August 2004

American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 15, No. 8
August 2004

CONTENTS

How I Saw the Light (Part II)
Ancient Insights Now Forgotten
Song of the South
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

How I Saw the Light (Part II)

More personal accounts of what led AR readers to racial consciousness

I Want to Sob Like a Child for All We Have Lost

I was born in Oakland, California, in 1944 and raised in a lower middle-class area of the city. There was only one non-white family in the neighborhood, and crime was almost unheard of. For example, once a week I was required to accompany my aunt on an all-day shopping excursion to downtown Oakland. Before leaving, my aunt would open wide both the front and back doors to her home, in order to let in fresh air. Those doors were open for six to eight hours straight, and no one ever trespassed. The family car was always parked overnight with its doors unlocked and its windows rolled down. No one ever tampered.

Slowly, incrementally, the demographic and political profile of the city changed, and by the late ‘60s to early ‘70s, it was no longer the city I had loved. Oakland had become an unhealthy, dangerous place. My racial consciousness arose from the many experiences a white man must endure in the inner city.

It came, in part, from the owner of the neighborhood grocery store (a Chinese immigrant) being gunned down in front of his wife and three small children. And from the owner of the local liquor store (a Hungarian immigrant), shot to death while his wife pleaded for his life. And from John, the elderly owner of the local hardware store, being dragged into a rear room of his store, his lifeless form discovered several hours later, his skull having been smashed to bits with a hammer taken from his own inventory. And from my arriving home from work one afternoon to find that everything I owned had been stolen from my duplex, with the exception of the rifle I kept hidden behind the water heater.

It arose in part from the endless stream of nonsense spewing from the mouths of the “oppressed:” Power to the people. Send a pig to heaven with a .357. Black is beautiful. Try black and you’ll never go back. Keep it black ‘til I get back.

It arose also from the media making heroes out of local radical groups and individuals (who were nothing more than common street thugs): the SLA, the Soledad Brothers, the Black Panthers, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis — the list goes on and on.

It arose from the degenerates of my own race in Berkeley, the Castro district, and Haight-Ashbury, and also from having a large caliber revolver placed to my temple while being told, “I’m gonna blow your white m***** f****** brains out, Honky!” My racial consciousness is a product of all of these things and so many more, the total weight of which I could no longer endure.

To my discredit I fled California in 1987. I’ve since lived in Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Tucson. With each move I’ve sought to restore the quality of life I was so privileged to enjoy as a youth. I have failed in my quest.

I want back my city! My streets! My ocean! I want back my schools, my infrastructure, my arts, and the companionship of like-minded citizens. I want the comradeship of similar people working together to achieve similar goals. And I once again want to stand atop the high ground just north of the Golden Gate and gaze toward the city in wide-eyed wonderment at the panorama my race created. And as I write this I want to drop to my knees, round my shoulders, and sob like an abandoned child for all we have lost.

Jason Day, AZ.

I Believed My Ancestors Were Bad

I would like to share my experiences of living in Los Angeles as a white teenager. My father has always tried to instill a love for my heritage and pride in the accomplishments of Europeans, even though everywhere else, I was being told the opposite. I didn’t quite understand what my father wanted me to be proud of.

Until ninth grade, I believed my European ancestors were bad, that they were racist, and hated anyone unlike them. I believed this because it is what I was taught in school. It was all over the media, and I couldn’t escape it. I did not think what I was hearing was wrong.

It wasn’t until high school that I began to understand. Every one of my classes had an agenda to make white people feel bad about their heritage and ancestry. Being a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Caucasian female in LA, I have encountered much racism. The students at my school were mostly blacks and Hispanics, and I began to dread having to go to classes and hear insults aimed at my people every day. I was always around people who are not tolerant of fair-skinned people, but I was supposed to have respect for them. I decided home schooling would be better for me.

I enjoy reading your publication. Both my father and I like to hear about other white men and women waking up and opening their eyes to the truth. I am proud to be white and I won’t let anyone tell me differently. Thank you for helping our race.

Lindsay Gordon, age 16

‘Racist’ Feelings Were Something Immoral

I am 43 years old, an educated, self-employed professional working in a technical field in a large mid-western city. I first met black people in elementary school when they were bused from the black part of the city to our genteel neighborhood school. My observations at the time, as a 4th, 5th, and 6th grader, were that the few black children tended to be loud, unruly, and not too smart. With the exception of one well-behaved black boy who applied himself, the others caused my teachers a disproportionate amount of the relatively little trouble they had in a 1960s middle-class elementary school.

I wish you could see the class photo of my 6th grade class — three rows of beaming white faces, two smiling black girls who were amiable but loud and dull-witted, and one large-for-his age, scowling black boy standing in the back row, half-turned away from the camera, with a classic case of “attitude.” He was also the class bully, and terrorized some of my friends and me. At this point I had already begun to form a poor impression of blacks but, as a child, I didn’t think deeply about this.

As I went through high school, more and more blacks were bused to our school, and the pattern of classroom disruption continued. There were the outbursts of hallway fighting between blacks or between blacks and the tough whites from the poorer neighborhoods. I had two black friends, girls who were gregarious and reasonably studious. One became pregnant by a 15-year-old black boy when she was a senior. By the end of high school, my impression of blacks as dull-witted, irresponsible, loud and disruptive was pretty well set, but I still did not think in terms of racial consciousness. I didn’t feel comfortable around blacks, and I didn’t respect any of the blacks I knew (except for one studious girl and the studious boy from elementary school), but I felt that being outspoken about my “racist” feelings was something immoral that had to be hidden, something I needed to grow out of.

As the years passed and I met more black people in college, graduate school, and in the workplace, my impressions did not change. There was the psychotic black woman in the dormitory where I worked as a residential advisor, who harassed the white women on her floor; the clique of black students who insisted on having a “blacks only” social organization funded with student government money; my advisor in graduate school, a black woman who taught in a graduate journalism program but was a poor speller and who could not finish paperwork by the necessary deadlines. In my field of computers, the few blacks I have met have been at best borderline competent.

By my mid-30s, I was firmly convinced that blacks are a problem for white society but I didn’t see a moral justification for doing anything about it. I had never been exposed to anything like AR or a well-reasoned racialist argument. I felt that my secret resentments of and poor opinion of blacks were personal weaknesses for which I would be answerable in the next life.

What changed my mind were two arguments.

I had arrived at a political view that was mostly libertarian: Give us back our freedom of association and we can voluntarily separate from troublesome blacks. Stop taking away our money to support indolent, sexually irresponsible blacks, and we will have fewer problems. But then I read that whites will eventually become a minority in this country. Combine that with the fact that no majority-black or -Hispanic nation has ever maintained a society of the kind whites create, and it becomes a logical certainty that whites must politically and geographically separate themselves from blacks and Hispanics if we are to survive as a people.

The other powerful argument that convinced me a racialist approach was necessary was evidence like that presented in The Bell Curve, that blacks are less intelligent than whites and more emotional and disruptive and crime-prone for genetic reasons. I used to think blacks’ problems could be fixed with education or social programs, but I became convinced social programs can’t work.

I began to search for web sites that had articles on these matters, and this is when I came across AR. I have concluded, based on the dispassionate, reasoned arguments I have found in AR and a few other places, that much as I would like to be an idealist, the reality is that whites simply must separate themselves from blacks in some manner that protects us as a people. I feel a sadness for the decent black people who through no fault of their own are part of a race that as a whole is unable to manage its affairs. I hope there is a way to order the world so that blacks can be free and prosperous and that people can have goodwill towards one another.

The only approach to race that has a chance of working is one that avoids histrionics and does not demonize others. One reason so many whites feel uncomfortable with racialist ideas is their historical association with violence and white supremacy. The white man who blew up the black girls in that Birmingham church did a great deal of harm to the white race. Violence or shrillness will never convince white people who may well have doubts about blacks but think it is immoral to be “racist.” Talking about “Jews” as the source of the problem smacks of Nazism — another violent movement that did us great harm.

I have made racial arguments to a few of my closest friends, and I know they can have an impact. Still, it takes time for people to give themselves permission to think in a racially conscious way. Even I am still not 100 percent comfortable doing so. But the arguments, the facts, the studies — these, combined with personal experiences will eventually change enough minds to make a difference.

Anonymous

Forced Busing Began in Wichita

I was born in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958, and have always known blacks were different from whites: louder and more animated. Still, I did not think much about this until I went to junior high school in 1970. That was the year forced busing began in Wichita. Blacks beat whites for no reason, and shook them down for pocket change. It was shocking to us. The few blacks who had been with us in earlier grades were not that way for the first month or two of school, but soon started acting like their 8th and 9th grade brethren.

My increasing dislike for blacks continued through high school. Blacks generally kept their distance in high school, but woe to the white who walked the halls by himself as the end of the school year approached. Blacks did not like taking final examinations. As exam days approached, they would look for a solitary white and beat him up. They would be kicked out of school and not take final exams, but would be passed on to the next grade.

I attended undergraduate school at Kansas State University. In junior high and high school the percentage of blacks has been 15 to 20 percent, but now it was two to four percent. This meant no more black-on-white violence, and I loved it. So did other whites from high schools with many blacks. Still, there were a few negative experiences. Once, at a lecture, a black man walked across most of a row purposely bumping into whites and not excusing himself. When he came to a black student he excused himself.

Mike Sanders

I Needed to Find a New Career

I saw the light when I chose public education as a career relatively late in life. I had been a New Thought minister for 11 years, and converted to another faith. That meant I needed to find a new career, so I chose teaching.

One of the first things I learned was that in our jurisdiction you cannot give a black child an IQ test. I couldn’t believe my ears. Once I overheard a black mother tell a friend, “Well, it’s time to have another baby. The welfare’s about to run out.” When I went to graduate school to get a teaching credential, I was immediately cast into the world of multiculturalism and its doublespeak. I was told that the great disparity in test scores between white and black and Hispanic kids was caused by institutional racism. That did it. At age 52, I was not exactly wet behind the ears.

I was raised by a Southern mother in Southern California, and she always said there was a difference in capability between whites and blacks. I had always looked for evidence that she was wrong, but now I began to see the evidence that she was right.

Baker

My Country is Marching Down the Same Path

It is relatively easy for me to pinpoint when my views began to change. The year was 1994, and I learned of a controversial new book called The Bell Curve, which was causing a stir even in Canada, where I lived. I had to read the book in order to satisfy my curiosity, even though it required a special order because the bookstores in Halifax, Nova Scotia, were not stocking it.

In 1994 I was 40 years old, so my opinions on practically everything were well established. I had grown up in a town, a province, and a country that were overwhelmingly white. Race had always seemed irrelevant, except as a way periodically to look down on the Americans for their race problems.

I was perplexed by The Bell Curve. Could it be true? I had always known that intelligence played a role in life outcomes, but did the races really differ in average IQ? The evidence presented by the authors seemed undeniable. I could not let it rest, and thus my investigations began. I must say they were not easy. There is a tremendous amount of garbage about race put out by a never-ending supply of crackpots and morons. Thank God I accidentally stumbled upon AR.

Michael LevinPhilippe RushtonArthur JensenSamuel Francis and Jared Taylor became my tutors. Their scholarly articles and books became the core of my curriculum. To be sure, race does matter, and as I’ve come to learn, it matters a great deal. My country is marching down the same path as the United States. Non-white immigration is at record levels, and whites are already a minority in two of our three major cities: Vancouver and Toronto. With my awareness comes a profound sadness and sense of foreboding. My nation is changing in countless ways and no one seems to care. I can’t help but envision a grim future for my grandchildren.

Name Withheld, Canada

I Can’t Say I am Completely Convinced

I do not agree with everything in AR, but your magazine has helped me streamline my thoughts. For the record, I am an immigrant, so I do not belong to the category of people you favor, but I can understand that.

I was born and raised in the most politically correct country in the world, where multiculturalism and diversity (these terms together were called internationalism) were an integral part of a higher “religion” called Communism. Dissent was a crime and punished accordingly. That country was called The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and I think we can learn valuable lessons from its breakdown. Most Americans think Communism and the poor economy were the main reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Those factors played a destructive role, but many do not realize that the policy of “internationalism” had a major influence on the disintegration of a once powerful and feared country.

When the Bolsheviks came to power, Lenin stated that “every nation has the right to self determination.” What he meant was not independence, but that all parts of the happy Soviet family could preserve their culture, traditions and language as long as they embraced Communism. You will find striking similarities between Lenin’s teachings and the views of today’s proponents of diversity. For about 70 years the impression was that this policy worked, and at the end of the 1960s, I believe, it was declared that a new entity, the Soviet People, had come into being and that the national question had been solved.

In the mid-1980s after I graduated from university I had to travel a lot on business. I talked privately to many people in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics and found that they had an unfavorable opinion of Russians. Some hated Russians outright. At the same time many Russians referred to other nationalities as “low-lifes.” However, “nationalism” was a severely punishable crime. All people are brothers and brothers don’t hate each other. Period.

When Communism fell, one of the first things that happened was that every Soviet Republic declared independence from Russia and formed its own national state.

It is important to note that the majority of newly independent countries realized they would not be better off economically. The Soviet economy had been very tightly integrated to ensure that none of the republics could gain economic independence. In many cases the economies of those countries deteriorated badly, but people still felt they could manage themselves better as nations. After independence, they started to persuade Russians either to leave their countries or assimilate, learn their language, and accept their culture. There was no more talk of internationalism.

Significantly, there were not as many racial, ethnic or even cultural differences among the nations of what was known as the USSR as there are between whites and blacks in America. Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians are all Slavs, they have similar languages and the same religion. But even for these groups, there were enough differences to warrant separation.

When I lived in Russia, I was an avid listener to the Voice of America, and was under the impression that the situation in the United States was completely different. The many ethnic groups and races all considered themselves American, spoke one language and shared the same culture, traditions and history. When I brought my family to the USA, I considered myself lucky to be here, and I did not think too much about what was happening in this country. Only later I started to notice things that did not seem to be quite right.

It was not any major event that altered my views, but small things. When we came to the US my son was four and didn’t speak English. When he went to kindergarten I immediately was offered all sorts of special programs for him. I insisted that he be treated the same as any other kid. The school administration told me we needed to preserve his language, culture and traditions. After a couple of meetings with teachers they finally backed off and in six months my son spoke English as well as any other kid in his class. I had to go through the same thing when my younger son enrolled in school.

When we bought a house it was in a nice, well-kept neighborhood, but after four years things slowly started to change. My next-door neighbors sold their house to Sikh immigrants from India. I found I couldn’t open windows or enjoy our rose garden anymore because of the incredibly strong smell of curry in the air. To make things worse, they were cooking in the garage with all the doors open. After some hesitation, I politely explained that although I respect their right to cook and eat whatever they want, they in return should respect my right not to smell what they are cooking. They called me racist, fascist and Nazi. I was shocked.

I talked to other neighbors about this. Some agreed with me, but said nothing can be done; others said it did not bother them; others called me a Nazi racist again. As the neighborhood became more and more colorful, more and more problems arose. I started to think about this disharmony. I could not find any satisfying answers in the mainstream media, because according to them it was me — an intolerant bigot — who was the problem! I discovered your publication and subscribed to it. I also bought some politically incorrect books and started to study the problem. I can’t say I am completely convinced yet by your point of view, but I guess I am still at the beginning of my path to understanding the racial problem. I have learned one thing: Diversifying society brings nothing but harm.

Americans should take a closer look at what happened in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Oops! I forgot there are no such countries any more. My sincere hope is that nothing like that will ever happen here.

Sergei, Sacramento, Calif.

Roaches Crawled Freely About

I am probably the only AR subscriber who graduated from a historically black college (HBC), but I really can’t say that made me “see the light.” I was treated very fairly, and overall my time there was positive. Of course, I didn’t realize then how academically sub par the school was, and I certainly wouldn’t choose an HBC if I decided to continue my education.

After leaving college I went into law enforcement, and it was there that reality hit me like a club over the head. I realized that all those doubts about blacks I had in the back of my mind were there for a good reason. Despite my college experiences with black people, I had never gone into their neighborhoods and homes. I had never been in homes where roaches crawled freely about, eating food that had obviously been lying on the floor for days. I could never have imagined going into the home of a nearly blind 90-year-old black man who called police because his granddaughter had come over and stolen his Social Security money. I could never have imagined responding to an armed robbery call and discovering the white female convenience store clerk who had confronted the black juvenile female shoplifter in her store, and had gotten the entire side of her mouth cut open with a box cutter — her teeth were clearly visible. And it is hard to describe the anger I felt when I watched a young white mother cry because the black man who had just burgled her home had stolen her video camera and all the precious, irreplaceable tapes of her daughter.

But what I really could never have conceived of before becoming a police officer was the complete lack of guilt and remorse for the terrible acts blacks seem especially capable of committing. I can honestly say I have met some characters whom I consider to be beasts without souls.

When that July 1995 issue of AR arrived in my mailbox — unsolicited — it was like discovering hidden treasure. Here at last were articulate people putting into words what I had known for years to be true, but was constantly told by the establishment media was not true. I still think the cover story, “The Morality of Survival” by Michael Masters, was one of the best ever. And through reading AR I discovered authors like Richard McCulloch, whose books make the moral case for racial consciousness as well as anyone. So sixteen years of police work, many books by racialist authors, and of course, AR, have me “seeing the light” quite clearly.

Anonymous

Proud to be Gay and Proud to be White

Like the Jewish reader who wrote of his racial awakening in Part I, I am a member of a minority group that is assumed to “belong” to the left. As a lesbian, I am supposed to be glad to be a band in Jesse Jackson’s rainbow. And for most of my life, I believed the left’s rhetoric about identity politics, voted Democrat, and supported the liberal agenda.

Growing up in Los Angeles, I attributed the racial conflicts I experienced to black oppression — when blacks called me “blondie” and pushed me around, they were venting legitimate frustration, given their history as victims of the system. When Watts burned, I watched the smoke rise over East LA from the front lawn of my parents’ working-class home. And, again I rationalized: Years of police brutality had caused the riots, not the blacks themselves. When affirmative action was put in place and blacks were given preference over more qualified whites, I acquiesced. We owed them that much. Even as late as the 1980s I was still buying it. Like most gays and most blacks, I voted for Bill Clinton.

But slowly, my attitude began to change. Although there were many, I can think of three specific events that finally pushed me out of the rainbow. The first was President Clinton’s speech about the demographic future of America in which he rejoiced at the impending demise of the white majority. Although I rejected my own reaction at the time as racist, the words that came to my mind were “traitor to his race.” I ignored my gut reaction and filed it away.

The second was a job I nearly lost out on because I was white. The man who hired me told me in confidence that although he wanted me for the position, he had been instructed to hire a “person of color.” To his credit, he disobeyed his supervisor, ignored this directive, and hired the most qualified candidate. A white friend wasn’t so lucky. During a job interview she was told, without apology, that only blacks would be hired.

And third — an outcome that made so many of us question our assumptions of race — was the O.J. Simpson verdict.

As a lesbian, I have never experienced discrimination on the job, and I can count on one hand the number of times I have been verbally harassed because I am gay. As a white person it has been an entirely different story. I have white lesbian friends who have been raped by black men; white gay male friends who have been beaten up by Hispanic gangs (in one case my friend died); and numerous straight white friends whose “quality of life” has been reduced by blacks and other people of color.

I am still uneasy with many aspects of the Euro-American movement as I try to reconcile being a proud gay person with being a proud white person. But when push comes to shove, my guess is that race trumps sexual identity, and that I’m not the only gay on your subscription list.

Name and city withheld

The Whites Let Out a Collective Gasp

I grew up in largely white suburbs in the Midwest and South. While there were always a handful of blacks and other non-whites in the public grade schools I attended, they were for the most part no different from my fellow whites. In behavior, dress, speech and socioeconomic background, we were all pretty much the same; it was in the early to mid 1970s, and I don’t believe any of us children were really conscious of race.

That changed dramatically in high school. I went to a school in suburban Atlanta that was virtually all white — typical suburban children from typically suburban families. At first, there were few blacks, and again, other than their skin color, they were pretty much like the rest of us. Then DeKalb County started something called the “Majority to Minority” (M to M) transfer program, a voluntary desegregation plan whereby any student could switch schools if it meant leaving one where his race was the majority and going to one where it was a minority. The program was open to whites as well as blacks — I knew one white student who transferred to a black school to play on a better basketball team — but M to M basically meant blacks transferring to white schools.

These were not the blacks we white suburban kids were used to. They came largely from the Atlanta part of DeKalb, or from the black southern portion of the county, and came by the busload. They most definitely did not dress, talk or behave like us, or the blacks we knew and with whom we were comfortable.

The difference was driven home by an incident one day in the cafeteria when two M to M black girls started arguing. They were soon screaming at each other, using the most vile language imaginable, and then they started fighting. At school I had never seen anything more than a scuffle, but this was an intensely violent “street” fight. The girls — 15 or 16 years old — were punching, kicking, pulling each other’s hair, and clawing each other as if they meant nothing short of murder. None of us had ever seen anything like it. The white children sat in stunned silence, our mouths practically hanging open. The idea of breaking up the fight never occurred to us, although if the girls had been white, someone would surely have stepped in.

One of our assistant principals — a very large black man who was a former college linebacker — ran out of his office and got between the girls. This did not end the fight. As he tried to separate them, they both attacked him with the same animal ferocity. One of the girls picked up a cafeteria chair and swung it at his head. He ducked, but a leg caught him on the forehead, opening up a nasty gash. The whites let out a collective gasp. None of us could have imagined striking a school official, much less hitting him with a chair. In her rage, this black girl had lost all fear and, it seemed to us, something of her humanity as well. The assistant principal wrestled the chair from her and managed to get his arms around her while other administrators dealt with the second girl. They hauled the girls off and, as I recall, we never saw them again.

Although the fight lasted just a few minutes, it had a profound effect on many of us. I believe most of us learned our first lesson in racial consciousness that day. We no longer saw blacks as just like us, only darker. They — particularly the M to M blacks — were different: profoundly alien and potentially dangerous.

The M to M program itself seemed to awaken a racial consciousness in our parents. As the school got more M to M transfers, whites began to leave. White families with children in public schools began moving to other, more distant whiter counties. Blacks bought their homes. As more blacks moved into the area, the schools became blacker, prompting still more whites to leave. When I left that part of DeKalb County in the early 1980s, it appeared to be 90 percent white. Within a decade, it was perhaps 40 percent white. I would imagine the figure today is closer to 10 percent.

Stephen Webster, AR Assistant Editor

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

ARTICLE

Ancient Insights Now Forgotten

Booth Tarkington (1869–1946) was an Indiana novelist who won Pulitzer prizes for The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) and Alice Adams (1921), but is best known for three books about a middle-class boy named Penrod. The first of the series, titled simply Penrod (1913), contains an incident in which the boy’s eyes are opened in much the way those of the previous contributor’s were opened years ago in a high school cafeteria. Tarkington was a liberal for his time, but wrote before delusions about race had become quite so well established.

Penrod, age 11, has struck up an acquaintance with Rupe Collins, a tough guy and bully from the other side of the tracks. Penrod is fascinated by Rupe’s swaggering ways and starts imitating them. Rupe likes to put his face right up to someone else’s and threaten violence, and Penrod has tried this on his friend Sam Williams, and on two Negro playmates, the brothers Herman and Verman, who live in a nearby alley. They take it cheerfully, but when the bully himself gives Herman the look and threatens violence, the results are different:

“You ole black nigger,” Rupe said venomously to Herman, “I’m agoin’ to — ”

But he had allowed his nose to remain too long near Herman’s. Penrod’s familiar nose had been as close with only a ticklish spinal effect upon the not very remote descendant of Congo man-eaters. The result produced by the glare of Rupe’s unfamiliar eyes, and by the dreadfully suggestive proximity of Rupe’s unfamiliar nose, was altogether different. Herman’s and Verman’s Bangala great-grand-fathers never considered people of their own jungle neighbourhood proper material for a meal; but they looked upon strangers — especially truculent strangers — as distinctly edible.

Penrod and Sam heard Rupe suddenly squawk and bellow . . .

Then they separated — and battle was on!

How neat and pure is the task of the chronicler who has the tale to tell of a “good rousing fight” between boys or men who fight in the “good old English way,” according to a model set for fights in books long before Tom Brown went to Rugby. There are seconds and rounds and rules of fair-play, and always there is great good feeling in the end . . .

But, when Herman and Verman set to, the record must be no more than a few fragments left by the expurgator. It has been perhaps sufficiently suggested that the altercation in the stable opened with mayhem in respect to the aggressor’s nose. Expressing vocally his indignation and the extremity of his pained surprise, Mr. Collins stepped backward, holding his left hand over his nose, and striking at Herman with his right. Then Verman hit him with the rake.

Verman struck from behind. He struck as hard as he could. And he struck with the tines down. For, in his simple, direct, African way he wished to kill his enemy, and he wished to kill him as soon as possible. That was his single, earnest purpose.

On this account, Rupe Collins was peculiarly unfortunate. He was plucky and he enjoyed conflict; but neither his ambitions nor his anticipations had ever included murder. He had not learned that an habitually aggressive person runs the danger of colliding with beings in one of those lower stages of evolution wherein theories about “hitting below the belt” have not yet made their appearance.

The rake glanced from the back of Rupe’s head to his shoulder; but it felled him. Both darkies jumped full upon him instantly, and the three rolled and twisted upon the stable floor, unloosing upon the air sincere maledictions closely connected with complaints of cruel and unusual treatment; while certain expressions of feeling presently emanating from Herman and Verman indicated that Rupe Collins, in this extremity, was proving himself not too slavishly addicted to fighting by the rules.

From the panting, pounding, yelling heap issued words and phrases hitherto quite unknown to Penrod and Sam . . . Appalled, the two spectators retreated to the doorway nearest the yard, where they stood dumbly watching the cataclysm.

The struggle increased in primitive simplicity: time and again the howling Rupe got to his knees only to go down again as the earnest brothers, in their own way, assisted him to a more reclining position. Primal forces operated here, and the two blanched, slightly higher products of evolution, Sam and Penrod, no more thought of interfering than they would have thought of interfering with an earthquake.

At last, out of the ruck rose Verman, disfigured and maniacal. With a wild eye he looked about him for his trusty rake; but Penrod, in horror, had long since thrown the rake out into the yard. Naturally, it had not seemed necessary to remove the lawn-mower.

The frantic eye of Verman fell upon he lawn-mower, and instantly he leaped to its handle. Shrilling a wordless war-cry, he charged, propelling the whirling, deafening knives straight upon the prone legs of Rupe Collins. The lawn-mower was sincerely intended to pass longitudinally over the body of Mr. Collins from heel to head; and it was the time for a death-song. Black Valkyrie hovered in the shrieking air.

“Cut his gizzud out!” shrieked Herman, urging on the whirling knives.

They touched and lacerated the shin of Rupe as, with the supreme agony of effort a creature in mortal peril puts forth before succumbing, he tore himself free of Herman and got upon his feet.

Herman was up as quickly. He leaped to the wall and seized the garden-scythe that hung there.

“I’m go’ to cut you gizzud out,” he announced definitely, “an’ eat it!”

Rupe Collins had never run from anybody (except his father) in his life; he was not a coward; but the present situation was very, very unusual. He was already in a badly dismantled condition, and yet Herman and Verman seemed discontented with their work: Verman was swinging the grass-cutter about for a new charge, apparently still wishing to mow him, and Herman had made a quite plausible statement about what he intended to do with the scythe . . .

Rupe paused but for an extremely condensed survey of the horrible advance of the brothers, and then, uttering a blood-curdled scream of fear, ran out of the stable and up the alley at a speed he had never before attained . . . And a ‘cross-shoulder glance at the corner, revealing Verman and Herman in pursuit, the latter waving his scythe overhead, Mr. Collins slackened not his gait . . .

From the alley door, Penrod and Sam watched the flight, and were without words. When the pursuit rounded the corner, the two looked wanly at each other; but neither spoke until the return of the brothers back from the chase.

Herman and Verman came back, laughing and chuckling.

“Hiyi!” cackled Herman to Verman, as they came. “See ‘at ole boy run!”

“Who-ee!” Verman shouted in ecstasy.

“Nev’ did se boy run so fas’!” Herman continued, tossing the scythe into the wheelbarrow. “I bet he home in bed by viss time!” . . .

Penrod looked dazedly from Herman to Verman and back again. So did Sam Williams.

“Herman,” said Penrod, in a weak voice, “you wouldn’t honest of cut his gizzard out, would you?”

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

BOOK REVIEW

Song of the South

What does it take for a nation to endure?

Michael Andrew Grissom, Can the South Survive?, The Rebel Press, 2001, 705 pp. (soft cover) $22.50.

Although the title of this book is Can the South Survive? it could have had the subtitle Can America Survive? or Can Whites Survive? This is to say that although it is a book about the South, written by a proud and loyal Southerner, the questions it asks go far beyond sectional interests. Michael Grissom’s main concern is whether there is a realistic hope for a distinctly Southern nation, but he understands that the South’s decline into irreligious, miscegenist vulgarity is part of a sickness that afflicts whites everywhere. The great strength of this book is that although it ranges widely over history and culture, it never loses sight of the central question of race. Michael Grissom is that rare and refreshing Southerner who never apologizes.

Michael Andrew Grissom, Can the South Survive?

The Old South

Mr. Grissom begins with an explanation of what makes the South southern. It is good as far as it goes, but deserves more than 34 of the book’s 705 pages. Mr. Grissom has covered this ground more thoroughly elsewhere, particularly in his 1988 book, Southern by the Grace of God, but readers less familiar with the South will want a better-rounded picture of what the author so passionately defends.

Mr. Grissom starts with four distinctively Southern traditions: a feudal theory of society, a code of chivalry, a firm concept of the gentleman, and a pervasive religiousness. Southerners thought seriously about what God, honor, and breeding required of them. Men avenged insults on the field of honor and, as Mr. Grissom writes, “falsehood, like an act of cowardice, was supposed to lose one his standing in society.” He adds that “every woman was a lady; ladies were to be protected; their virtue assured; their honor unquestioned.”

The total war Sherman and Sheridan waged against the South was an incomprehensible outrage against this deep sense of propriety. Mr. Grissom quotes Confederate Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin:

If they had behaved differently; if they had come against us observing strict discipline protecting women and children, respecting private property and proclaiming as their only object the putting down of armed resistance to the Federal Government, we should have found it perhaps more difficult to prevail against them. But they could not help showing their cruelty and rapacity, they could not dissemble their true nature, which is the real cause of this war. If they had been capable of acting otherwise, they would not have been Yankees, and we should never have quarreled with them.

Once their country was invaded, Southerners defended their way of life with a single-mindedness that commanded admiration. Colonel Arthur Freemantle of the British army, who marched for a time as an observer with the Southern armies, concluded his diary with this tribute:

The more I think of all that I have seen in the Confederate States of the devotion of the whole population, the more I feel inclined to say with General [Leonidas] Polk — ‘How can you subjugate such a people as this?’ and even supposing that their extermination were a feasible plan, as some Northerners have suggested, I never can believe that in the nineteenth century the civilized world will be condemned to witness the destruction of such a gallant race.

Of course, the “gallant race” was defeated, and if it was not entirely destroyed, it’s confidence was badly shaken. Mr. Grissom explains:

The bitter taste of defeat, the ensuing horror of Reconstruction, and the collapse of his [the Southerner’s] stable social order — reinforced by the pervasive Yankee textbooks from which his children formed their ideas — convinced him that he had been wrong, or at best had taken the wrong road and was, therefore, obligated to try things the Yankee way, to see it the Yankee way.

Already by the end of the 19th century, Henry W. Grady of Atlanta had popularized the phrase “New South,” by which he meant commerce and industrialization on the Northern model. The South was to make money-making life’s chief end; it was to “outyankee the Yankee” as one Southern editor put it.

Still, the South avoided some of the restlessness of the North. Mr. Girssom quotes John Crowe Ransom, writing in 1930 about Southern communities: “Their citizens are comparatively satisfied with the life they have inherited, and are careful to look backward quite as much as they look forward.”

John Crowe Ransom

John Crowe Ransom (Credit Image: Robie Macauley / Wikimedia)

Of course, what increasingly made this satisfied life intolerable to the rest of the country was the subordinate position of blacks. Blacks had been in the South in large numbers since the 18th and even the 17th centuries, and whites had established hierarchical relations that persisted long after slavery. Even in 1960, there were still 140 counties in the Old Confederacy in which blacks outnumbered whites, and equality was unthinkable. William Alexander Percy’s 1941 novel, Lanterns on the Levee, reflects one thoughtful Southerner’s observations about blacks:

Murder, thieving, lying, violence — I sometimes suspect the Negro doesn’t regard these as crimes or sins, or even as regrettable circumstances. He commits them casually, with no apparent feeling of guilt. White men similarly delinquent become soiled or embittered or brutalized. Negroes are as charming after as before a crime. Committing criminal acts, they seem never to be criminals. The gentle devoted creature who is your baby’s nurse can carve her boy-friend from ear to ear at midnight and by seven a.m. will be changing the baby’s diaper while she sings ‘Hear the Lambs a-calling.’” He goes on to ask: “Is the inner life of the Negro utterly different from ours? Has he never accepted our standard of ethics?

Still, explicit commentary on racial differences was rare. Mr. Grissom quotes the “Yankee-born Carleton Putnam:”

The South, after generations of experience, had developed customs and a way of life with the Negro that took his limitations into consideration with a minimum of friction and a maximum of kindness. It was entirely against these customs, these adaptations, openly to analyze and publicize the reasons for them.

However, when outsiders began to interfere with race relations, delicacy became a disadvantage:

The truth is that responsible Southerners have deliberately weakened their own defense because of their unwillingness to raise the underlying problem. They talk of states’ rights when they should be talking anthropology, and they do so out of instinctive human kindness. There is a point at which kindness imposed upon ceases to be a virtue.

In 1951, the NAACP, which had until then considered the South impregnable, held its national convention in Atlanta. This marked a shift in emphasis and the beginning of a campaign against which the South was poorly prepared. The North proceeded to bully the South with a zeal born of ignorance, but Southerners never mounted a coherent defense.

“The South,” writes Mr. Grissom, “was teeming with traveling troublemakers” who, together with the federal government, were behind the tumultuous events of the period. Mr. Grissom ably tells the stories of the integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1957, the “freedom riders” of 1961, the near-war at Ole Miss in 1962, the Birmingham church bombing of 1963, and the Selma-to-Montgomery march of 1965.

Little Rock Central High School

The integration of Little Rock Central High School.

Throughout this period, there was some white resistance, but little unity and bad leadership. Blacks, as Mr. Grissom points out, very quickly learned to stick together: “[B]loc voting works to the advantage of the negro in that his is the only special interest group which can be counted on to stay the course consistently, a decided advantage when it comes to extracting promises from weather-vane politicians.”

Among whites, “the moderate became the liberal’s best friend,” writes Mr. Grissom. “Always counseling moderation, inaction, passivity, the moderate never managed a stand on anything.” The South was also betrayed by its newspapers, many of which were owned by Northerners. Even those with roots still in the South had editors who played to a New York audience rather than to their own readers. Ministers, as well, were quick to capitulate, and whites became so demoralized that “the presence of a single black is enough to intimidate a whole room full of whites.”

Mr. Grissom describes some of the consequences of this loss of nerve. A visit to Central High School today finds that what was once the pride of Little Rock needs millions of dollars of repairs, sits in a blasted neighborhood — and hosts a museum that tells the integration story. “Not only do liberals do stupid things,” he writes; “they commemorate them.”

Mr. Grissom always includes the parts of the story liberal cheerleaders leave out. He notes that years after the integration of Ole Miss, James Meredith didn’t have quite the view of the event he was supposed to: “They would have been crazy not to fight against me, because I went there to fight them,” he said. “I went there to take their good thing away from them.”

Despite the long string of racial defeats for the South, the region still retains some sense of race. The common joke in the South when Lisa Marie Presley married Michael Jackson was that this was proof Elvis was dead. If “the King” had had a spark of life in him he would have showed up to stop her marrying a black man.

Final Collapse

In Mr. Grissom’s view, the “civil rights uproar” was central to a generalized collapse of decency. It pre-dated drug-taking, the “free-speech” movement, and demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, but it merged with them, made use of them, and outlasted them. “There was not an issue in the Sixties that couldn’t be connected to a black cause,” he writes.

The 1960s saw not only the overthrow of the racial order but virtually every other order as well. “We are always only one generation away from apostasy, and one untaught, untrained, undisciplined generation is all it takes to break the chain of civilization’s perpetuity,” writes Mr. Grissom. “That generation was the one the Sixties gave us.”

He calls modern culture “a sea of pollution,” and has the greatest revulsion for the coarseness that now characterizes language, dress, manners, and behavior. He blames much of the decline on television, and wishes it had never been invented: “If Southerners don’t quit watching TV, I fear it will rob us of our very souls.” Mr. Grissom frankly favors censorship, and complains that too many people will betray their principles for fear of being called “prudes.”

Mr. Grissom takes his faith seriously, and writes angrily about “imitation churches” that apologize to blacks, ordain women, promote miscegenation, fawn over homosexuals and AIDS carriers, and join in attacks on Southern symbols. He argues that efforts to “change with the times” and to be “relevant” have left churches with smaller congregations than ever. How, he asks, can anyone be attracted to an institution that calls God the “father-mother” and evokes the “mighty hand” of God rather than His “right hand” for fear of offending southpaws? “If the religious institutions of the South do not function properly,” he asks, “what can the South expect in the way of order, morality, and stability?”

These are, of course, problems that concern the whole country and not just the South. Mr. Grissom also writes about the dangers of “an immigration policy based upon trying to avert charges of racism,” and his chapter on why the Republicans cannot save the South could have been entitled why they cannot save anything. They are, he notes “simply one branch of a single-party system,” and it is because of them that the word “conservative” “has become so perverted that it resists definition” and is “a term sadly in search of a meaning.”

Is there any hope for the South? Mr. Grissom is not sure. “One must eventually ask,” he writes, “if Southerners . . . can even be moved to a consideration of their plight.” Most, he fears, have become “a people who have forgotten who they are.” In this respect, Southerners are no different from their Northern — or European — cousins. The white man, Mr. Grissom writes, “doesn’t even realize he is in a war. He fails to comprehend the seriousness of his own situation and probably won’t until he is in the minority — and then it will be too late.”

This book’s final prescription for the South is not realistic. Swallowing his deep disapproval of the man, Mr. Grissom quotes Abraham Lincoln from 1848 — “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better” — and proposes secession. Secession appeals to Southerners nostalgic for the gallantry and bravery of their Confederate ancestors, and who believe that if the South were somehow free of Yankee domination it would return to the healthy ways of the past.

Union is Dissolved!

Secession would be wonderful. There was, at one time, a Southern nation, and it could perhaps be reborn. However, separatist sentiment among whites is more likely to follow racial than sectional lines. Many Southerners will look to Northern whites for racial allies before they look to blacks for regional allies (though Mr. Grissom does not consider blacks Southerners: “Historically, the term has never been applied to the negro . . .”). Mr. Grissom understands that the central problem for the South has been race, but for secession even to get a hearing, it would have to be offered as something that would appeal to blacks. That is no different from preaching states’ rights when the problem is anthropology, and that approach failed.

Mr. Grissom understands what is at stake. Immigration and low birthrates are quickly eroding the majority, and if the white man disappears, “he will take with him his sense of fair play, his unswerving commitment to the underdog, his belief in personal responsibility, his willingness to aid those in distress, his aversion to crime, his strong sense of family, and his ability to create and maintain stable governments.” Precious as the South may be, there are a few things that are even more important.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

The ‘Democracy’ of Liberals

Belgium’s Vlaams Blok is a nationalist party that calls for secession of Flanders from Belgium, withdrawal from the EU, and tough restrictions on immigration. The Blok would deport all illegal immigrants immediately, and let legal immigrants stay only if they speak Flemish, know Flemish laws and history, and are approved by Flemish neighbors. Few of the Turks and Moroccans who live in Belgium would be able to stay.

The Blok’s views make it very unpopular with the Belgian establishment. When he took office in 1999, Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who represents a Liberal-Socialist coalition, said, “The issue I want to be judged upon is whether I will be able to stop the Vlaams Blok.”

In 2000, a government agency called the “Center for Equal Opportunities and the Fight against Racism” sued to ban the Vlaams Blok on the grounds that it is a racist party not in line with European and international human rights treaties. The Center did not sue the party itself, because it would have had to charge it with a political crime, and all such crimes must be tried by the Cour d’Assises. This is the only court in Belgium that seats a jury, and a jury of citizens was unlikely to convict. Therefore, the government, through its agency, charged three non-profit agencies affiliated with the Vlaams Blok with putting out “racist” publications. Belgium essentially bans private funding of political campaigns, and the non-profits receive the state subsidies all major political parties require in order to function. The government accuses the non-profits of putting out “racist” publications. This, it argues, is a “press crime,” not a political crime, so the case can be tried before a judge rather than the Cour d’Assises.

In June 2001, the first trial court rejected the government’s case because it considered the accusations political and therefore outside its competence. “The judiciary was being used as a stage for a political settling of scores,” wrote the judge. In Feb. 2003, an appellate court upheld this decision, but the government took the case to the Belgian Supreme Court, which overturned the second court and sent the case for trial on its merits to the Court of Appeal in Ghent, a stronghold of Socialists and Liberals. This court found the agencies guilty and fined them the Euro equivalent of $14,880. The ruling also forbade distribution of party literature and television appearances by party members. The French-speaking television networks in Belgium complied with the ruling, but the Flemish ones did not.

The Vlaams Blok has appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court again, but it has little chance of winning. If the Supreme Court upholds the Ghent ruling, the Blok loses all government funding. Essentially it becomes a criminal organization and cannot field candidates.

The ban on campaigning was particularly harmful because it came just before the June 13 elections. The Vlaams Blok still became the largest party in Belgium, receiving 24.1 percent of the vote and 32 seats in the Flemish parliament. Its 981,587 votes surpassed those of the Socialists — the ruling party in the French-speaking parliament in the Wallonia region — by almost 100,000, but the Blok cannot form a government. Just as the French parties do with the National Front, all other parties have colluded to keep it out of power. They have agreed never even to talk to the party, let alone form a coalition with it. Belgium is therefore in the astonishing position of having its most popular party unable to form a government and even facing dissolution at the hands of judges.

If this blatantly anti-democratic effort to stifle nationalist opposition succeeds, the Blok vows that its members will promptly establish a new party. [Stephen Pollard, I’ve Seen The Future: It’s Scary And Belgian, The Times (London), Apr. 24, 2004. Belgium Strangles Opposition, The Flemish Republic, Jan-Feb.-March 2004. Winning Team, The Flemish Republic, April-May-June 2004.]

Euroskeptic Success

The most notable result of the June European Parliament elections was the success of “Euroskeptic” parties that want their countries out of the European Union (EU). In Britain, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), was among the largest gainers. It received 16 percent of the vote, more than double its share in the 1999 European Parliament election, and the number of UKIP Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) increased from two to 12. UKIP’s gains came at the expense of Britain’s two largest parties: Labour got 23 percent of the vote, six percent less than in 1999, and its worst result in a national election in almost a century. The Tories received 27 percent of the vote, down nine percent from 1999 and their worst result since 1832.

While the primary plank in UKIP’s platform is withdrawal from the EU on the grounds that it is corrupt and economically harmful to Britain, it has also taken a strong stand against mass immigration and “political correctness.” According to its website, UKIP stands for “Freedom from Overcrowding.” It complains that more than 200,000 legal immigrants and an unknown number of illegal immigrants are coming to Britain every year. This influx overloads roads, railways, and social services, and causes “social tensions.” Ashley Mote, one of UKIP’s newly elected MEPs, has written a book called Overcrowded Britain, which urges restrictions. UKIP would also revise anti-hate speech laws, noting that “there is no one ‘correct’ view on immigration, the European Union, devolution, multiculturalism, education, women’s rights, fox hunting, or anything else.”

Newly-elected UKIP MEP Robert Kilroy-Silk, a former Labour MP, is the party’s most visible member. He was fired from his job as a television talkshow host and prosecuted for inciting “racial hatred” after he wrote in a January newspaper editorial that Arabs contributed nothing to the modern world, and referred to them generally as “suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors.” To those who complain that the war on terror is destroying the Arab world, he answered there would be little lost even if it did. He was recently acquitted of “inciting hatred,” and his well-publicized remarks do not seem to have decreased his popularity with the voters.

The British National Party also made great strides in the election — up to 4.9 percent of the vote from one percent in the last election — but failed to elect any MEPs. The Guardian called UKIP’s success “a spectacular irruption into the existing electoral order,” because it was the first time a “populist party of the right” had won so much support. [Robert Kilroy-Silk, We Owe the Arabs Nothing, Sunday Express, January 4, 2004. The Price Of Ukip, The Guardian, June 14, 2004. UKIP Makes Big Gains In Euro Poll, BBC News, June 14, 2004. No Charges Over Kilroy’s Remarks, BBC News, July 1, 2004. UK Independence Party Official Website, www.ukip.org]

UNbelievable

A group of congressmen, led by black Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, have sent a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asking the United Nations to send election observers to monitor the US presidential election in November, in order to “ensure free and fair elections in America.”

In the letter, Rep. Johnson refers to the June 2001 report of the US Commission of Civil Rights “that found that the electoral process in Florida resulted in the denial of the right to vote for countless persons,” and “that the ‘disenfranchisement of Florida’s voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of black voters’ and in poor counties.”

The congressmen — four black, four white and one Hispanic — want the UN to post observers throughout the US, not just Florida. The UN has yet to respond. [US Lawmakers Request UN Observers for November 2 Presidential Election, AFP, July 2, 2004.]

Weighing in on Racial Differences

Once again, science confirms the reality of race. Although the link between obesity and poor health is well established for whites, new research suggests extra pounds do not hurt blacks — particularly black women — as much as they do whites, and may even help them live longer. A study by the American Cancer Society found that being overweight does not affect the health of black women until they reach a body mass index (BMI) of 35, well into the obese range, and even then the increase in the risk of death is only 20 percent. Among black men, the risk of death begins to increase as they reach the overweight category, but the rate of increase is small. The study also suggests that blacks whose BMI is in the overweight but not obese range may actually live longer than blacks of normal weight.

Because blacks generally die younger than whites, some scientists believe other causes of death mask or distort the effect of obesity. Others argue that blacks may suffer less harm from excess weight because of the way they store fat. Blacks often distribute it under the skin all over their bodies, rather than deep in the abdomen like most whites. Overweight blacks therefore tend to have lower levels of harmful triglycerides than whites and higher levels of beneficial HDL cholesterol.

“People don’t know what to make of it,” says Dr. Steven Heymsfield of Columbia University. “Blacks still have a lot of strokes and heart attacks, but maybe it’s for reasons other than [body mass index].” [Daniel Q. Haney, Blacks Less Prone to Risks from Fat, AP, June 29, 2004.]

‘Racial Empathy’

In September, whites in Annapolis, Maryland, will witness an act of racially humiliating street theater, courtesy of local blacks and a European non-profit group called The Lifeline Expedition that travels the world apologizing for slavery. They plan to create “racial empathy” by organizing a “slave” parade through the streets of Annapolis — with yoked, chained whites and black “masters.” “I think that the publicity that it will receive will be very positive for Annapolis,” says John Wilson, executive director of RESPECT, an umbrella organization of Annapolis-area black groups. “This, while symbolic, is an important step to allow people to move on.”

The Lifeline Expedition, based in London, has organized similar marches in France, Portugal, Spain, and other white countries that took part in the slave trade, and plans to hold marches this fall in Baltimore, Boston, Charleston, Newport, R.I., New York and Richmond, as well as in Annapolis. The Richmond event will include a march from Jamestown to Williamsburg. The group’s aims include “promoting reconciliation in the context of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and its legacy” and apologizing “for the slave trade and in particular for Christian responsibility.”

The Alex Haley-Kunta Kinte Foundation, named after the plagiarizing author of Roots and his fictional African “ancestor,” issued the invitation to Lifeline. The Annapolis march will take place on September 29, the supposed anniversary of Kunta Kinte’s 1767 arrival in the port city. Organizers will also “pray with insight” at places associated with the slave trade, hand out flyers, and visit city hall to encourage the city fathers to apologize for slavery. Foundation member Carol Youmans says the group is hoping the event will “encourage recognition and awareness of the ramifications of slavery,” and that those who witness it will be moved to “pledge to work hard to eradicate the social damage.”

Miss Youmans notes that to make sure the parade itself causes no “social damage,” the “police are going to be on hand.” [Roles to be Reversed in Annapolis Slave March, WBAL Radio/AP, July 1, 2004. The Lifeline Expediton website, www.lifelineexpedition.co.uk]

Full Moon

Richard Brown, who is black, appeared in a Milford, Connecticut, courtroom on June 23 to plead guilty to armed robbery in exchange for a maximum sentence of 15 years. As prosecutors worked out details with the judge, Mr. Brown began talking loudly to his court-appointed lawyer, prompting Superior Court Judge Patrick Carroll to tell him to be quiet. Judge Carroll then asked Mr. Brown’s lawyer why he should accept a guilty plea from such a poorly-behaved defendant. Mr. Brown started talking back to the judge, insisting on more time with his lawyer. When the judge told Mr. Brown to call him “sir,” he shouted, “Sir? Kiss my (expletive), sir!” He then turned his back on the bench and dropped his pants, exposing his buttocks. Judge Carroll immediately found Mr. Brown in contempt, gave him a six-month sentence, and ordered him out of the court. Mr. Brown called Judge Carroll a “racist” and a “white devil” as bailiffs dragged him away. The prosecution withdrew the plea agreement, and Mr. Brown now faces a possible 40 years in prison if convicted of robbery. [Meggan Clark, Defendant ‘Moons’ Judge During Court, Register (New Haven), June 24, 2004, p. A1.]

A Cultural Misunderstanding

On June 29, a federal grand jury indicted Philadelphia’s former City Treasurer, Corey Kemp, and his friend Ronald White on dozens of corruption charges. Both men are black. Mr. Kemp faces up to 798 years in prison, and Mr. White 555 years. The FBI accuses Mr. White of giving Mr. Kemp tens of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts in return for city contracts for Mr. White and his associates. Mr. White paid $10,350 to build a deck for Mr. Kemp’s house, gave him a trip to the 2003 NFL Super Bowl in San Diego, and provided season tickets and limousine rides to Philadelphia basketball games. Mr. White, a lawyer, earned more than $600,000 in city legal fees during Mr. Kemp’s tenure — from April 2002 to December 2003. Mr. White’s girlfriend, Janice Knight, who owns a printing firm, received $300,000 in city contracts during the same period.

The men are also accused of multiple counts of extortion. When a Baltimore broker asked to do business with the city, they told him to make a contribution to Philadelphia Mayor John Street’s campaign and to give work to Miss Knight. When the broker refused, they turned him down. They also demanded a $25,000 contribution to Mayor Street’s campaign from a Philadelphia financial advisory firm in exchange for city contracts and access to the mayor.

The FBI wiretapped conversations that make it clear the men gave city business only to campaign contributors. “If they ain’t with us they ain’t gonna get nothing . . .” says Mr. Kemp in one conversation. “I mean, this is . . . election time, this is time to either get down or lay down, man, I mean, come on, to me, personally it’s not even a hard decision.” Mayor John Street’s re-election meant money in their pockets: “The key for us right now, man,” Mr. White says, “is to concentrate on getting John elected, so it gives us four more years to do our thing. If we get four more years, Corey, we should be able to set up.”

The FBI says Mr. Kemp and the Rev. Francis McCracken, also black, filed false statements to get a $115,000 advance on a bank loan to Rev. McCracken’s church and then spent $50,000 on themselves. The grand jury has not charged Mayor Street, likewise black, with any crime, but accused him of creating “a culture of corruption” in his administration. When the mayor found out about the FBI investigation in 2003, he suggested it was a Republican “dirty trick” to derail his re-election, and suggested it was “racially motivated.”

Mr. White says the grand jury suffers from cultural misunderstanding. He explains that it is part of black culture for blacks to help each other: “[Mr. Kemp] was a friend of mine and they’ve taken a friendship and turned it into or tried to portray it into something else.” [Department of Justice, White, Kemp, And 10 Others Charged In Philadelphia Corruption Case, (Press Release) June 29, 2004. White Blames Indictment On Cultural Misunderstanding, NBC10.com (Philadelphia), June 30, 2004. Three More Arraigned In Philadelphia Corruption Probe, NBC10.com (Philadelphia), July 2, 2004.]

Cincinnati Shakedown

Racial tensions remain high in Cincinnati, scene of violent anti-white rioting in April 2001. City and business leaders have set aside $2.2 million to give summer jobs to 3,000 young blacks. The state of Ohio has spent another $1 million over the past two years for even more jobs for blacks, and the US Department of Labor has earmarked yet another $2 million. Black state Rep. Tyrone Yates, a former Cincinnati councilman, wants $4 million more. In a letter to Ohio Gov. Robert Taft, Rep. Yates wrote that he was “sensing a terrible summer situation brewing in the poor and African-American community.” “It is my opinion, and unfortunate prediction,” he added, “that Cincinnati will see major disruptions without an infusion of summer employment dollars.”

Fellow state representative Thomas Brinkman calls Rep. Yates’ letter “outrageous extortion.” “I think it is wrong on so many levels, it’s unbelievable,” he says. “It’s threatening — ‘you’ll have blood on your hands if you don’t act.’ It’s foolish, because everyone knows the budget. We don’t have $4 million lying around to throw at a problem.” Rep Yates says the threat is real. “My writing was out of grave concern for the city,” he says. [Kevin Aldridge and Justin Fenton, Letter Predicts Summer of Unrest, Cincinnati Enquirer, June 18, 2004.]

Judicial Tyranny

A St. Petersburg, Florida, judge has taken the first step toward requiring a school district to produce equal racial outcomes as a matter of law. On July 2, Judge James Case of the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit granted class-action status to all current and future black students in Pinellas County in a suit that claims racial differences in academic achievement violate the equal protection clause of the Florida constitution. The suit would require that the county do whatever it takes to eliminate the achievement gap.

In his decision, Judge Case wrote that the plaintiffs “have cited an overabundance of statistical evidence indicating that black students are achieving far below white students in every category.” School authorities argued that differences in performance reflect an accumulation of individual differences and do not mean all blacks should be treated as collective plaintiffs. Judge Case disagreed, writing, “Although individual cases reinforce the statistical data, it is the system as a whole that is being challenged, not how that system has dealt with a particular student on an individual basis.” [AP, Suit Expanded to Include More Black Students, Herald (Miami), July 3, 2004.]

For a judge to recognize a class of plaintiffs is tantamount to finding in the class’s favor, and most defendants give up at this stage and settle. If Pinellas County agrees that the Florida constitution really does require equal academic outcomes for all racial groups, it will bind itself to whatever “programs” this requires — black principals? Afro-centric curriculum? private tutors for blacks? fewer hours of instruction for whites? — forever.

A Black Record

In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Alabama Senator Hugo Black, his favorite “New Dealer,” to the Supreme Court. Black’s former membership in the KKK did not sit well with many members of the media, and Time magazine wrote at the time that he wouldn’t “have to buy a robe; he could dye his white one black.”

A careful examination of Black’s career would have reassured them. Black was a life-long champion of equal rights for blacks. He built a successful legal practice by winning large settlements for injured blacks and immigrants against white-owned steel mills and coal mines in Birmingham. His Klan membership — only two years, from 1923 to 1925 — appears to have been purely political. He used it to impress jurors and win votes for his 1926 Senate campaign. He was opposed to separate-but-equal education, and later became one of the nine Supreme Court justices who declared school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Black strongly opposed the Court’s delaying tactic of integration with “all deliberate speed,” believing it should be immediate. Stephen Black, the only one of his 13 grandchildren to return to Alabama explains: “He said late in his life the only decision in his career that he regretted was agreeing to the language ‘all deliberate speed.’ He said he felt it caused undue delay in the process of desegregation.”

Black’s vote on Brown made him and his family personae non grata in Alabama. His two sons, one a Birmingham lawyer planning a run for the Senate, were forced to move out of the state. The University of Alabama Law School refused to let him attend his 50th reunion in 1956, and in 1959, the state Senate passed a resolution recommending that he not be buried in Alabama. He isn’t. After his death in 1971, Black was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. [April Wortham, The Reclaiming of Hugo Black, Tuscaloosa News, May 16, 2004, p. 1A.]

Full Grovel

Last September, Abington Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania made national headlines when staff honored the wish of a white man who asked that no blacks be present when his wife gave birth to their child. Hospital administrators have spent the last eight months apologizing for something they now consider “morally reprehensible.”

They disciplined the supervisors who made the decision to keep blacks out, met with local black leaders, and set up a diversity committee. They hired consultants from the Multicultural Research and Training Institute to survey the staff and give advice on how the hospital should exercise its new-found appreciation of diversity. The report, which administrators say they will probably keep secret, will set the terms of a mandatory “cultural competency” training program for the hospital’s 4,600 employees.

Hospital vice president Meg McGoldrick says the goal of the training is to “ensure that diversity exists in our hospital, and that we’re handling these issues appropriately. And, most importantly, to make sure that nothing like what happened in September ever happens again.” [Oliver Prichard, Study on Race is Due at Abington Memorial, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 2, 2004, p. B4.]

On the Warpath

The Havasupai Indians of Arizona believe that humans — them — were born on the floor of the Grand Canyon after the waters receded following a world-wide flood. They were shocked when Daniel Garrigan, an Arizona Sate University (ASU) doctoral candidate, claimed that analysis of their blood proved they originated in Asia. Tribe member Carletta Tilousi was present when Mr. Garrigan defended his dissertation, and asked if he had received tribal permission to study their blood. He admitted he had not.

“I knew we wouldn’t have given this guy or anyone permission to do that study,” she says. “I started to think, ‘How dare this guy challenge our identity with our own blood, DNA.’ Then I remembered when many of us gave blood years ago for a diabetes project. I wondered if this was the same blood.”

The Havasupai suffer from high rates of diabetes, and in the early 1990s asked ASU for help. Seventy-five tribe members gave more than 4,000 blood samples to a team of ASU researchers led by Prof. Therese Markow. The tribe hired a lawyer to find out what happened to its blood. It learned that Prof. Markow’s team used the blood to study schizophrenia, inbreeding, and migration patterns as well as diabetes. Researchers also sent samples to other labs and universities across the country. At least 23 articles and dissertations have been based on Havasupai blood research, and only 15 are on diabetes. The tribe decided to sue, claiming “severe mental and emotional harm, suffering, fright, anguish, shock, nervousness and anxiety.”

Supporters of the Havasupai say that the non diabetes-related research is unethical, and liken it to taking blood from Christians in Nazareth for one purpose and then claiming it proves Jesus never existed. “Think how devastating it would be to learn that you unknowingly gave your blood for studies that went against your entire belief system of origin,” says Argosy University psychology professor Louise Baca.

The tribe is suing for $25 million on behalf of 52 individual Havasupai and for $50 million on behalf of the tribe. Both suits name ASU, the Arizona Board of Regents, Prof. Markow and two other researchers as defendants. The two other researchers say Prof. Markow misled them as well as the Havasupai about the nature and extent of her research. [Paul Rubin, Indian Givers, New Times (Phoenix), May 27-June 2, 2004, p. 19. Larry Hendricks, Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff), March 16, 2004.]

Preferences Kill

Six people died last October 17 in a fire at a 35-story building in downtown Chicago. There was strong evidence of fire department incompetence, and Cook County appointed a commission of retired judges to investigate. The Mikva Commission, which takes its name from its chairman, Judge Abner Mikva, held months of hearings and took days of candid testimony from firemen. The result is a report that finally states the obvious: Firemen and officers should be appointed on the basis of tested competence, not race or sex.

The department now has 52 high-level jobs that are filled through political appointment rather than competitive examination. Forty-nine percent of the people who hold these jobs are white, 35 percent are black, 11.5 percent are Hispanic, and 3.8 percent are women. The Mikva Commission found that three of these appointed officers — one black and two Hispanic — were directly responsible for elementary and probably fatal mistakes on October 17. Firemen shut the wrong doors, causing a stairway to fill with smoke rather than funnel smoke out of the building, and several people probably died as a result. No one set up a search-and-rescue team, and firemen concentrated on putting out the fire rather than saving people. No one got the information from calls people trapped in the building made to 911. Someone told the black officer about a housekeeper missing on the 21st floor but he did nothing until he got a second report. She died.

One veteran white fireman says it was only a matter of time before racial preferences started killing people. “Anybody who’s been around for a while could see it coming,” he says. “It finally bit us in the ass. It absolutely did.”

The Mikva Commission also called on the county to maintain fitness standards for firemen. They particularly criticized a fat black lieutenant who gave up on a search of the fatal, smoky staircase, and had to be treated by medics. “Morbidly obese people shouldn’t be fighting fires,” says commission member Sheila Murphy.

Candor of this kind from a government commission is astonishing, but in this case the incompetence appears to have been so obvious that even the inevitable black howling is relatively muted. “I don’t think this has anything to do with affirmative action,” says Alderman Freddrenna Lyle. “That’s just an excuse to be used by people opposed to it.”

The Mikva Commission report comes at an awkward time. On April 1, Mayor Richard Daley nudged out a white fire commissioner and appointed the city’s first black, Cortez Trotter. Blacks and Hispanics have besieged Mr. Trotter with demands for non-competitive appointments. This is exactly what the Mikva Commission says must stop. It remains to be seen what the city thinks is more important: saving lives or appeasing non-whites. [Fran Spielman and Frank Main, Loop Fire Report Says Fire Department, Not Fire, Responsible for Six Lives Being Lost, Chicago Sun-Times, June 28, 2004. Fran Spielman and Annie Sweeney, Mikva Calls for Promotions Overhual, Chicago Sun-Times, July 2, 2004.]

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Letters from readers
LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — Jared Taylor’s fact-filled examination of the history of Brown v. Board was a useful corrective to the mythmaking of our elites.

One point that cannot be emphasized too much is that during the 1950s and early ‘60s, whites outside the South supported the soi-disant civil rights movement because they thought it would not affect them. Indeed, prior to the mid-1960s, race relations were sometimes referred to as “the Southern problem.”

So long as blacks were only seeking the abolition of Jim Crow in the South, so long as it was only in the South that white children were forced to attend schools with blacks, Northerners supported civil rights. They assumed its principles would never reach into their all-white communities. However, after those principles were enshrined in federal law by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, after Northern cities went up in flames during the “long hot summers” of black riots in the ‘60s, and after many thousands of Northerners fled their cities to escape the terrors of “integration,” the truth was harder to hide.

Martin Luther King, Jr. who tried to bring his movement north in 1965, later admitted the hopelessness of fighting Northern whites: “I’ve been in demonstrations all across the South. But I can say that I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’ve seen in Chicago.”

Of course, most of those whites have long since decamped to white enclaves, but there has never been any real recognition of the North’s hypocrisy in supporting a program of Southern “integration” which the North was unprepared to accept for itself. Nor, for that matter, have most Northerners been willing to admit their own desire to live in majority-white communities.

Today, nearly all white Americans profess to support “integration” in theory, even as they carefully avoid it in practice. The legacy of liberal hypocrisy lives on, even as many “conservatives” (I cannot help but think of radio/TV host Sean Hannity) now strain to pretend that the civil rights movement was constitutional in principle and method.

Name Withheld, Washington, D.C.

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Sir — The media recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the murders committed by O.J. Simpson. In one report, I heard his trial referred to as “The Trial of the Century.” I decided this term might be appropriate, not because it involved a “celebrity” or because it was televised, but rather because it was a foreboding glimpse into the future.

A predominantly black jury sat in judgment of a black man accused of murdering two whites. Would justice trump racial solidarity? Most of white America, with its smug belief in the concepts of blind justice and the rule of law, was shocked to hear the jury return after only four hours with a “not guilty” verdict, and by the subsequent celebrations by blacks. As black Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall once said to Justice William Douglas, “You guys have been discriminating for years. Now it’s our turn.”

As America continues to darken, and nonwhites become more overtly racialist, there will be more opportunities for nonwhites to “take their turn” at the expense of whites. The Simpson trial was a warning that government “by the people” does not work in a balkanized, multiracial society.

Brian Byrne, Irvine, Cal.

AR’s commentary on the Simpson verdict can be found in the November 1995 issue — Ed.

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Sir — In the aftermath of Ronald Reagan’s death, I think it is worth noting that Reagan, at least at one time, may not have been just a conventional conservative, but had a racial consciousness in the spirit of AR. I cite his condemnation of “welfare queens driving Cadillacs.” He made the remark in the mid-1960s after Lyndon Johnson’s disastrous Great Society greatly increased illegitimacy — especially black illegitimacy. I also remember that in the 1980 Carter-Reagan debate, when the subject of the minimum wage came up, Reagan claimed it should be low in any case but even lower for blacks since their unemployment rate was higher. He knew that employers would not hire blacks at the prevailing minimum wage because of their low productivity.

Name Withheld, Downers Grove, Ill.

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Sir — I discovered your website last night and I find it superb — and also shocking. I live in Wales, UK (soon to be called Englandistan!), and we suffering Brits have had enough but don’t know where to turn. Anyone who dares question asylum or immigration is a Nazi, scum, etc. The media are quick to condemn anyone who is politically incorrect, even firing them if they are in their employ. There are organizations that commit violence upon democratically elected British National Party (BNP) members and seem to be immune from prosecution. My country is governed by traitors and non-British politicians. Our cities have been burned by black rioters, with the 1980s seeing the worst, and racial tensions are still high in some areas. Bradford(istan) and Oldham, in the north of England saw huge [south] Asian riots in 2001 [see AR, July 2001]. Guess who received the blame? The BNP.

Keep up the great website — I’m hooked.

Tina Kerswell, Wales, Great Britain

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