are unequivocal and unwavering in our message, our people will respond to the call.

Our message must be clear and uncompromising — not hysterical or overstated, but certainly clear and uncompromising. We must never waver or falter. We must without qualification stand for what we believe and hold our positions even under the fiercest fire. In the words Shakespeare put into the mouth of Henry the Fifth, “he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart. . . . We would not die in that man’s company that fears his fellowship to die with us.” Those conservatives who cannot or will not take a principled stance in defense of the historic conservative truths about race should retire to their homes and leave the field to those who can. After all, what could be more worthy of being conserved than the very genetic survival of our people?

Let the fair weather patriot and the sunshine soldier depart. We will not depart. We will not be silenced by media denunciations. We will not be bullied by threats of financial reprisal. We will not be silenced by appeals to guilt offered in the guise of Christianity. We are resolved to fight these issues out to their ultimate conclusion so that we can say, with the men who sailed with Nelson at Trafalger, “Thank God we have done our duty!” As Rudyard Kipling said: “The strength of the wolf is the strength of the pack, and the strength of the pack is the strength of the wolf.” Each of us adds his individual strength to our cause and each of us is strengthened by the strength of our cause.

To plagiarize William Lloyd Garrison in The Liberator, many will object to the severity of our language, but is there not cause for severity? We will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. We are in earnest. We will not equivocate. We will not excuse. We will not retreat a single inch. And we will be heard.

Sam G. Dickson is a lawyer who lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

• • •BACK TO TOP • • •

BOOK REVIEW

Having it Both Ways

A black professor’s solution to the race problem.

Integration or Separation? A Strategy for Racial Equality, Roy L. Brooks, Harvard University Press, 1996, 348 pp.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

It has been obvious for years that American society is not turning out the way the civil rights activists of the 1960s promised it would. Our experiment in forced integration and equality-by-edict has now ground so deeply into failure and incoherence that even a few establishment figures have begun to notice.

Integration or Separation? A Strategy for Racial Equality, Roy L. Brooks

Books on race long ago lost the chirpy optimism of the March on Washington. The End of Racism, as well as two books by blacks with the words “race war” in their titles fail to raise the essential questions of whether multiracialism is possible or desirable, but at least they describe current developments with commendable grimness.

Roy Brooks, a professor of law at San Diego University, goes one better and takes aim at the idea of integration itself. At the beginning of the book he says he will argue “that racial integration has failed to work for millions of African Americans, and that well-intended integrationists have got to awaken from their half-century’s self-induced hypnotic trance and recognize that they are holding on to a tarnished trophy.”

To say integrationists are in a hypnotic trance puts Prof. Brooks in the same corner as Sam Dickson, but Harvard University Press has not, of course, published a separatist manifesto. What Prof. Brooks proposes is “limited separation,” which gives blacks but not whites the right to form “nurturing enclaves” where they can be free of the white man’s incurable racism.

Baffled by Integration?

The book explicitly rejects total separation or “black nationalism,” and says blacks should be able to choose between integration and “limited separation,” moving between the two whenever it suits them. White racial consciousness is to be held down, and the integrated world is to be kept fit for visiting and resident blacks by means of stiff doses of multiculturalism. In short, Prof. Brooks wants to combine the material advantages of white society with the psychological advantages of black separation.

The Failure of Integration

In his critique of integration, Prof. Brooks opens with the proposition that “there is nothing intrinsically good about racial mixing. Its appeal comes from its social utility.” By “social utility” Prof. Brooks means whether it is good for blacks; the interests of whites do not concern him. Prof. Brooks therefore reports that integration has failed — not because it has blighted once-great cities, destroyed school systems, and uprooted millions of whites — but because blacks have not always been pleased with the results.

School integration, for example, was supposed to lift the self-esteem and academic achievement of blacks, but it has lowered self-esteem and had no effect on test scores. In employment, “racial humiliation remains a continuing problem in integrated settings,” resulting in “the distress talented middle-class African Americans suffer at work in white institutions.” Prof. Brooks concludes that “the homogeneous community rather than the larger white society is the environment in which the personal self-esteem of African Americans develops positively.”

In integrated universities, black students must constantly battle a hostile white environment. “African American professors . . . are sherpa guides, leaders who take their students through unknown and treacherous terrain.” They also “interpret the often mysterious and arcane rules of campus life” — though one wonders whether anyone who finds university rules “mysterious and arcane” belongs in college. Prof. Brooks notes that even after decades of formal integration, college campuses are largely self-segregated, and asks the excellent question: “If integration cannot work in this protected milieu where can it work?”

Housing integration has been a failure as well, though Prof. Brooks makes contradictory arguments about it. On the one hand it has been a cruel trick because the most capable blacks have vanished into the white suburbs, leaving the slums to fester. On the other hand, racist mortgage bankers keep blacks cooped up in ghettos.

Why has integration failed? Because of “an entrenched structure of institutionalized racism that can be found in every nook and cranny of this country.” White racism cannot be eliminated because it is “a racialized way of feeling, thinking, and behaving that emanates from the American culture at large and that is reinforced by schools, families, friends and other microsocial entities.”

There is no such thing as black racism because “there is no centuries-old system of racialized subordination and discrimination designed by African Americans to exclude white Americans . . .” Integration might have worked (which is to say that blacks could have been satisfied with it) were it not for white racism, but after a spasm of contrition during the 1960s and 1970s, whites are becoming more hard-hearted. Black children therefore must be “trained to cope with white oppression” and spend much of their time “developing racial survival skills.”

What to do?

Since whites are so awful, why not make a clean break with them? Prof. Brooks toys with the idea. He even makes the surprising claim that “mainstream Americans on both sides of the color line are openly considering a total separation of the races as the only satisfactory solution to the race problem.” We would like to know who these people are.

Prof. Brooks recounts past attempts at separation, like the colonization of Liberia, Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa movement, and the occasional separatist demands of the Nation of Islam. He also gives interesting accounts of “black towns” like Nicodemus, Kansas; Mound Bayou, Mississippi; and Allensworth, California. These were established by freed slaves and some flourished until either the Depression or integration finished them off.

Prof. Brooks concedes that separation has not worked for blacks. He takes a brief look at the squalor and barbarity of civil-war Liberia, and concludes that American blacks might not be happy living there. Since the book opens with the idea that racial mixing is to be judged strictly by whether it is good for blacks, separation is presumably judged in the same light; if he thought it would work, Prof. Brooks would probably favor it. His reasons for rejecting it are practical, not principled.

Why doesn’t separation work for blacks (the book is silent about whether it works for whites)? Prof. Brooks says black nationalism suffers from “romanticism,” or the unrealistic view that if only American blacks were living in Africa everything would be wonderful, or from the equally unrealistic view that blacks are superior to whites and need only be left alone in order to prove it. In other words, there was nothing wrong with Marcus Garvey’s motto, “Rise up, you mighty race; you can do what you will,” but Garvey was wrong to think that moving to Africa would make a big difference.

Prof. Brooks also criticizes black nationalism for emphasizing the race — the group — over the individual. He makes this point several times, insisting that “limited separation” is meant to benefit individuals rather than the race. Only later does it become clear why he emphasizes this point.

Limited Separation

Prof. Brooks solution — Limited separation (LS) — would be based on the recognition that many blacks need an alternative to integration, that they do best in homogeneous, race-conscious schools, communities, and business. Since blacks would be choosing their own separation this would be self-affirmation rather than a return to segregation. Whites would not be banned outright from the LS undertaking, but could be kept out if their presence threatened the explicitly racial character of a group. The book’s most concise statement of the purpose of LS is as follows:

Limited separation provides an option to scores of African Americans who do not have the superhuman strength or extraordinary good fortune to make it in racially hostile, predominantly white mainstream institutions. Racial integration and limited separation should be viewed as different paths to racial equality. (emphasis added)

Since limited separation would be optional for blacks, it could be a permanent home for some but also serve as a training ground for those who later want to venture into the difficult world of integration. In the latter case it would be a way-station on the road to “equality,” which presumably means making as much money and having as much status as whites. The key institutions of LS would be school and community.

Prof. Brooks promises us a system of public schools that will meet the “special needs” of blacks, whatever they are. Schools will be run by strong black role models and “will emphasize the public achievements and contributions of African American men.” There will be no “tracking” or ability grouping, and Prof. Brooks recommends some kind of “rites of passage” “as a way of aiding and dignifying the often difficult transition from boyhood to manhood.” The schools may be segregated by sex if the community desires. They will run late and on weekends “to protect students from the streets by offering healthy alternatives.”

Prof. Books seems to suffer from a certain romanticism of his own: “In African American public schools, principals will make sure every classroom remains under the teacher’s firm control.” Likewise, once blacks have had the benefit of these schools, he assures us they will not need affirmative action when they apply to integrated universities.

The remaining majority-white schools cannot, of course, be left unsupervised. They will perform the usual multiculti rituals, preach “tolerance,” be full of minority role models, and promote extracurricular race mixing.

Prof. Brooks veers into yet more romanticism in his belief that LS will bring middle-class blacks streaming back to “the community:”

Limited separation will have its greatest impact on housing and employment . . . middle-class African Americans will run toward rather than away form working-class and poor African Americans. The hope is that the human and economic capital withdrawn from African American communities during the civil rights movement, when America’s integrationist drive was in high gear, will return to these communities.

Why should it? Prof. Brooks notes that there has been a spate of books, such as The Rage of a Privileged Class by Ellis Cose, that explain how harrowing it is for blacks to take high-paying jobs in white corporations. He takes these authors at their word, and predicts “a stampede of middle-class African Americans heading back to the community.” This will, in turn, “enable poor and underclass African Americans to jettison a self-defeating and dysfunctional culture and adapt to a more middle class, African American culture.” Small businesses run by and for blacks will spring up by the thousand, turning LS zones into thriving, independent communities.

Of course, it is nonsense to think that the blacks who work for Xerox and General Motors will all rush off to the slums. No matter how intolerable they claim it is to be the only black VP, they are not about to start wig shops in East St. Louis or Camden. Blacks are vastly better off in white societies than in any they could build on their own, and they know it.

Even Prof. Brooks knows it: “I would not personally pursue a course of limited separation, because racial integration has worked well for me and my family.” The good professor does not say whether it was “superhuman strength” or “astonishing good luck” that pulled him through, but he seems to be content with his tenured job at a white university.

And this, of course, is why LS must always favor the individual and never subordinate him to the group. People like Prof. Brooks, who can handle whitey, must have the option of leaving their not quite “superhuman” brothers behind in the ‘hood. Prof. Brooks notes that many poor and working-class blacks might well want to live their entire lives in limited separation, but he will presumably keep his membership at the faculty club.

What We Have Now

Although Integration or Separation? is written as if it were a bold, new look at America, it is not much more than a description of America as it is today. Blacks already have all-black public schools that try to meet their “special needs.” They already have the option of pretending to be “the African diaspora.” A black employer can already have an all-black workforce if he wants. Blacks can already celebrate Kwanzaa, wear Kinte cloth, take “African” names, bully whites, and be loved for it. Or, if they want, they can learn proper English, go to college, and get a job with Coca Cola. And, while blacks make race the centerpiece of their identities, whites are browbeaten into celebrating diversity. Prof. Brooks just seems to want official approval for what is already happening.

He also wants what is best for blacks, as is his right. If blacks want integration they should have it. If they want separation they should have that. If they want to stay separate most of the time, but sally forth occasionally to treat with the treacherous white man, that is fine, too.

Though Prof. Brooks does not put it this way, he sees whites as a kind of raw material for black success. They are evil brutes and not always worth the bother, but if properly handled they can be made to grovel and write checks. Some blacks have the knack for making this happen, but some don’t. Those who don’t only seem to make whites angry and make it harder for the gifted to practice the knack. Limited separation will keep trouble-makers out of the way.

Whites, of course, do not have legitimate racial interests. Since they are “racists” they cannot be allowed a preference for separation. Blacks can separate legitimately (and insist on integration when it suits them), but when whites separate it is oppression and bigotry. Capitulationist sentiment is so common among whites that Prof. Brooks probably has no idea of the self-serving double standards he takes for granted.

Even so, when Harvard University Press publishes books that claim integration has not worked for blacks, it will not be long before someone ventures the view that it hasn’t worked for whites either. Even if it gives unsatisfactory answers, Integration or Separation? certainly raises the right question.

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IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Hunter-Gatherers

Last year, 600 manhole covers and 1,500 lids on curbside drains were stolen from the streets of Detroit and presumably sold for scrap. A cast-iron manhole cover weighs nearly 200 pounds, costs about $100 to make, and brings about $7.00 as scrap. Drain covers weigh about 125 pounds and bring about $3.00. Replacement costs are over $130,000 per year, not counting the settlements the city has to make with people who fall down manholes or whose cars are banged up when they roll into a hole.

One scrap dealer who claims not to buy city property says, “You wouldn’t believe what comes in our door — stop signs, street lights, manhole covers. It’s unreal.” No one has ever been arrested for stealing a Detroit manhole. The crime is unknown in the rest of the state of Michigan. (David Migoya, Vanishing Lids, Detroit Free Press, Feb. 26, 1997, p. 1A.)

Wicked White Australians

Twice in one month, Australians have discovered that “aboriginal artists” they had swooned over were really white people. The first shock was the discovery that a man who had been touted as one of the brightest lights in aboriginal painting was really an 82-year-old white woman named Elizabeth Durack. For three years, critics had been twittering about “Eddie Burrup,” whose pictures have been winning prizes and going on traveling exhibitions. The artist had managed to escape public contact, claiming to speak little English and that he lived in a remote part of the Kimberley Plateau in Western Australia.

The usual people are in a fearful stew. “How dare anyone appropriate a culture like that,” says one curator who had exhibited “Mr. Burrup’s” work; “It’s a massive fraud.” The acting director of the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Cultural Center calls it “the ultimate act of colonization.” (Peter Spielman, “Aboriginal’ Artist’s Ruse Roils Australia, San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 1997, p. A11.)

One week after this embarrassment, “Wanda Koolmatrie,” author of the acclaimed autobiography, My Own Sweet Time, was discovered to be a 47-year-old white man named Leon Carmen. Miss Koolmatrie had likewise been unavailable for interviews. Literary prizes had to be awarded in absentia, because she was always “overseas” or “out in the bush writing.” The book was used as a text for senior high school examinations in 1996.

Lydia Miller is arts director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Australia’s highest Aboriginal organization. Although she used to gush with praise for My Own Sweet Time, she now says the book was “trickery and deceit.” “It surprises me,” she says, “that non-indigenous people need indigenous people to validate their existence.”

Mr. Carmen has a far simpler explanation: The Australian literary establishment has no interest in publishing books by middle-aged white men. “I can’t get published,” he explained, “but Wanda [Koolmatrie] can. It’s a distinct possibility the book didn’t win the literary prize, the skin did.” Mr. Carmen’s two-year hoax came to an end when his publisher refused to accept a second volume for publication without meeting the author. (Peter Spielman, Literary Hoax Rocks Australia, San Francisco Chronicle, March 14, 1997, p. A16.)

Wicked White Americans

Some states are considering passing “death with dignity” laws that permit terminally ill patients to refuse treatment and even seek doctor-assisted suicide. Many blacks apparently think this is another trick to do them in. Mary Evans, a black woman on the board of the Death With Dignity Education Center in California says “People in the black community see death with dignity as just another way for them to be offed.” Rev. James Perkins of Detroit’s Greater Christ Baptist Church, for example, is convinced that any such laws will be used to “eliminate” blacks.

Interestingly, blacks are more likely than whites to want to have life prolonged by even the most heroic measures. According to a 1993 University of Miami study, 37 percent of blacks, as opposed to 14 percent of whites “want to be kept alive no matter what.” Only 20 percent of blacks but 50 percent of whites would ever consider doctor-assisted suicide. Suicide rates among the elderly are likewise much lower for blacks than for whites. (Lori Montgomery, Blacks Fearful of Plug Pulling by White Doctors, Detroit Free Press, Feb. 26, 1997, p. 1A.)

Wicked Brits Grovel

British Christians have made careful plans to celebrate the second millennium of the Christian era in a way that will not offend people of other faiths. Guidelines have been established by something called Churches Together in England, which represents the major denominations. All “triumphalism” is to be avoided, and Christians will be enjoined to apologize for the Crusades, slavery, colonialism and other “past evils.” “We want to say we are sorry for the hurt that was caused long ago and is happening now,” explains one church leader. (Jonathan Petre & Jo Knowsley, Church Leaders: Let’s Say Sorry for our Evil History, Sunday Telegraph (London), March 16, 1997, p. 7.)

Business as Usual

The media are in an uproar because three white teenagers in the Chicago area reportedly attacked a 13-year-old black boy and injured him severely. He was riding through a largely-white neighborhood when he was pulled from his bicycle, kicked and beaten, and left for dead. The assailants are later said to have bragged that they had taken care of “the nigger problem,” though they now deny everything. There has been the usual hullabaloo: Jesse Jackson has “appealed for calm,” and Mayor Richard Daley has visited the sick room, where the beaten boy is still in a coma. The FBI is hot on the case, and a fund has been established to handle the flood of money people have sent to the boy’s family. (Sharon Cotliar & Fran Spielman, Teens Deny Hate Attack, Chicago Sun-Times, March 25, 1997, p. 1. Gary Marx & Andrew Martin, Unwritten Rules Remain in Bridgeport, Chicago Tribune, March 26,1997,p.1.)

At almost the same time, Chicago police arrested 21-year-old Jerry Wagner, a black man who stabbed five white people over a period of several days. He told police that he heard God telling him to kill whites. All survived the attacks, but several are in serious condition. Somehow, neither Jesse Jackson nor Mayor Daley (nor much of the press) have taken any interest in the matter. (Philip O’Connor, Man is Charged in 5 Stabbings; Cops Say Incidents “Hate-related,’ Chicago Sun-Times, March 17, 1997, p. 16.)

Language Lessons

USA Today, which usually heaps praise on immigrants, devoted its Feb. 28 cover story to what it billed as “The politically incorrect question of the 1990s.” Headlined “Can’t Anyone Here Speak English,” the story recounted the huge problems caused by newcomers who cannot make themselves understood. Besides horror stories about doctors, taxi drivers, and storekeepers who can’t communicate, the article estimates that language problems cost the country $175 billion every year in lost productivity, wages, tax revenue, and unemployment compensation. The paper even notes that it may have been the inability of Chinese crew members to understand English commands that caused a freighter to smash into a riverside New Orleans mall on Dec. 14th.

Surprisingly, the story does not end with bromides like “let’s all hold hands and learn English together.” It reports that never have so many “Americans” been unable to speak English, and that 23 states have passed English-only laws.

Justice System Not Racist

The state of New York has just spent $300,000 to find out that its juvenile justice system does not discriminate against blacks and Hispanics. Those two groups are more likely than whites to be sentenced for youth crimes only because they are more likely to be arrested. When similar offenders are compared, the juvenile system does not discriminate by race. The study “removes the argument [of “racism’] from the debate,” says Governor George Pataki’s former chief advisor on criminal justice.

The report noted that in New York City, blacks were 19 times more likely than whites to be arrested for serious juvenile crimes; Hispanics were nine times more likely. The report did not attempt to find the causes of these disparities. (Fredric Dicker, State’s Juvenile Justice Isn’t Racist, Says Study, New York Post, Feb. 21, 1997.)

Tarheels Don’t Want Hispanics

The number of Hispanics living in North Carolina has doubled since 1990 and now stands at about 175,000. There are now so many that a Charlotte company plans to publish Paginas Amarillas or Spanish Yellow Pages. How do the natives feel about this? Sixty-six percent say they don’t want Hispanic neighbors. (Aura Maas, In North Carolina, the New Southern Accent is Spanish, Charlotte Observer, March 9, 1997, p. 1C.)

More African Snatchers

The penis-snatching scare, reported in last month’s “O Tempora” column, has spread from Ghana to neighboring Ivory Coast. People have gathered in Abidjan, the capital, to flush out and kill suspected sorcerers. At least three have been beaten or burned to death by crowds of men who reportedly kept their hands over their genitals for protection. Other alleged sorcerers have survived their beatings or escaped unhurt. They are said to be able to make a man’s penis shrivel or disappear, and then demand money in return for a cure. In Ghana, at least 12 men were killed by mobs before the scare subsided. (Andy Geller, Witch Doctors Torched After Men See Shrink, New York Post, March 8, 1997, p. 12.)

Girlz in the ’Hood

A 31-year-old black lawyer may be disbarred for advertising as a prostitute and then denying it under oath. Marsha Watt is a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern University Law School. She was working for the prominent Chicago law firm of Winston & Strawn when she placed an ad in a local paper offering companionship to “discreet, sensitive executives and professional gentlemen” at a rate of $310 per hour. An undercover police officer arrested her in a hotel room after negotiating a fee for two sex acts. Miss Watt then lied under oath when she was investigated by the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission. (Jon Hilkevitch, Attempted Cover-up Might Hurt Attorney, Chicago Tribune, March 5, 1997, p. 6, sec. 2.)

Second Civil War

Home Box Office has aired a movie about a future multi-racial United States called “The Second Civil War.” Set in the near future, Mexican immigrants tear down the Alamo, and members of Congress shout at each other through interpreters. Blacks try to assassinate the mayor of Los Angeles because he refuses to speak English. The crisis comes when the governor of Idaho closes the state’s borders rather than accept a planeload of Pakistani orphans. The movie is supposed to be a comedy.

Bravo, Borzellieri!

Frank Borzellieri is an elected member of a New York City school board, who has written several articles for AR and has spoken at an AR conference. He recently wrote a letter to the editor of the Queens Ledger, in which he scoffs at the “Reverse Open Enrollment Program” offered to white students in his district. The parents of children who attend schools that are over 75 percent white get letters from the school board inviting them to enroll their children in a school where whites are a minority. “Through this program, it is possible for students of different races to learn together,” they are told.

As Mr. Borzellieri points out, even school officials recognize that this is a bad joke. In the 10 years whites have had this option, not one has acted on it. The only reaction the letters get is frantic calls from parents who misread the letter and think their child is going to be bused. On the other hand, there is always a stampede of non-whites who use the “open enrollment” program to attend majority-white schools.

Mr. Borzellieri continues:

The truth, which everyone knows and almost no one will admit, is that integration is always a one-way street. Non-whites want to move into the territory of whites — schools, neighborhoods, clubs, etc. — because those are the most desirable. It never works the other way around. Whites never choose, of their own volition, to move into non-white institutions. Parents will do anything — even take phony addresses — to enroll their children in white schools. It is the unspoken truth that race drives almost every decision people make. Teachers, likewise, always want to work in the white schools . . .

White liberal hypocrites, who claim to love multiculturalism and extol integration as vitally important, always manage — when it comes to their own lives, their own homes, and their own children — to choose white institutions as much as the rest of us. When it hits close to home, they seem to demonstrate a grasp of reality in complete contradiction to what they profess to believe.

(Frank Borzellieri, School Integration or Racial Madness (letter), Queens Ledger, March 20, 1997.

City Living

“A mob of looters led by an 11-year-old boy swarmed over a city murder scene in the minutes before cops arrived last weekend, stealing guns, cash and even bullets right from a dead man’s pocket, police said.” So opens a recent news story about life in Trenton, New Jersey.

Two blacks, one a drug dealer and the other a drug buyer, had a Sunday afternoon shootout in the home of the buyer. The dealer got the worst of it, and staggered out the door and died, while the buyer lay wounded in a pool of blood. The gang of looters went to work immediately after the shooting stopped, rifling the dead man’s pockets and sizing up his clothes. “If he was there another five minutes he would have been naked,” said one of the police officers, who arrived on the scene just minutes after the killing.

Yet more looters barged into the wounded man’s house, stepping over him to steal a gun, money, and marijuana. Police say this is unusually ghoulish behavior but they are particularly annoyed that thieves stole the murder weapon, which will make it difficult to prosecute the survivor for first degree murder. (Marc O’Reilly, Young Jackals, The Trentonian, March 18, 1997, p. 3.)

Nature Trumps Nurture

In 1973, sexologist John Money reported the case of a boy who was reared as a girl after his penis was cut off in a surgery accident shortly after he was born. Dr. Money claimed that with a combination of hormone treatments, a man-made vagina, and appropriate rearing, the otherwise anonymous “Joan” was happy as a girl. The case entered the literature as a classic example of the power of environment and the insignificance of heredity.

A recent reanalysis has reached a different conclusion. Careful study shows that the female identity never took hold. Joan didn’t like dolls and often tried to urinate standing up. Instead of imitating her mother’s makeup ritual she mimicked her father shaving. Her classmates teased her because she looked like a boy, calling her “cave man” and “gorilla.” She had practically no friends because she didn’t fit in with boys or girls. At age 12 she was given estrogen treatments and grew breasts, but she was not attracted to boys. At age 14, still ignorant of her past, she finally confronted her father and told him she could not feel like a girl. He broke down in tears and told her the truth.

Joan was relieved rather than angry; suddenly everything she had always felt made sense. “She” has since had her breasts lopped off and has been given a surgically-constructed penis. Now calling himself “John,” he has married a woman and adopted her children. He is now in his 30s and is reportedly as well adjusted as one can be after such an ordeal. He is glad, finally, to be able to live as a man.

Although the story is a horrible one, it has exploded yet another anti-hereditarian myth. As Horace put it more than 2,000 years ago, “You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet still she will return.” (Natalie Angier, Defying an Intervention, Sexual Identity Prevails, New York Times, March 14, 1997.)

Televised Offenses

The Beverly Hills chapter of the NAACP objects to the “demeaning” way blacks are portrayed on television. Billie Green, president of the chapter, doesn’t like what she calls the “groping and rolling and bucking of the eyes” on offending programs. She doesn’t like profanity or bad English either. “There’s all this complaining about black kids speaking Ebonics — well, they’re getting it from television.”

Oddly, the offending programs star blacks and are written by blacks for blacks. They are: “Martin,” “The Wayans Bros,” “The Jamie Foxx Show,” “Homeboys in Outer Space,” “Goode Behavior,” “Sparks,” “In the House,” and “Malcolm and Eddie.” (Greg Braxton, Groups Call for Changes in Portrayal of Blacks on TV, L. A. Times, Feb. 8, 1997, p. A1.)

Black Graduation

Affirmative action brings many unprepared blacks to universities. This is reflected in dropout rates. What follow are the percentages of white and black students at various universities who manage to graduate within six years. University of North Carolina — whites 86 percent, blacks 64 percent; Rutgers University — 80, 60; U.C. Berkeley — 84, 58; University of Illinois — 82, 54; Penn State — 80, 51; University of Delaware — 73, 56. (After Late Start, University Works Hard to Graduate Blacks, New York Times, Dec. 1, 1996, p. 16.)

Hitting Bottom

In Chicago’s heavily black and Hispanic schools, administrators have stopped supplying rest rooms with toilet paper, soap, or paper towels. If they leave paper in the rest rooms, students clog the plumbing by flushing whole rolls down toilets, and plaster the walls and ceilings with wads of wet paper. Many teachers establish official bathroom breaks, when they dispense just enough paper for a single use. Other schools supply paper in the rest rooms but teachers always accompany students to make sure they do not go wild. There is no soap in these rest rooms because students tear the soap dispensers off the walls. There are no doors to the stalls because students destroy them.

Recently the principle of Revere School on the South Side relaxed its no-paper policy, but only for its older students. They immediately reverted to waste and wildness, so the policy was reinstated. (Janita Poe, In School Bathrooms, Tissue is a Privilege, Chicago Tribune, Feb. 4, 1997, p. 1.)

SIDEBAR

Our Error

Our October 1996 account of the killings of two blacks by former 82nd Airborne soldiers appears to have been mistaken. Police sources assure us that there was no previous contact between the white soldiers and the blacks, and that the killings do, indeed, appear to have had strictly racial motives. Our report that the shooting was a dispute over adulterated drugs appears to have been mistaken. We apologize for the error.

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Letters from readers
LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — Your April cover story by Steven Schwamenfeld was marvelous! Some of the contemporary accounts of British bravery put a lump in my throat. Still, the article left me with ambivalent feelings. It is stirring to read an account of what stout and loyal men we once were, but it also shows how far we have fallen. Somewhere, beneath the brainwashing, let us hope that the spark of “Wellington’s secret weapon” still burns within our people.

Mr. Schwamenfeld does not have a British name, but he has the soul of an Anglo-Saxon.

Cullen Atwood, Fort Worth, Tx.

Sir — I greatly appreciated “Race, Nation and the Soldier.” Mr. Schwamenfeld has done a wonderful job of reconstructing the character and motivations of the British soldier during the days of the empire. One could no doubt assemble equally inspiring accounts from the American Civil War and from both world wars.

Alas, for the most part, it was making war against our racial brothers that we have shown our finest qualities. Those qualities have suddenly gone missing now that our race faces its greatest challenge.

Allen Schmitz, Orlando, Fl.

Sir — In her April letter to the editor about Professors Whitney’s article on the Human Genome Project, Shirley Edwards wonders whether the truth about genetics will ever make liberals apologize to the Arthur Jensens and William Shockleys they have defamed. I wouldn’t count on it. They are too busy practicing democracy.

John Dewey, in in 1916 book, Democracy and Education, wrote that “a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority.” Democracy means that the people rule, and no external authority can limit the passions of the sovereign people. Of course, the most eminent external authority is the truth, but in a democracy the truth is subject to a majority vote.

I would also note that in the 1904 Encyclopedia Britannica there is no alphabetical entry for “democracy” though in Vol. XI it notes that Aristotle likened democracy to tyranny.

J. H. Jones, Beckley, W.V.

Sir — I enjoyed the review of Richard Lynn’s Dysgenics and read Mr. Jackson’s account of the book’s treatment of the Flynn effect with particular care. The idea that people have been getting smarter at a rate of three IQ points per decade since the 1930s is, to me, one of the most astonishing conclusions in all of psychometry. It has been 50 years since the Second World War, so by gaining three points a decade American blacks are now presumably as smart as the whites of the 1940s.

I believe that IQ tests measure intelligence reliably. If Prof. Lynn says that people alive today score 15 points higher than did people 50 years ago, I believe him on that, too. However, I simply cannot bring myself to believe that today’s blacks are as intelligent as the whites who launched the blitzkrieg, built the A-bomb, and designed the Spitfire.

This said, I do greatly admire Prof. Lynn’s willingness to follow the data wherever it will lead. It takes great courage to do so, and this is how science advances. Still, I feel sure time will reveal some other explanation for these astonishing and apparently contradictory findings.

Shirley Edwards, Wilmington, N.C.

Sir — With some difficulty I managed to secure a copy of Richard Lynn’s Dysgenics, which you reviewed in your April issue. The book is entirely as you described it, and though I hate to part with $60.00 for a book, this one was worth it. What bothers me is how little promotion Praeger has given this important title.

I understand they are also bringing out Michael Levin’s Why Race Matters. To publish top-class books on the most important issues of the day is wonderful. But to charge astronomical prices, do no promotion, and watch such books sink without a bubble is a crime. When I walk into a book store and see the sort of rubbish that avid promotion manages to sell, I wonder what could be accomplished if a publisher really pushed a worthwhile book.

James Holly, New Orleans, La.

Sir —  American Renaissance seems to be the magazine for me. As a graduate student in biochemistry, it is almost impossible to find a publication “on my level” that approaches the subject of race in an honest and fearless manner. When I was younger, I was a “skinhead” and was told by various people that I was a “racist” because I was uneducated. Well, guess what? Education, especially in genetics and taxonomy, has confirmed the basic ideas I held in the past. My hair is now longer, and I dropped the sillier aspects of the racialist movement, but my interest in the continued survival of the white race in undiminished.

That is why I was so glad to find your magazine. It is great to have a forum where people can rationally discuss racial issues without teenage antics, crossburning, or goosestepping.

Greg Casalina, Schenectady, N.Y.

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