November 1999

American Renaissance magazine
Vol 10, No. 11 November 1999

 

CONTENTS

Multiculturalism and Marxism
How it Works
Book Review: The Tragic Mulatto
Figuring Out Who’s Who
Germany: Islamic Gangrene
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

Multiculturalism and Marxism

An Englishman looks at the Soviet origins of political correctness.

by Frank Ellis

For the purposes of everyday life it was no doubt necessary, or sometimes necessary, to reflect before speaking, but a Party member called upon to make a political or ethical judgment should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine gun spraying out bullets.

— George Orwell, 1984

No successful society shows a spontaneous tendency towards multiculturalism or multiracialism. Successful and enduring societies show a high degree of homogeneity. Those who support multiculturalism either do not know this or, what is more likely, realize that if they are to transform Western societies into strictly regulated, racial-feminist bureaucracies they must first undermine those societies.

Maoist Propaganda

This transformation is as radical and revolutionary as the project to establish Communism in the Soviet Union. Just as every aspect of life had to be brought under political control in order for the commissars to impose their vision of society, the multiculturalists hope to control and dominate every aspect of our lives. Unlike the hard tyranny of the Soviets, theirs is a softer, gentler tyranny but one with which they hope to bind us as tightly as a prisoner in the Gulag. Today’s “political correctness” is the direct descendent of Communist terror and brainwashing.

Unlike the obviously alien implantation that was Communism, what makes multiculturalism particularly insidious and difficult to combat is that it usurps the moral and intellectual infrastructure of the West. Although it claims to champion the deepest held beliefs of the West, it is in fact a perversion and systematic undermining of the very idea of the West.

What we call “political correctness” actually dates back to the Soviet Union of the 1920s (politicheskaya pravil’nost’ in Russian), and was the extension of political control to education, psychiatry, ethics, and behavior. It was an essential component of the attempt to make sure all aspects of life were consistent with ideological orthodoxy — which is the distinctive feature of all totalitarianisms. In the post-Stalin period, political correctness even meant that dissent was seen as a symptom of mental illness, for which the only treatment was incarceration.

As Mao Tse-Tung, the Great Helmsman, put it, “Not to have a correct political orientation is like not having a soul.” Mao’s little red book is full of exhortations to follow the correct path of Communist thought, and by the late 1960s Maoist political correctness was well established in American universities. The final stage of development, which we are witnessing now, is the result of cross-fertilization with all the latest “isms:” anti-racism, feminism, structuralism, and post-modernism, which now dominate university curricula. The result is a new and virulent strain of totalitarianism, whose parallels to the Communist era are obvious. Today’s dogmas have led to rigid requirements of language, thought, and behavior, and violators are treated as if they were mentally unbalanced, just as Soviet dissidents were.

Some have argued that it is unfair to describe Stalin’s regime as “totalitarian,” pointing out that one man, no matter how ruthlessly he exercised power, could not control all the functions of the state. But, in fact, he didn’t have to. Totalitarianism was much more than state terror, censorship, and concentration camps; it was a state of mind in which the very idea of a private opinion or point of view had been destroyed. The totalitarian propagandist forces people to believe that slavery is freedom, squalor is bounty, ignorance is knowledge, and that a rigidly closed society is the most open in the world. And once enough people are made to think this way, it is functionally totalitarian even if a single dictator does not personally control everything.

Today, of course, we are made to believe that diversity is strength, perversity is virtue, success is oppression, and that relentlessly repeating these ideas over and over is “tolerance and diversity.” Indeed, the multicultural revolution works subversion everywhere, just as Communist revolutions did: judicial activism undermines the rule of law; “tolerance” weakens the conditions that make real tolerance possible; universities, which should be havens of free inquiry, practice censorship that rivals that of the Soviets. At the same time, we find a relentless drive for equality: the Bible, Shakespeare, and rap “music” are just texts with “equally valid perspectives;” deviant and criminal behavior is an “alternative life-style.” Today, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment would have to be repackaged as Crime and Counseling.

In the Communist era, the totalitarian state was built on violence. The purges of the 1930s and the Great Terror (which was Mao’s model for the Cultural Revolution) used violence against “class enemies” to compel loyalty. Party members signed death warrants for “enemies of the people” knowing that the accused were innocent, but believing in the correctness of the charges. In the 1930s, collective guilt justified murdering millions of Russian peasants. As cited by Robert Conquest in The Harvest of Sorrow (p. 143), the state’s view of this class was, “not one of them was guilty of anything; but they belonged to a class that was guilty of everything.” Stigmatizing entire institutions and groups makes it much easier to carry out wholesale change.

This, of course, is the beauty of “racism” and “sexism” for today’s culture attackers–sin can be extended far beyond individuals to include institutions, literature, language, history, laws, customs, entire civilizations. The charge of “institutional racism” is no different from declaring an entire economic class an enemy of the people. “Racism” and “sexism” are multiculturalism’s assault weapons, its Big Ideas, just as class warfare was for Communists, and the effects are the same. If a crime can be collectivized all can be guilty because they belong to the wrong group. When young whites are victims of racial preferences they are to-day’s version of the Russian peasants. Even if they themselves have never oppressed anyone they “belong to the race that is guilty of everything.”

The purpose of these multicultural campaigns is to destroy the self. The mouth moves, the right gestures follow, but they are the mouth and gestures of a zombie, the new Soviet man or, today, PC-man. And once enough people have been conditioned this way, violence is no longer necessary. We reach steady-state totalitarianism, in which the vast majority know what is expected of them and play their allotted roles.

The Russian experiment with revolution and totalitarian social engineering has been fully chronicled by two of that country’s greatest writers, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn. They brilliantly dissect the methods and psychology of totalitarian control. Dostoevsky’s The Devils has no equal as a penetrating and disturbing analysis of the revolutionary and utopian mind. The “devils” are radical students of the middle and upper classes flirting with something they do not understand. The ruling class tries to ingratiate itself with them. The universities have essentially declared war on society at large. The great cry of the student radicals is freedom: freedom from the established norms of society, freedom from manners, freedom from inequality, freedom from the past.

Russia’s descent into vice and insanity is a powerful warning of what happens when a nation declares war on the past in the hope of building a terrestrial paradise. Dostoevsky did not live to see the abominations he predicted but Solzhenitsyn experienced them first hand. The Gulag Archipelago and August 1914 can be seen as histories of ideas, as attempts to account for the dreadful fate that befell Russia after 1917.

Solzhenitsyn identifies education and the way teachers saw their duty as instilling hostility to all forms of traditional authority as the major factors that explain why Russia’s youth was seduced by revolutionary ideas. In the West, during the 1960s and 1970s — which can collectively be called “the 60s” — we hear a powerful echo of the collective mental capitulation of Russia that took place in the 1870s and continued through the revolution.

One of the echoes of Marxism that continues to reverberate today is the idea that truth resides in class (or sex or race or erotic orientation). Truth is not something to be established by rational inquiry, but depends on the perspective of the speaker. In the multicultural universe, a person’s perspective is “valued” (a favorite word) according to class. Feminists, blacks, environmentalists and homosexuals have a greater claim to truth because they are “oppressed.” In the misery of “oppression” they see truth more clearly than the white heterosexual men who “oppress” them. This is a perfect mirror image of the Marxist proletariat’s moral and intellectual superiority over the bourgeoisie. Today, “oppression” confers a “privileged perspective” that is essentially infallible. To borrow an expression from Robert Bork’s Slouching Towards Gomorrah, black and feminist activists are “case-hardened against logical argument” — just as Communist true believers were.

Indeed, feminist and anti-racist activists openly reject objective truth. Confident that they have intimidated their opposition, feminists are able to make all kinds of demands on the assumption that men and women are equal in every way. When outcomes do not match that belief, this is only more evidence of white-male deviltry.

One of the most depressing sights in the West today, particularly in the universities and in the media, is the readiness to treat feminism as a major contribution to knowledge and to submit to its absurdities. Remarkably, this requires no physical violence. It is the desire to be accepted that makes people truckle to these middle-class, would-be revolutionaries. Peter Verkhovensky, who orchestrates murder and mayhem in The Devils, expresses it with admirable contempt: “All I have to do is to raise my voice and tell them that they are not sufficiently liberal.” The race hustlers, of course, play the same game: Accuse a late-20th century liberal of “racism” or “sexism” and watch him fall apart in an orgy of self-flagellation and Maoist self-criticism. Even “conservatives” wilt at the sound of those words.

Ancient liberties and assumptions of innocence mean nothing when it comes to “racism:” You are guilty until proven innocent, which is nearly impossible, and even then you are forever suspect. An accusation of “racism” has much the same effect as an accusation of witchcraft did in 17th century Salem.

It is the power of the charge of “racism” that stifles the derision that would otherwise meet the idea that we should “value diversity.” If “diversity” had real benefits whites would want more of it, and would ask that yet more cities in the U.S. and Europe be handed over to immigrants. Of course, they are not rushing to embrace diversity and multiculturalism; they are in headlong flight in the opposite direction. Valuing diversity is a hobby for people who do not have to endure its benefits.

A multicultural society is one that is inherently prone to conflict, not harmony. This is why we see a huge growth in government bureaucracies dedicated to resolving disputes along racial and cultural lines. These disputes can never be resolved permanently because the bureaucrats deny one of the major causes: race. This is why there is so much talk of the “multicultural” rather than the more precise “multiracial.” Ever more changes and legislation are introduced to make the host society ever more congenial to racial minorities. This only creates more demands, and encourages the non-shooting war against whites, their civilization, and even the idea of the West.

How is such a radical program carried forward? The Soviet Union had a massive system of censorship — the Communists even censored street maps — and it is worth noting there were two kinds of censorship: the blatant censorship of state agencies and the more subtle self-censorship that the inhabitants of “peoples democracies” soon learned.

The situation in the West is not so straightforward. There is nothing remotely comparable to Soviet-style government censorship and yet we have deliberate suppression of dissent. Arthur Jensen, Hans Eysenck, J. Philippe Rushton, Chris Brand, Michael Levin, and Glayde Whitney have all been vilified for their racial views. The case of Prof. Rushton is particularly troubling because his academic work was investigated by the police. The attempt to silence him was based on provisions of Canadian hate speech laws. This is just the sort of intellectual terror one expected in the old Soviet Union. To find it in a country that prides itself on being a pillar of Western liberal democracy is one of the most disturbing consequences of multiculturalism.

A mode of opinion control softer than outright censorship is the current obsession with fictional role models. Today, the feminist and anti-racist theme is constantly worked into movies and television as examples of Bartold Brecht’s principle that the Marxist artist must show the world not as it is but as it ought to be. This is why we have so many screen portrayals of wise black judges; street-wise, straight-shooting lady policemen; minority computer geniuses; and, of course, degenerate white men. This is almost a direct borrowing from Soviet-style socialist realism, with its idealized depictions of sturdy proletarians routing capitalist vermin.

Multiculturalism has the same ambitions as Soviet Communism. It is absolutist in the pursuit of its various agendas, yet it relativizes all other perspectives in its attack on its enemies. Multiculturalism is an ideology to end all other ideologies, and these totalitarian aspirations permit us to draw two conclusions: First, multiculturalism must eliminate all opposition everywhere. There can be no safe havens for counter-revolutionaries. Second, once it is established the multicultural paradise must be defended at all costs. Orthodoxy must be maintained with all the resources of the state.

Such a society would be well on its way to becoming totalitarian. It might not have concentration camps, but it would have re-education centers and sensitivity training for those sad creatures who still engaged in “white-male hegemonic discourse.” Rather than the hard totalitarianism of the Soviet state we would have a softer version in which our minds would be wards of the state. We would be liberated from the burden of thought and therefore unable to fall into the heresy of political incorrectness.

If we think of multiculturalism as yet another manifestation of 20th century totalitarianism, can we take solace in the fact that the Soviet Union eventually collapsed? Is multiculturalism a phase, a periodic crisis through which the West is passing, or does it represent something fundamental and perhaps irreversible?

Despite the efforts of pro-Soviet elements, the West recognized the Soviet empire as a threat. It does not recognize multiculturalism as a threat in the same way. For this reason, many of its assumptions and objectives remain unchallenged. Still, there are some grounds for optimism, for example, the speed with which the term “political correctness” caught on. It took the tenured radicals completely by surprise, but it is only a small gain.

In the long term, the most important battleground in the war against multiculturalism is the United States. The struggle is likely to be a slow, frustrating war of attrition. If it fails, the insanity of multiculturalism is something white Americans will have to live with. Of course, at some point whites may demand an end to being punished because of black failure. As Prof. Michael Hart argues in The Real American Dilemma, there could be racial partition of the United States. We may find that what happened in the Balkans is not peculiar to that part of the world. Race war is not something the affluent radicals deliberately seek but their policies are pushing us in that direction.

I have argued so far that the immediate context for understanding political correctness and multiculturalism is the Soviet Union and its catastrophic utopian experiment. And yet the PC/multicultural mentality is much older. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke offers a portrait of the French radicals that is still relevant 200 years after he wrote it:

They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery.

Of course, multiculturalism is far from being a solution to racial or cultural conflict. Quite the contrary. Multiculturalism is the road to a special kind of hell that we have already seen in this gruesome 20th century, a hell that man, having abandoned reason and in revolt against God’s order, builds for himself and others.

Frank Ellis is professor of Russian at the University of Leeds in England.

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ARTICLE

How it Works

A good example of soft totalitarianism is a recent editorial in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In its Aug. 18 issue the paper deplored the fact that AR editor Jared Taylor was invited to address a police group on the subject of racial profiling:

An embarrassingly cursory advance review of speaker Jared Taylor’s background failed to detect that his embrace of racial profiling is inexorably linked to his fear that white people are headed for oblivion. ‘To celebrate diversity . . . is nothing more than to celebrate our own dwindling numbers and influence,’ he has written on the Web. ‘It is utterly unnatural and will, ultimately, destroy us.’

Such bigoted, groundless sentiments naturally implicate anything else Taylor had to say. That includes his assertion that federal statistics show that a higher percentage of blacks than whites commit violent crime.

No official censorship commissariat forced the Post-Intelligencer to write this. It was purely internal thought control that made the editors write that at least for “class enemies” an ad hominem argument is the same as refutation. Anyone who believes that whites have an interest in maintaining a white majority is, in their view, disqualified to speak on any subject, even to report government statistics. In the world of soft totalitarianism, this is the sort of tyranny we expect from the advocates of “tolerance” and “diversity.”

Our President likes to lead the attack on class enemies. In an Oct. 2 address to a group of homosexuals he said “hate” is “America’s largest problem.” By “hate,” of course, he means the racial and moral values Americans took for granted until perhaps the 1960s. But if such sentiments are more of a torment to us than crime, cancer, war and pestilence, imagine what a desolate horror our country must have been when virtually everyone was a “hater” who thought homosexuality was a perversion and that America should stay white! It is only natural that Mr. Clinton should look forward to the day when whites become a minority, for it is the desire of every revolutionary nihilist to abolish the people in the name of the people.

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BOOK REVIEW

The Tragic Mulatto

Who’s black? Who’s not?

The New Colored People, Jon Michael Spencer, New York University Press, 1997, 214 pp., $24.95

For most of American history, miscegenation was thought to be a loathsome thing. Americans believed racial mixture violated both the laws of nature and the will of the Creator, who had established separate races with different traits. Americans were also concerned about the psychological effect of being a child of two races. Neither black nor white, the “tragic mulatto” was thought to be without a firm identity and not fully accepted by people of either race. It was therefore out of respect for the integrity of the races and from concern about the ambiguous status of mixed-race children that many American states outlawed miscegenation. As late as 1967, when they were struck down by the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, 16 states still had anti-miscegenation laws on the books.

The New Colored People, Jon Michael Spencer

Today it is fashionable to think hybrids are exotic and progressive, that they are the ideal towards which America and the world are moving, and that anyone opposed to mixed marriage is a wicked bigot (although endogamy is still respectable among Jews and many non-whites). The idea that hybrids could have identity problems is likewise thought to be “racist” patronizing. And yet, at a time when race is as salient in our lives as ever, the identity of mixed-race Americans is anything but clear. Although it is seldom publicized, there is a raging controversy — particularly among blacks and mulattos — over what it means to be mixed. It is in this debate that The New Colored People takes an openly partisan position.

The One Drop Rule

Historically, the United States has followed the “one drop rule,” according to which anyone with even a trace of black ancestry was black. Census categories, popular thinking, Jim Crow laws, and everything else followed this rule. Although the federal census has had different categories over the years, with “Mexican,” “foreign-born,” and “other” appearing at various times (see sidebar), the government has never officially counted mulattos or octoroons or any of the other arcane possibilities commonly recognized in Brazil, for example. Negroes were Negroes, no matter how light their skin.

It was inevitable that the racial revolution of the last 40 years would attempt to overthrow this practice, just as it has every other. But what has made this aspect of the revolution interesting — and also embarrassing to liberals — is that blacks are now the most impassioned supporters of the one drop rule. What was, in the past, a method of keeping the white race pure by holding even light-skinned blacks at a distance is now conventional black thinking. Most black intellectuals and “leaders” rise up in fury against anyone who opposes it.

Organized criticism of the one drop rule comes from people who want the United States to implement an official new racial designation, namely, “multiracial.” But who wants it and why? It seems that the most energetic proponents are whites married to non-whites and who have hybrid children. If they are married to blacks, they don’t like the one drop rule because it means their children can’t be anything but black — which is a repudiation of the white parent. At the same time they argue it is unrealistic and cruel to force hybrids to call themselves either black, white, Asian or American Indian. They don’t like the “other” census category because it sounds like an afterthought. The leaders of the campaign appear to be whites affiliated with organizations with names like Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally), American Association for Multi-Ethnic Americans, A Place For Us, and with magazines like Interrace.

There are also some mulattos and other light-skinned hybrids who don’t like being told they must be black and only black. Jana Wright, in an essay in Interracial Voice, writes: “If you are of mixed-race, you are often called upon to prove your Blackness, as though a lack of melanin proves that you don’t want to ‘uplift the race’.” She argues that by adding a multiracial category she and people like her could be “no longer just ‘half’ Black, we could be Black AND White.”

At the other extreme is a mulatto who completely rejects whiteness: “Until the last remnant of white racism is verifiably eliminated from the Earth, all ‘non-whites’ — however one defines that — must contribute to the continuation and the strengthening of the . . . ‘fundamental racial distinction’ in America by identifying solely with their/our non-European roots.”

Heather Green, a Canadian mulatto takes the same view: “If I do anything short of vigilantly embracing my African identity — consciously, wholeheartedly and without illusions about African realities — then I may be swept away, co-opted, consumed and sucked into the European power structure, culture and mindset which preaches that because of African blood, I am inferior.”

The New Colored People is essentially a book-length argument in support of this view. Jon Michael Spencer, who is a professor of music and American studies at the University of Richmond, offers two kinds of arguments to support the one drop rule. The first has to do simply with numbers. Congressional districts are sometimes drawn to give black voters a majority, and employment discrimination cases often turn on whether a white employer had the same proportion of blacks in his workforce as live in the neighborhood. So long as numbers can be an advantage, Prof. Spencer doesn’t want a single black to slip into a different category.

There is strength in numbers even aside from government regulation: “While whites, with their majority status, hunt down, identify, and discriminate against everyone with that ‘one drop,’ the greater number of blacks resulting from the ‘rule’ make it more difficult for our oppressors to maintain the institutions of discrimination.” The second part of this argument is nonsense. As the history of South Africa or of the ante-bellum South shows, a small number of whites can govern large numbers of blacks if they wish, but Prof. Spencer is correct to glory in numbers. Today, bloc voting by blacks is a powerful tool for advancing black interests.

However, his main objection to the multiracial category, to which he devotes most of the book, is that it might undermine black consciousness and solidarity: “[O]pponents of the multiracial movement suspect that the movement’s real aim is to dismantle the black community.”

He quotes a black, F. James Davis, who argues that “the suggestion today that the one-drop rule is an arbitrary social construction that could be changed sounds to the black community like a dangerous idea. If one result of such a change would be to cause some lighter-colored persons to leave the black community for the white community, the former would lose some of its hard-won political strength, perhaps some of its best leaders <. . .”

Prof. Spencer is also very much afraid light-skinned blacks will bolt. He worries about “blacks who [might] defect to the multiracial category” and wonders about their motives: “Some opponents of the multiracial movement may also suspect that the real aim of the multiracialists, particularly those who have traditionally been viewed as black due to the one-drop rule, is for the mixed-race blacks to be able to dissociate themselves from that despised caste.” Odd as it may seem, Prof. Spencer wants to bind to the black race the very people he thinks secretly despise blacks and would prefer to have nothing to do with them.

Prof. Spencer suspects that the white parents of hybrids are also desperate to find a new racial category that will keep their children out of the “despised caste” — though this is a mean-spirited reproach to whites who, by marrying blacks, have made the most profoundly pro-black, integrationist statement possible. Prof. Spencer’s fear that the friends and relations of the black race are all waiting for a chance to run for the door must say something about his own feelings about being black.

He goes on to argue — rather fantastically — that the new classification would “do nothing more than break up the black community.” He writes of “the havoc that would be brought upon the black racial identity and black solidarity” and warns of “the havoc that would likely be wreaked in the black community” by a loss of black solidarity. Any decline in black power is a serious concern because “the destruction of white supremacy will not occur by further fragmenting the black community or peoples of color.”

Prof. Spencer is particularly touchy about the idea that some of the icons of black history might have been “multiracial” rather than black. Nothing seems to infuriate him more than the thought of the white parents saying to their hybrid children, “Colin Powell, Lena Horne, Alex Haley, and Malcolm X were multiracial, just like you.” He thinks this is nothing less than the theft of black history, adding, “The United States has a history of this kind of grand larceny.” “Is Black History Month to be replaced by Multiracial History Month?” he asks. For Afro-centrists this may be a real worry because without the one drop rule, not even the most brazen of them can claim that Nefertiti, Jesus, Rameses, and Beethoven were “black.”

Prof. Spencer has visited South Africa and thinks multiracials would probably become like the Coloreds — mixed-race Africans who had an apartheid status above that of blacks but below whites. He says whites are past masters at throwing mulattos a few scraps to win their help in oppressing blacks. He can easily imagine a co-opted class of light-skinned “house niggers” outdoing whites in anti-black behavior, and believes that if the United States had granted mulattos special privileges they would have left blacks to fend for themselves. He warns that “in Brazil, the mulattos, in their struggle to get on the white bandwagon, kick their darker kindred around even more severely than the whites.”

He notes that black-mulatto tension is ripe for exploitation: “Already there is a lack of trust in the black community for those who appear mixed, given that historically whites have chosen mixed-race people who are part white to guard their systems of power and privilege in countries they have colonized.” He adds that if mulattos defected to a new category blacks might never agree to take them back.

Prof. Spencer therefore wants to support the one drop rule in every possible way. It is only with the greatest reluctance that he would let anyone who is part-black be anything but black. He does concede that “African Americans must open up new space for mixed-race blacks to be biracially black.” He does not elaborate on what would be in that “space” — perhaps hybrids cannot be expected to be as hostile to whites as real blacks — but such people are to be biracially black, rather than biracial.

Racial Consciousness

The huge majority of whites wouldn’t think twice about giving hybrids the option of checking a “multiracial” box on their census form and would be astonished at the vehemence of the views expressed by Prof. Spencer and by the people he quotes. And it must have been a fearsome shock for the idealistic white parents of mulattos to find themselves accused of wanting to undermine the black race when they proposed for their children a racial classification that was something other than 100 percent black.

James Landrith is a white man married to a black woman, and edits a publication called The Multiracialist Activist. He is bitter about “traditional civil rights groups who tend to brush off our community or denigrate us.” “These same groups,” he writes, “are the ones battering self-identifying multiracials as ‘running from their blackness’ and calling them ‘Uncle Tom’ as well as belittling and demeaning interracial marriages.”

The white liberal goal is to do away with racial consciousness, or at least to allow voluntary, multiple and even shifting racial identities. Liberals soon discover that blacks want the very opposite; for many of them race comes first. When Prof. Spencer writes about “the havoc that would be brought upon the black racial identity and black solidarity” if there were to be a multiracial category, he takes for granted that racial consciousness and solidarity are essential for blacks.

It is therefore almost amusing to watch Prof. Spencer struggle with the fashionable and now nearly obligatory view that race is a biological fraud. He apparently feels he has to endorse this silliness but his heart is not in it; he cannot turn his back on race. He says the country needs “an obliteration of racism . . . before the people at the bottom of the social and economic totem [pole] of American society abandon the unity and protective barrier that race has brought them so far.” He says he believes in “the denunciation of race but the dependency on race until the vestiges of racism are obliterated,” adding that “we must be careful not to abandon the idea of race too hastily and not to let those groups that have been history’s oppressors forget their behavior too soon.” In other words race may be rubbish, but blacks should use it to their advantage and keep whitey on the hop as long as they can.

It is in sentiments like these that we find the significance of black opposition to the proposed new census category. It was a significance few whites understand: Racial solidarity is so important to blacks that the most innocent and even obvious proposal that could conceivably undermine it unleashes near-hysterical opposition.

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ARTICLE

Figuring Out Who’s Who

The flap over how black is black enough went public briefly in 1997, when the government considered adding a “multiracial” category to the 2000 census. Activists had already succeeded in getting Georgia, Ohio, and Illinois to let people call themselves “multiracial,” and they wanted the same from the Census Bureau.

Ever since 1977, the US government has recognized four races: white, black, Asian-and-Pacific-Islander, and American-Indian-and-Eskimo. The government also recognizes one “ethnicity” — Hispanic — and then apportions all Hispanics among the four recognized races. When people fill in census forms they are supposed to pick their own race, and until recently the government told hybrids that “the category which most closely reflects the individual’s recognition in his community should be used for purposes of reporting on persons who are of mixed racial and/or ethnic origins.” Presumably, if your “community” thinks you are black (or white), that is what you are.

For the 1990 census, the government added a new racial category: “other.” Four percent of the population — more than 10 million people — said they were “other,” though the census bureau then divided them up into the four official races so as not to leave loose ends. It would be interesting to know how many of the 10 million were Arabs or mulattos or others with genuine objections to the four categories, and how many were white liberals casting a stylish protest vote against the idea of race.

In lobbying for the new category, “progressives” hoped that a “multiracial” category would be the first step towards obliterating racial classification altogether. Everyone is really multiracial, they argued, and since race is nothing more than prejudice and fake biology, the government shouldn’t even be collecting the data.

The government studied the proposed new category carefully. It did a survey to see how many people would call themselves multiracial, and found it would be only about one percent of blacks and even fewer whites. On reflection, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which decides these things, concluded that a multiracial category would just “create another population group, and no doubt add to racial tension and further fragmentation of our population.” (Immigration doesn’t do that?) This was exactly what The New Colored People was saying.

What OMB did decide was to let hybrids check as many of the four racial categories as they like. “When the data are reported,” it explained, “counts should be provided of the number of persons who checked two races, three races or four races, and information on the combinations should also be provided.”

This was the compromise that probably offended the fewest people. Advocates of the multiracial category who wanted their hybrid children to be able to avoid repudiating one side of the family were satisfied. People like Prof. Spencer were unhappy the census now gives mulattos the option of an identity that includes something other than black, but are glad there is no official, multiracial category.

It was the activists who wanted to destroy the concept of race who were the most disappointed. They hoped eventually to persuade just about everybody to claim to be “multiracial” and thereby bring down the entire classification system. Since they were pushing what they call “the option of racelessness,” they were angry that hybrids must identify themselves in specifically racial terms — the very terms they hope to abolish.

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ARTICLE

Germany: Islamic Gangrene

What the Muslims really want.

In the name of a suicidal “human rights” policy, Germany has accepted thousands of foreign immigrants who, just as in France, cannot be assimilated. In the new Europe-without-borders, these new arrivals have been dumped in the suburbs, which have become semi-lawless areas where hundreds of youths wander the streets. Caught between idleness and delinquency, these washouts of the “Germany for everyone” policy are the perfect prey for the Islamicists. To the integrationist blather of the politicians, the recruiters of Milli Görüs offer a clear alternative message: all Muslims belong wholly to the Islamic world and to their countries of origin. This is just the message with which to recruit young Turks by the dozen for the largest Islamic organization in Germany. The Hodjas (religious elders) have stolen a march on the integration bureaucracy and now hold the terrain. Not one of the 500 mosques in Germany has escaped the control of MG, and its 28,000 members now preach the good word to the some three million Muslims living in Germany.

MG handles everything from cradle to grave. Its financial basis, its logistics expertise, and sense of organization permit it to weave quite a web. Among its beneficiaries are children to whom it offers courses in computers or whom it sends on free vacations, believers for whom it picks up the tab for a pilgrimage to Mecca, and even bereaved families for whom it loosens its purse strings when they cannot afford to send the body back home for burial.

Indoctrinate the Masses

From breadlines for the needy to the soccer ball MG may buy for the youths in the neighborhoods, nothing is left to chance. By means of this Islamic charity — which the German authorities applaud — the association methodically pursues its objective: the indoctrination of the Muslim masses.

The first demonstration of power was a “day of youth,” held several weeks ago in Düsseldorf. To cries of “Allah Akbar” (God is Great), seven thousand people marched in step, men on the right, veiled women on the left. Within a few minutes thousands of red and green flags — the colors of Turkey and of Islam — were unfurled beneath the Rhenish sky. The Turkish national anthem took the place of Deutschland Über Alles. What a shock for a disillusioned Germany, astonished that millions of second-generation Turks, raised on an integrationist diet, should be singing the praises of “Turkey, my dear fatherland” and of Necmettin Erbakan, a former prime minister of Turkey and generous patron of MG. Even if Mr. Erbakan takes care never to talk about the Islamicization of Germany, his supporters make no mystery of their goals. As MG points out in one of its bulletins, “the Community is a means to an end, and the end is an Islamic society.”

Mehmet Erbakan, nephew of the former prime minister, certainly takes this view. But unlike the bearded ones, whom he considers behind the times, he prefers to learn the ways of German society the better to infiltrate it. Suits in the latest style have taken the place of Arab robes, and he chooses his words with care. The younger Erbakan doesn’t like the term “religious association” and prefers to call MG “the representative of a minority that has not had a voice for a generation and a half.” His target is the German federal government, which has not shown sufficient respect for the Muslim community. In his frequent speeches, the Secretary General of MG rails against everything from the electoral success of conservative parties in East Germany to the lack of Islamic religious instruction in schools, to job discrimination against young foreigners, to prohibitions against the Islamic headdress in schools.

Allies on the Left

Mr. Erbakan goes even further. He adds threats to his denunciations, cleverly catching the Social-Democratic government in the trap of citizenship reform: “If 1.7 million Muslims gain German citizenship, we will not just be a plaything for the politicians; we will become a real electoral potential” without which the left cannot stay in power.

This threat is clear enough to keep the Berlin government conciliatory. Otto Schily, the Interior Minister, has ignored security service warnings about the number of Islamic fundamentalists, and has proposed that the Islamic movements be given public support that would put them on an equal footing with Christian churches. MG, which has infiltrated the Islamic Council (which represents 900,000 Muslims and is therefore the official interlocutor with the German government), immediately won an agreement that Islamic associations would teach religious courses in secondary schools.

Going beyond religion, MG activists have launched an assault on other institutions. They have targeted labor unions, student organizations, parent-teacher associations, and have made particular inroads in the Foreigners Councils (consultative organs set up in the various Lander), where they hold the majority of seats. Not even the political parties have escaped subversion. When the Christian Democrats recently threw out a member after learning he belonged to an Islamic association, the Social Democrats welcomed him with open arms. Several members of MG are in the Socialist Youth. As MG leader Mustafa Teneroglu explains, “the Koran is also the expression of social and democratic thought.” Above all, he believes in an ancestral mission begun several centuries ago by the Saracens, continued by the Ottomans and more recently by the Albanian Kossovars: the conquest and Islamicization of the West.

Of course, if MG is powerful in Germany it is because of the millions of Turks who live there. But on a smaller scale, France with its 400,000 Turkish Kurds is hardly likely to be spared.

This article is translated, with permission, from the July 30-September 2 issue of Rivarol, a French periodical. Address: 1, rue d’Hauteville, 75010 Paris, France.

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IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Didn’t Make the Evening News

On August 16th, Terrence McCray and Ledell Lawrence, both black, decided to attack the next white person they saw on their street in Jacksonville, Florida. A retarded man named Gregory Griffith was the hapless victim; the two beat and stomped him unconscious and he died ten days later. Both Mr. McCray and Mr. Lawrence admitted they beat the man “because he was white.” State attorneys have not decided whether to pursue the case as a hate crime. (Police: Murder of Handicapped White Man Racially Motivated, Tampa Tribune, September 4, 1999.)

Whites living in a largely Puerto Rican part of Chicago woke up one morning to find unfriendly mail. The letters contained, “strong racist messages, threatening them with violence unless they moved out of the neighborhood.” Police say they received about 20 complaints but believe that a great many more whites got the letters. A Chicago city councilman has announced a $1,000 reward for information on who sent the letters. (www.latnn.com, White Residents Threatened in Puerto Rican Neighborhood, September 2, 1999.)

In Boulder, Colorado, “Asian Crips” leader Sonny Lee decided to help his friend Kather Yang, who wanted to have sex with a white woman. Together with four other Asian men they found a white University of Colorado student walking alone early on the morning of August 29th. They dragged her into a minivan, where they raped her and forced her to have oral sex. At one point she jumped out naked and tried to escape, but her assailants caught her and dragged her back into the van where they continued to rape her. “They were all screaming at her, calling her names and hitting her,” said Detective Jane Harmer. “It was a free-for-all.” One man threatened to “cut and burn her,” and another put a gun to the back of her head when they released her. Five suspects — Kao Vang, 18, Chu Vang, 16, Steve Yang, 19, Johnny Lee, 17, and Sonny Lee, 23 — face charges of kidnapping and sexual assault. Kather Yang, whose desire for a white woman was the cause of it all, killed himself in a Green Bay, Wisconsin, motel room. (Kevin McCullen, Rape Suspects Were Seeking White Woman, Denver Rocky Mountain News, September 30, 1999.)

In San Francisco as many as ten black women decided to go “looking for Asian girls” to rob. They fell upon three sisters aged 17, 21, and 22, whom they beat and robbed. Two other victims were apparently able to fight them off and run away. Someone saw the thieves emptying a stolen purse and called the police, who managed to arrest three of them — two 15-year-olds and a 17-year-old — before the rest scattered. “Two of the three (said) that the plan was to go up to Japantown and look for Asian girls,” said Inspector Simon Silverman of the Night Investigations Unit. “They told me that they went deliberately looking for Chinese girls because they felt that they are more vulnerable and that they would carry more money.” (Jim Herron Zamora, 3 Girls Jailed in Racial Assault, San Francisco Examiner, September 14, 1999.)

Success in Austria

In the latest national elections the Freedom Party, led by nationalist Jörg Haider, stunned Europe with its success. With 27.7 percent of the vote it is second only to the governing Socialists, who won 33.4 percent. It pulled ahead of the conservative People’s Party and is poised to enter a coalition government.

Mr. Haider has won votes — and the usual obloquy — because of his opposition to immigration. During the campaign Vienna was festooned with posters that said “Stop Over-Foreignerization.” In the past, Mr. Haider has startled the bourgeoisie by arguing that Hitler had a good employment policy and that the men who fought in the Waffen SS were “loyal patriots.” The Freedom Party’s latest success has led to the usual self-righteous hand-wringing all across Europe as well as in the United States, where White House spokesman James Rubin warned arrogantly that Mr. Haider had better not bring his “xenophobic” views with him if he joins Austria’s next government. (Susan Ladika, Nationalists Score Big Electoral Gain, Washington Times, Oct. 4, 1999, p. A11. David Sands, U.S. Calls for Stifling of Pro-Nazi Viewpoints, Washington Times, Oct. 5, 1999, p. A15.)

Police Chief Fights Back

In April we reported that Carl Williams, the New Jersey State Police Superintendent was fired for pointing out in a Newark Star-Ledger interview that non-whites were more likely to run drugs than whites. Blacks shrieked about “racial profiling” and Superintendent Williams had to go. New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman has since replaced him with a black former FBI agent. Mr. Williams has now filed a law suit against the governor, claiming that she fired him because he is white and that she wanted to appoint a black to further her political career. (It is probably true that any black police official who had told the truth about who runs drugs would not have been fired.) In his $21 million suit, Mr. Williams says that in public statements Gov. Whitman herself “expressly admitted that she had no problem with the use of race as one of several proxies for potential criminality.”

The 2,700-member state police force is mostly white, and the majority of troopers have remained loyal to Mr. Williams. They are also annoyed that their new chief did not come up through the ranks as Mr. Williams did, but was hired from outside the force. Gov. Whitman says the case against her is baseless and that the suit will further weaken police morale. (Whitman: Williams’ Lawsuit is Baseless, The Press (Atlantic City), Oct. 5, 1999. p. C6. Wendy Ruderman, Whitman Fears Suit May Stir Tensions, Times (Trenton), Oct. 5, 1999.)

Is Honor Color-Blind?

The University of Virginia at Charlottesville has an honor code that requires expulsion for any student who lies, cheats or steals. The 157-year-old code is now under attack because non-whites are more likely than whites to violate it and be expelled. Last year, for example, Asian students were eight times more likely to get the boot, blacks were four times as likely, and Hispanics five times as likely. (The total number of students expelled was so low — 19 — that the small sample size makes these comparisons unreliable but blacks, at least, appear to have been overrepresented for many years.) Naturally blacks smell “racism.” Rick Turner, dean of African-American affairs, points out that 97 percent of the people who brought accusations of honor code violations were white and says this proves the “system is biased and needs monitoring.” It does not seem to have occurred to him that people who are, themselves, more likely to violate the code may not be zealous about enforcing it. (David Fallis, Questioning U-VA’s Honor, Washington Post, Oct. 3, 1999, p. C1.) If minorities have their way, the code will be abolished or denatured. One more institution built by whites for whites will have been set aside because non-whites could not meet its demands.

Zebra Killings

Sibusiso Madubela was a captain in the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army during the fight against apartheid in South Africa. In 1994, when the country was handed over to the ANC, he joined the South African Defense Force but his rank was reduced to lieutenant, a demotion he considered “racist.” Earlier this year, he was granted leave from the Tempe military base in Bloemfontein to bury his father, but he overstayed his leave by ten days and had his pay docked. On September 16th he asked to see the base commander to complain about the punishment but the commander was elsewhere. Lieutenant Madubela then checked out his weapon and went on a shooting rampage, killing six white officers and a white woman civilian. He is reported to have pushed blacks out of the way in order to get clear shots at whites. He also managed to wound five people — all white — before he was shot and killed by one of the whites he wounded. Siphiwe Nyanda, chief of the South African Defense Force, insisted that it would be a mistake to assume that the shootings were racially motivated.

Lieutenant Madubela’s funeral attracted an estimated 2,000 mourners. The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), which still lingers on from anti-apartheid days, was furious that the army did not give him a military burial and vowed it would fire its own 12-gun salute. As people arrived at the burial ground, police confiscated weapons while blacks chanted “one settler [one white], one bullet.” In the funeral oration a PAC official vowed that his group would carry on Mr. Madubela’s good work and that the lieutenant had gone on his heroic rampage in order to “teach whites a lesson.” PAC members then began to fire a salute but were stopped by police who fired their own weapons into the air. At least three people were hurt in the panic that followed.

The funerals of the white officers were calmer but not without tension. Some black soldiers reportedly refused to join the honor guard, and blacks from other units are said to have been rounded up to fill out the ranks.

The integration of black “liberation” fighters into the South African army has not gone smoothly. The Tempe base was one of the first at which it was attempted, and the result has been continuous racial tension in an army in which most of the high-ranking officers are still white. British experts called in to help with integration warned two years ago that there was much hostility, calling Tempe “a racial powder keg waiting to explode.” (AP, S. African Shooter Had Been AWOL, Sept. 17, 1999. Black Lieutenant Kills 6 White Officers, Civilian, Washington Times, Sept. 18, 1999, p. A5. Elise Mnyandu, Race Tension Mars Burial of White S. African Troops, Reuters, Sept. 22, 1999. Michel Muller, Police Shoot at S. African Funeral, AP, Oct. 2, 1999.)

Billboard Back Up

Last month AR reported on Craig Nelsen, who put up anti-immigration billboards in New York City. They caused a huge stink, and city officials ordered them down, claiming they violated zoning regulations. In September, Mr. Nelsen put up his largest billboard yet, near the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn. It reads, “Because of mass immigration, the U.S. population will exceed half a billion in my lifetime. Help us, Congress. — An American Kid, age 6.” An official for the Department of Buildings says it will investigate to see if the new billboard violates regulations.

Mr. Nelsen is renting the space for $6,500 a month and is not worried about harassment. “I hope they rip it down,” he says. “It will draw more attention. The more they squawk, the better we look. The average American just agrees with us on this. Every time the city rips down the billboard it just strengthens our position.” Mr. Nelsen has also notified the city that he intends to sue for damages. He says the city interfered with his contract for earlier billboards, abridged his freedom of speech, and defamed him. (Julian Barnes, Immigration Foe Puts Up Another Billboard; City to Investigate Legality, New York Times, September 8, 1999.)

Seenging Deexee

Hispanics are flooding into the South. In Dalton, Georgia, which has several carpet-making mills, one percent of the school children were Hispanic in 1987; now 42 percent are Hispanic. Schools all over the south are desperate for teachers who speak Spanish, and some are willing to hire them all the way from Mexico.

The newcomers are unfamiliar with the history and culture of the South. “Most of them don’t know what the Confederate flag is or that the South had a tradition of the KKK,” says Jacqueline Rosier of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “This is all new to them.” They have found no shortage of teachers.

Nelson B. Rivers, director of the NAACP in Atlanta, sees new comrades: “It’s a natural alliance. I can’t imagine why anyone would see it as a threat. We are already working together. We have both been suppressed and excluded, so we have a lot in common.” (Gil Klein, Hispanics Fueling Boom in Old South, Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 5, 1999, p. A1. Wes Allison, More Hispanics in Area, Census Shows, Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 5, 1999, p. A8.)

Housing Their Own

A federal housing study of the Los Angeles area has stumbled upon the obvious: blacks and Hispanics don’t like each other. In an experiment in which Hispanics posing as renters went to black-run buildings and blacks applied at Hispanic-run buildings, both groups were shown the door more than half the time. Applicants of the right race got offers of apartments even when their credit records were worse. One Hispanic manager said outright that he didn’t rent to blacks. A Korean pretended not to be the manager when he was approached by a non-Korean. Many buildings advertise only in Spanish or Korean, which makes it clear what tenants they want. In the stilted language of UCLA geographer William A.V. Clark, all this is “striking evidence of persisting own-race selectivity and avoidance of other races.” (Ted Rohrloch, 2 Studies Find Racial Bias in Rental Practices, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 27, 1999, p. B1.)

Hiring Their Own

Los Angeles Times poll of minority-owned businesses in Los Angeles County found that non-white business owners overwhelmingly prefer to hire people of their own race or ethnic group. Nearly three quarters of Hispanic business owners described their work force as mostly Hispanic and 41 percent of black owners have a mostly black work force. About one-third of Asians and whites employ mostly other Asians or whites. No more than three percent of any minority group reported a mostly white work force.

When business owners hire outside their own racial group, they prefer Hispanics to blacks. Only one percent of Latinos reported a mostly black work force; only three percent of Asians and four percent of whites hired mostly blacks. At the same time, almost 30 percent of white owners reported a largely or partly Latino work force. The black-Hispanic difference is only partly explained by the fact that Hispanic workers outnumber black workers 41 percent to eight percent (Asians are 12 percent and whites are 39 percent). (Lee Romney, Minority-Owned Firms Tend to Hire Within Own Ethnic Group, Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1999.)

Same People, Same Problems

It has become fashionable to blame “inner-city” problems on high-rise housing projects. The new theory is that vertical concentration of poor people oppresses them, and that in dispersed, low-rise houses they will reform. All over the country, cities are boarding up (and sometimes blowing up) ancient high-rises. Two years ago the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) followed fashion by launching a huge project to move poor blacks into white-trimmed, turreted town houses. The first phase, which cost $80 million, was to replace the Henry Horner complex with 350 new houses and showcase CHA efforts to transform the entire area.

To the surprise of city officials, in just two years an entire block is now riddled with boarded up windows and burnt-out shells. The quick deterioration reportedly “raises perplexing questions about whether architecture or more stubborn cultural pathologies are at the heart of public housing woes.” Residents have a simpler answer. Shanika Ellis points out that the buildings may be different “but you still have the same people with the same mentality.” The CHA has a solution: It will pay a consulting firm one million dollars to assess the “housekeeping skills” of prospective tenants and to train residents in “housekeeping, parenting, financial management, and job readiness.” (Melita Marie Garza, Old Problems Plague New Low-Rises, Chicago Tribune, September 20, 1999, p.1.)

No one seems to remember that many high-rise projects were originally built for poor whites, who were somehow immune from the effects of vertical concentration. It was only when residents became largely non-white that the buildings’ architectural defects were discovered.

Save the Elephants

For nearly a year, South Africa has been in a tizzy over the fate of 30 or 40 elephants — at least part of South Africa has. In the summer of 1998, a company called African Game Services (AGS) rounded up elephants from overpopulated herds in neighboring Botswana and undertook to habituate them to humans before selling them to zoos and circuses. Long-simmering charges of cruelty to the animals came to a head with a widely-broadcast pirate video of an AGS trainer bludgeoning a chained baby elephant so brutally that the screaming animal urinated on itself. This has prompted an almost exclusively white animal welfare protest movement, with as many as 5,000 whites chanting and picketing at such remote locations as the AGS compound.

Naturally, South African blacks think any uplift movement should benefit them, not animals. “The animal kingdom clearly surpasses Africans when it comes to ‘rights,’” complains a typical black, and one black newspaper editor has suggested that “maybe we should dress our poor up as elephants.” Another black says whites “are in some sort of denial or [have] a heavy case of misdirected guilt.” (Paul Salopek, In S. Africa, a Mammoth Debate, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 1, 1999, p. 1.)

Whites are, indeed, misdirected. They are more willing to demonstrate by the thousands for the welfare of elephants than they are to work for the future of their own people.

Let the Groveling Begin

Albert Gore appears to be willing to go to any length to woo Hispanics, who accounted for five percent of the electorate in the 1996 presidential race. In September he spoke to the annual Congressional Hispanic Caucus dinner, where he told the audience that his first grandchild was born on July fourth. “My next one I hope will be born on Cinco de Mayo,” he said. (Ceci Connolly, Politicians Court Hispanic Vote, Washington Post, Sept. 16, 1999, p. A12.)

Pillory the Pilgrim

The town of Southampton on Long Island has something called the Anti-Bias Task Force, which his recently opened fire on the town seal. Adopted in 1929, the seal depicts a pilgrim, the date 1640, and the words: “First English settlement in the State of New York.” The task force has passed a unanimous resolution calling on the town to dump the seal because it “features an offensive representation of one gender, one race and one historical period.” To suggest that meaningful history began in 1640 is to ignore the contributions of the Shinnecock Indians. (Donna Giacontieri, Is Town Seal Offensive? Southampton Press, Sept., 24, 1999, p. 1.)

Fortunately, when the resolution was reported in the Southampton Press, residents swamped the town council with angry calls and letters, saving the seal — at least for now.

In a Vegetable State

The Florida Tomato Committee is a group of tomato growers that makes recommendations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture about federal tomato regulations. In September, the industry planned to ratify nominations for the committee at the 24th annual Joint Tomato Conference, which attracts hundreds of growers, shippers, and equipment suppliers. At the last minute, Kathleen Merrigan of USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service queered the do by refusing to accept this year’s nominations. In a letter to the committee she wrote, “I am concerned about the committee’s lack of significant effort and commitment to increase participation of women, minorities and persons with disabilities in the nomination process.”

At the beginning of the decade there were more than 800 tomato growers in the state but international competition has reduced the number to fewer than 100. Wayne Hawkins, manager of the committee, says he doesn’t know a single woman or non-white chief executive in the whole industry. As for “people with disabilities,” Dan McClure, president of West Coast Tomato, walks on crutches but has served on the committee for more than ten years. His renomination therefore did not increase the percentage of disabled.

Miss Merrigan of the USDA wants the committee to produce an outreach plan to recruit the right sort of people, adding that if she accepts the plan she “will ask the committee to conduct new nominations for my consideration.” (Jennifer Maddox and Laura Layden, Feds: Too Few Women, Minorities on State Tomato Panel, Naples (Florida) Daily News, Sept. 10, 1999.)

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Letters from readers
LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — After reading Glayde Whitney’s fascinating article on the biology of racial differences I understand much better why the other side is so intent on downplaying this subject. Some of these characteristics — the height of Pygmies, the fat accumulation on the buttocks of Hottentots — are strikingly different from anything found in other groups. In some cases, one begins to wonder whether we are even the same species. I assume that if modern means of transportation had no been invented and the various groups had continued to develop in isolation humans would have branched into different species. Whether one believes the races are created by God or are the result of evolution, it is difficult to believe that despite the huge number of physical differences that separate them, only the brain and its functions are identical in all groups. Biology is no friend of One-Worldism.

Conrad Schmidt, Rumson, N.J.

Sir — It is incorrect for Prof. Whitney to describe blacks as a “dominant social group” in America because they take over our cities, mate with our women, and acquire our resources. It is not the dominating nature of blacks that causes this but the submissiveness of whites. Blacks (and other non-whites) are only doing what we permit them to do. If whites wished, they have the material means to rule not only their own countries but the entire world — much as they did in the 19th century — but they have completely lost their nerve. Prof. Whitney is therefore describing white capitulation, not black accomplishment. It would be bad enough to be displaced by people more advanced than ourselves; it is unspeakable to be displaced by primitives.

Alan Kerbs, Paintsville, Ky.

Sir — We learn in the October O Tempora report on Craig Nelsen that the city council of New York City thinks it is hate-mongering to believe that America is headed for overpopulation, which could be cured by reducing immigration. Has it really become impossible to discuss American population levels without being called a “racist”? Liberalism has become such a caricature of itself that America may soon laugh it out of existence. Soviet Communism eventually collapsed under the weight of its own idiocy. Our system will too.

Sharon Tomlinson, Oceanside, Cal.

Sir — With all due respect to the materials in American Renaissance in general, as a repeated victim of black crime, I feel that Mr. Taylor’s investigations of the “color of crime,” are the most significant of all.

Charles Weber, Tulsa, Okla.

Sir — Last month you reported on the beating of a 12-year-old white at the hands of three black classmates in Chicago. A judge has ruled the beating does not constitute a hate crime. The September 2nd Sun-Times reports that Juvenile Court Judge Charles M. May ruled that the three attackers should be charged only with battery. He claims it is too difficult to determine whether the taunts were racial slurs. The attackers called the boy “Pillsbury Doughboy” and “white boy.” A black parent who witnessed the attack said she heard the attackers say, “Yeah, we’re going to whip that white boy’s ass.’”

Name Withheld, Chicago, Il.

Sir — I can sympathize with Alton Tolbert’s frustration at being treated like an outsider by the Japanese but I also sympathize with the Japanese. Just as whites do not need non-whites to “enrich” their culture, Japanese do not need non-Japanese to “enrich” theirs.

Larry McBride, San Francisco, Cal.

Sir — I am a Christian but I was impressed by your account of the early Greek and Roman religions. It would be hard to imagine a faith more likely to preserve bloodline and culture. On the other hand, a religion of the family did not preserve the Romans from dilution and displacement by aliens.

Likewise, the universalism of Christianity that so many white nationalists deplore has been an obstacle to us only for the past few decades. So what are we to conclude? The Greeks and Romans had a particularist religion but failed to preserve their particularity. Whites have had a universalist religion and are now failing just as the ancients did. Perhaps religion is not central to a sense of nation; it may not be the most powerful weapon of self-defense in a people’s armory. But if religion is not central what is? What is it that we and the Romans both eventually lost?

Paul Tanner, Newport News, Va.

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