May 2007
| American Renaissance magazine | |
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| Vol. 18, No. 5 | May 2007 |
| CONTENTS |
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Hispanic Racial Consciousness, Part II
To the Edge of the Precipice
Who Profits From These Registrations?
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers
| COVER STORY |
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Hispanic Racial Consciousness, Part II
They make no secret of wanting your country.
Part I described the deep racial/ethnic loyalties Hispanic Americans retain to their countries of origin, and explained how they have turned their backs on assimilation and expect the United States to accommodate their loyalties and preferences. It concluded by noting that every year several thousand Mexican-Americans go home in coffins to be buried in the country they consider their true home.
If some Mexican-Americans have their way, they will not have to go back to be buried; Mexico will come to them. What is called the Reconquista movement aims to break the Southwest off from the United States and reattach it to Mexico or even establish it as an independent, all-Hispanic nation. In historic terms, it would reverse the territorial consequences of the Mexican-American war. Reconquista is generally promoted by the best-educated Hispanics, many of whom were born in the United States.
Charles Truxillo, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of New Mexico, thinks Republica del NorteX would be a good name for a new Hispanic nation. The Republic of the North would contain all of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and the southern part of Colorado. Its capital would probably be Los Angeles. The Albuquerque-born Prof. Truxillo says the new nation is “an inevitability,” and should be created “by any means necessary.” He doubts violence will be necessary, however, because shifting demographics will make the transition a natural one. “I may not live to see the Hispanic homeland,” he says, “but by the end of the century my students’ kids will live in it, sovereign and free.”
Juan Jose Peña, Hispanic activist and vice chairman of the Hispanic Roundtable of New Mexico agrees with Prof. Truxillo, adding, “I’ve studied lots of civilizations. The United States is just like any other empire. It’s not going to live forever. Eventually it will break down because of stresses.”
Armando Navarro, Hispanic activist and professor at the University of California at Riverside is another Reconquista advocate, noting that if current social and demographic trends continue, secession is inevitable. “One could argue that while Mexico lost the war in 1848, it will probably win it in the 21st century, in terms of the numbers,” he explained. “A secessionist movement is not something that you can put away and say it is never going to happen in the United States,” he adds. “Time and history change.”
Xavier Hermosillo, a prominent businessman and leader of a Hispanic activist group in Los Angeles, explained that “we’re taking it [California] back, house by house, block by block.” He adds: “People ought to wake up and smell the refried beans.”
Probably the best known Reconquista organization is the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, better know by its Spanish acronym of MEChA. The word Aztlan in the organization’s name means “the bronze continent,” and is the name activists plan to give the new nation they carve out of the United States. One of its founding documents, El Plan de Aztlan, describes white people as “the brutal ‘gringo’,” and calls for Mexicans to reclaim “the land of their birth” and “declare the independence of our mestizo nation.” The group’s motto is Por la Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada: “For the race, everything. For those outside the race, nothing.” Founded in 1969 at the University of California at Santa Barbara, MEChA now has chapters on nearly every California college campus and in most high schools in the state. It has a considerable presence in other Western states as well. The official symbol of MEChA is an eagle holding an Incan battle axe and a lighted stick of dynamite. The slogan that goes with the symbol, Hasta la victoria, siempre! (Until victory, always!) was a favorite of Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution.
On some campuses, conservatives have called attention to MEChA’s racially divisive message, and Stanford students voted by a narrow margin to withhold university funding from the group. At the University of California at Los Angeles, the campus Republicans tried at least to get the group to denounce the explicitly secessionist El Plan de Aztlan, but it refused. “We will stand by the ‘El Plan de Aztlan’ because it has guided us,” MEChA chairwoman Elizabeth Alamillo explained.
Many Mexican intellectuals eagerly anticipate Reconquista. According to one newspaper report:
“The Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska affirmed today that Mexico is presently recovering the territories lost in the past to the United States, thanks to emigration: ‘The people of the poor, the lice-ridden and the cucarachas [cockroaches] are advancing in the United States, a country that wants to speak Spanish because 33.4 million Hispanics impose their culture.’ Ms. Poniatowska added that ‘this phenomenon . . . fills me with jubilation, because the Hispanics can have a growing force between Patagonia and Alaska.’”
Even Mexican government spokesmen speak the language of irredentism. At a symposium in Los Angeles on the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which marked the end of the Mexican-American War, the Mexican consul general, Jose Angel Pescador Osuna observed, “Even though I am saying this part serious and part joking, I think we are practicing la Reconquista in California.”
In 2005, Reconquista sentiment got an unusual public airing when 75 billboards appeared in Los Angeles advertising Spanish-language KRCA-TV. The billboards showed two newscasters in front of the downtown skyline, with “Los Angeles, CA” written above them. The “CA” was crossed out, and “Mexico” was stamped over it in bright red letters. Below, it said in Spanish: Tu ciudad. Tu equipo. (Your city. Your team.) Even a few gringos got the message. “The joke here is, ‘We’re taking back California,’” explained Stuart Fischoff, who teaches media psychology at California State University at Los Angeles. “Underneath the joke is part of the truth.”
Part of the great appeal Fidel Castro has long enjoyed in Mexico is his unwavering support for Mexican irredentism. In a 1997 speech in Mexico City, he renewed his call for the United States to return Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. He said Americans are “terrorized” when Mexicans cross into what is in fact their own territory.
The spirit of conquest need not be limited to the Southwest. Mass immigration, and the unwillingness of native-born Americans to insist on assimilation by newcomers leaves the impression the whole country is up for grabs. Riverside, New Jersey, is one of a handful of American cities that have tried to pass ordinances to discourage hiring or renting to illegal immigrants. Rev. Miguel Rivera, president of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy & Christian Leaders, noting that legal residency is not required to purchase property in the US, said illegal aliens would retaliate by buying rather than renting. New owners would welcome other illegals, who would eventually dominate through sheer force of numbers. “Riverside is going to be ours,” he said.
The Official Mexican View
It is official Mexican government policy to urge Mexicans living in the United States to remain loyal to Mexico. This policy applies broadly to all naturalized and even US-born citizens of Mexican origin, but government spokesmen direct their strongest efforts towards Mexican-Americans who hold elected office. In 1995, for example, then-president of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo himself told a group of Mexican-American politicians, “You’re Mexicans — Mexicans who live north of the border.” Two years later in Chicago, he took the same message to the Hispanic advocacy group, the National Council of La Raza. He “proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders and that Mexican migrants are an important — a very important — part of this.”
The administration of Vicente Fox continued the policy of ensuring that Mexican-Americans remained Mexican. In 2002, his government established the Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior (Institute for Mexicans Abroad) to promote “a more comprehensive approach” to promoting Mexican loyalty. A primary function was to invite American elected officials of Mexican origin to Mexico, to deepen their Mexican identity. In October 2003, for example, the Instituto invited 30 American state legislators and mayors for two days in Mexico City, where they met Mexican legislators, ministry officials, scholars, and advocates for immigrants. The institute had plans to bring 400 Mexican-American lawmakers and community leaders on similar trips in 2004.
The Instituto also sends representatives to the United States. Jacob Prado, counselor for Latino affairs at the Mexican Embassy, explained to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials that it was in “Latino officials like yourselves that thousands of immigrants from Mexico find a political voice.” He went on to explain: “Mexico will be better able to achieve its full potential by calling on all members of the Mexican Nation, including those who live abroad, to contribute with their talents, skills and resources.” American elected officials are still “members of the Mexican Nation.”
One Instituto official, Juan Hernández, typifies its approach. Born in the United States, and therefore a US citizen, Mr. Hernández was at one time a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, but makes no secret of where his real loyalties lie. On the web page of the President of Mexico he reported in 2002 that he had “been commissioned to bring a strong and clear message from the President to Mexicans abroad: Mexico is one nation of 123 million citizens — 100 million who live in Mexico and 23 million who live in the United States.” On ABC’s Nightline on June 7, 2001, he was candid about his goals: “I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think ‘Mexico first.’” He has also explained that Mexican immigrants are unlike Europeans because they “are going to keep one foot in Mexico” and that they “are not going to assimilate in the sense of dissolving into not being Mexican.”
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, who later became national security advisor to Vicente Fox, described the basic thinking of all Mexican administrations. In an article in the Mexican newspaper El Siglo de Torreon, he wrote that the Mexican government should work with the “20 million Mexicans” in the United States to advance Mexican “national interests.”
All political factions in Mexico are united in the view that the US-Mexican border is illegitimate, and that Mexicans have the right to cross it any time. Former president Vicente Fox’s official view was that any measures the United States took to catch or deport illegal immigrants were a violation of human rights. Felipe Calderon, who succeeded him in 2006, shared that view, adding, “like many . . . I have cousins, uncles, in-laws who are undocumented and live in the United States.” Mexican Interior Secretary Santiago Creel once complained, “It’s absurd that (the United States) is spending as much as it’s spending to stop immigration flows that can’t be stopped . . .” When he took over in 2004 as the man in charge of border relations with the United States, Arturo Gonzalez Cruz explained that his ultimate goal was to see the border disappear entirely.
At the time of the “A Day Without Immigrants” demonstration in May, 2006, Mexicans showed their solidarity by organizing what was to be a massive boycott of American products. Mexican unions, political and community groups, newspaper columnists and a number of government officials issued the call. “Remember, nothing gringo on May 1,” said a typical e-mail message, urging people not to patronize McDonald’s, Burger King, Starbucks, Sears, Krispy Kreme or Wal-Mart. The goal was to pressure Congress into looser border control and amnesty for illegal immigrants.
In 2004, the government distributed millions of free copies of The Guide for the Mexican Migrant, a comic-book-format set of instructions on how to sneak into the United States. It explained what to pack for a desert or river crossing, techniques for surviving extremes of heat or cold, and how to avoid the Border Patrol. Once in the United States, it advised Mexicans to keep their heads down and not attract attention.
Grupo Beta is a government-funded organization set up in the early 1990s to help illegal border-crossers. It maintains hundreds of staging areas just south of the border, marked with blue pennants to indicate that drinking water is available. Mexicans planning a run for the border can flag down its bright orange trucks any time for help. Grupo Beta frequently gives lectures on safety and concealment, typically ending them with the words, “Have a safe trip, and God bless you!”
The Mexican state of Peubla has gone even further. In late 2006, it announced an innovative program to keep emigrants from getting lost when they cross the border illegally. Jaime Obregon, the coordinator for the Commission for Migrants, said the state would give handheld satellite navigation devices to anyone who registered as a border-crosser. “Our intention is to save lives,” he explained, saying he expected the state to hand out 200,000 devices during the following year.
The view that Mexicans have a natural right to enter the United States explains the vitriol that met American discussions in 2006 about ways to stop illegal crossings, and an eventual Congressional vote to build a wall along certain parts of the Mexican border. President Vicente Fox called the plan for a wall “disgraceful and shameful,” and promised that if it were ever built it would come down like the Berlin Wall. Interior Ministor Santiago Creel boasted that “there is no wall that can stop” Mexicans from crossing into the US. Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez warned that “Mexico is not going to bear, it is not going to permit, and it will not allow a stupid thing like this wall.” He even said he would ask the United Nations to look into the American plan and declare it illegal.
Ordinary Mexicans were just as outraged. “It’s against what we see as part of our life, our culture, our territory,” exclaimed Fernando Robledo of the state of Zacatecas. “Our president should oppose that wall and make them stop it, at all costs,” said 26-year-old Martin Vazquez of Mexico City. Jose Luis Soberanes, head of the Mexican National Human Rights Commission, didn’t think the government was being forceful enough. “I would expect more energetic reactions from our authorities,” he said. “It’s preferable to have a more demanding government, more confrontation with the United States.”
Other Latin American countries were equally outraged. Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein said a wall would be “absolutely intolerable and inhuman.” The foreign ministers of Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic all gathered in Mexico City to denounce the American measures and to coordinate strategy to make sure the border remained open to illegal immigrants.
Latin American countries, themselves, carefully control their borders, but their governments insist that the United States remain open. In an act of unusual candor, Mexican President Felipe Calderon acknowledged in 2006 that in light of the harsh measures Mexico takes against illegal immigrants from Central America it was inconsistent to complain about American border controls. In 2005, Mexican authorities caught nearly a quarter million illegals, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Mexico probably takes a more forceful and even high-handed interest in domestic American policies than does any other country in the world. Mexican consular officers work closely with Hispanic organizations in the United States to press for amnesty, free medical treatment, welfare benefits, driver’s licenses, and in-state university tuition for illegal aliens. The Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior keeps databases of Mexican activists who can be counted on to pack the galleries of state legislatures and city councils whenever there is a vote that might affect immigrants. Such a crowd was on hand during the California legislature’s debates in 2003 over whether to grant driver’s licenses to illegals. When an assemblyman complained, “This bill paves the way to Aztlan!” everyone in the gallery stood up and applauded. When the city council of Holland, Michigan, debated whether to accept Mexican consular identification cards issued to illegal immigrants, a Mexican official brought a crowd of compatriots. They caused such a disturbance the city council was unable even to deliberate.
As noted above, in May 2006, Hispanics in America mounted massive demonstrations against proposed measures to control immigration. The Mexican legislature issued a declaration of support for the demonstrators, and voted to send a delegation to Los Angeles to show solidarity. These gestures received the overwhelming support of every political party.
Likewise, when California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denounced a plan to grant temporary driver’s permits to illegal immigrants the assembly of Baja California promptly voted him “persona non grata,” theoretically barring Gov. Schwarzenegger from visiting the neighboring Mexican state.
The Mexican government is careful to see that Mexicans living in America receive every possible benefit available to them. A few welfare programs are closed to illegal immigrants but Food Stamps are not. Some illegal immigrants hesitate to apply for them for fear their status will be discovered and they will be deported. Mexican consul Luis Miguel Ortiz Haro of Santa Ana in Orange County, California, went on Spanish-language television to tell Mexicans it was safe to apply. “This program is not welfare,” he said. “It won’t affect your immigration status.” More than 1,200 people applied for Food Stamps the next day.
No other country so frequently intervenes in the interests of its citizens. In 2000, for example, the Mexican consul in Atlanta urged Hispanics to start a national boycott of any company that does not offer services in Spanish. In San Diego, the Mexican consul officially urged Mexicans who work as janitors to join a class-action lawsuit against California’s supermarket chains. “This lawsuit is important because it involves large numbers of our nationals, and because it insists that their rights be respected regardless of their legal status,” said Luis Cabrera Cuaron. Most Americans have no idea of the extent to which Mexico criticizes and tries to influence American affairs.
Every Mexican institution nurtures unfavorable views of the United States, and immigrants bring with them the sentiments they learned as children. As one American observed:
“I was visiting the Museum of National History in Mexico City where I observed a class of perhaps 40 10-year-old school kids sitting on the ground in front of a huge mosaic map that was labeled ‘Mexico Integral,’ or ‘Greater Mexico.’ Their teacher expounded on how the Norteamericanos stole half of Mexico in 1847 in what the Mexicans refer to as the North American Intervention. The map showed Mexico to include Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, most of Idaho, and Oregon and Washington up to the Alaska panhandle.”
According to one poll, 58 percent of Mexicans believe the southwestern United States rightfully belongs to them, and 57 percent believe they have the right to cross the border without US permission. Mexicans also assume that America is not serious about border control or citizenship. As Jesus Cervantes, director of statistics for Mexico’s Central Bank explained, “There have been amnesties and reforms before, and they will continue to occur periodically.”
The illegal crossing into America is so much a part of the Mexican psyche that in Ixmiquilpan, in the central state of Hidalgo, there is a theme park devoted to reproducing the experience. At $15.00 a head, Mexicans can spend an evening crossing a fake Rio Grande, squishing through mud while a fake people-smuggler in a ski mask shouts “Hurry up! The Border Patrol is coming!” Advertisements for the theme park offer the chance to “Make fun of the Border Patrol!” and to “Cross the Border as an Extreme Sport!”
Many Mexicans believe the United States cannot function without them. In a 2004 Mexican film called A Day Without a Mexican: The Gringos Are Going to Weep, all the Hispanics in California suddenly disappear. In just 24 hours, pompous, helpless whites find that schools have closed, grocery shelves are empty, and piles of garbage clog the streets. Martial law is declared. The Hispanics miraculously reappear the next day, and are greeted with hugs and kisses — even by the Border Patrol.
The Mexican view of the United States is a mixture of historic resentment, envy, and contempt for a nation that submits to insult and cannot control its borders. These sentiments start at the top. Near the end of his term, former president Vicente Fox, who frequently boasted of his close friendship with President George W. Bush, explained to Mexicans why they should be thankful for their heritage. “We are already a step ahead, having been born in Mexico,” he said. “Imagine being born in the United States; oof!”
When Mexicans in the United States get in trouble with the law, the usual explanation is that they were corrupted by America. As Jesse Diaz of the League of United Latin American Citizens explained, “They’re picking up those bad habits of cheating, of drinking, and drugs” after they arrive, adding that US popular culture undermines the “conservative Catholic values” they brought with them from Mexico.
This is essentially the average Mexican view. A 2006 Zogby poll gave the following results: 84 percent of Americans said they had a positive view of Mexicans, but only 36 percent of Mexicans had a positive view of Americans. Eighteen percent of Americans thought Mexicans were racist, while 73 percent of Mexicans thought Americans were racist. Forty-two percent of Americans thought Mexicans were honest, but only 16 percent of Mexicans thought Americans were honest.
Mexicans are devoted soccer fans, and sports seem to bring out their true feelings. On February 11, 2004, the American Olympic soccer team played a qualifying match against Mexico in the Mexican town of Guadalahara. The crowd drowned out “The Star Spangled Banner” with their boos, and shouted “Osama! Osama! Osama!” as the US players left the field. This only repeated the treatment the Americans got just a few days earlier when they played a match in Zapopan: hooting down the national anthem, booing when the Americans scored, and shouting “Osama! Osama!” However, that game was not even against Mexico. The Americans were playing Canada.
Why Are We Passive?
With the possible recent exceptions of Iran and North Korea, no other country treats us with such contempt. Government officials openly subvert our policies, ordinary people insult us, and many Mexicans even appear to have designs on part of our territory. Why are we so passive? Why do American universities say nothing when Hispanic faculty and students openly advocate breaking up the United States? Why do no politicians complain when many Hispanics send home hundreds of dollars every month — and then seek medical treatment at taxpayer expense? Why are we silent when Mexicans take US citizenship while openly proclaiming their loyalty to Mexico? Why do most journalists and politicians tacitly agree with the Hispanic view that immigration control is “racist”?
Much of the answer lies in the fact that Hispanics are not white, and that most whites are so fearful of being called “racist” they dare not take a stand against any non-white group. Let us imagine that France were sending us millions of poor, uneducated Frenchmen who made no effort to learn English, who celebrated French holidays rather than American holidays, who sent money out of country but demanded free services, who expected ballot papers and school instruction in French, who ignored our immigration laws, who insisted on hiring and college admissions preferences because they offered us “diversity?” What if some of them talked openly about taking over parts of the United States and kicking out the rest of us? Would our press and politicians remain silent?
What if the French government openly encouraged all this? What if it offered French-American elected officials free, loyalty-boosting trips back to France, and encouraged French-Americans everywhere to work and vote for French rather than American interests? What if the French jeered at our national anthem and chanted “Osama, Osama” when our athletes took the field?
Americans would be furious. We would recall our ambassador. We would deport every French illegal, and severely limit further immigration from France. There would be calls to strip naturalized Frenchmen of US citizenship — particularly if they had shown their true loyalties by maintaining French citizenship.
Let us not forget how angry Americans were when France opposed the invasion of Iraq. That affront to our pride was nothing compared to what we have suffered every day for decades at the hands of Mexicans and their government. If the French were to treat us as Mexicans do, there would be universal outrage and immediate countermeasures because we would not be paralyzed by the fear of being called racists.
With Hispanics, however, not only does race make us powerless to resist, race is part of what drives their refusal to assimilate and fuels their contempt for our culture and our interests. Demands, insults and loyalties are ultimately in the name of la raza, and that is what makes them so durable and so dangerous — and makes it impossible for us to respond as any normal, healthy nation would respond to similar provocations.
Another reason for our passivity is the fact that Hispanics are now nearly 15 percent of the population, and their numbers are growing rapidly. Politicians from both parties say they cannot afford to alienate Hispanics because of their increasing power at the ballot box. They do not seem to recognize the danger of currying favor with a voting bloc whose loyalties may not even lie with our own country. American citizens who place foreign interests over those of the United States do not deserve the same political consideration as loyal Americans. What if there were a sharp crisis with Mexico? Is there any doubt which side Mexican-Americans — citizens or not — would take?
It is already nearly impossible to discuss immigration rationally, or even enforce laws that are on the books. If we are already afraid to take measures that would antagonize 15 percent of the population, how likely are we to be able to act in our own interests if Hispanics become 20, 30, or even 40 percent of the population?
The number-one political goal of Hispanics is amnesty for illegal immigrants and yet more Hispanic immigration. If American politicians refuse to set policy according to national needs, if they sacrifice the longer-term interests of America for the short-term political gain of placating Hispanic voters, they will eventually find themselves pushed aside by sheer force of numbers.
Like those of blacks, Hispanic group interests are narrowly defined and do not leave much room for broader, national interests. There is no sign that as Hispanics increase in numbers they are expanding their horizons to include these broader interests.
After decades of accepting sole responsibility for the failure of blacks to become full-fledged Americans, whites should have learned that multiracialism is an endless Calvary of accusations, resentments, demands, failures, and conflicts. It was the worst of folly needlessly to have established yet another minority to tread this bitter and all-too-familiar ground.
More and more Americans recognize that we are, in effect, giving our country away to foreigners who care nothing for us or for our traditions. It is this largely inchoate realization that drives ordinary Americans and even a few in Congress to see that we face a choice that is nothing short of a civilizational crisis: Will we remain part of the West or will we leave to our grandchildren a shapeless, Third-World jumble in which the men and culture of Europe are on their way to oblivion? We still have a choice if only we have the will.
| ARTICLE |
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To the Edge of the Precipice
A black man’s remarkable racial insights.
Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Right Era, Harper Collins, 2006, 181 pp., $24.95.
This is a short book — just 181 paperback-sized pages — but it has more good sense packed into it than books five times longer. Shelby Steele, who was a black radical in the 1960s, has since acquired a view of both blacks and whites that is almost completely unclouded by dogma. Dr. Steele, who has been a fellow at the Hoover Institution since 1994, is perhaps the first mainstream author to analyze white guilt and describe the tremendous damage it does. Dr. Steele does not get everything right, but his elegant dissection of white self-absorption and black opportunism is one of the best antidotes now available to the shelves of nonsense that pass for wisdom on race.
Dr. Steele begins by musing on what the William Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal told us about how moral standards change. He writes that he recalls reading that President Eisenhower used to use the word “nigger” when he was on the golf course. That posed no threat to his presidency, just as Mr. Clinton’s debauching an intern posed no threat to his. However, suggests Dr. Steele, had each man done what the other did, they would have been hounded out of office. “Race simply replaced sex as the primary focus of America’s moral seriousness,” Dr. Steele writes and, as we shall see later, he finds a connection between the two.
The central insight of White Guilt is that “racism” is now America’s most despised crime. Dr. Steele is silent on how this came to be, but he is right to see it as the fundamental psychological transformation of our time. This transformation meant that far from being able to face other races with confidence and even a sense of superiority, “the idea of evil had begun to attach to America and to whites.” Anyone who could be accused of “racism” immediately lost authority, and not just on social questions. “Racists” lost all standing as respectable human beings. As Dr. Steele points out, the rigid new structure of taboos thus “makes the moral authority of whites and legitimacy of American institutions contingent on proving a negative: that they are not racist.” (Dr. Steele’s emphasis here and throughout)
One of Dr. Steele’s keenest observations, and the one that has earned him the most liberal wrath, is that the rituals by which whites avoid the taint of “racism” — protestations of love for blacks, denunciations of “bigotry” — have little to do with wanting to help blacks and everything to do with demonstrating innocence. As he explains:
“Surely genuine goodwill may also be a part in such efforts. But the larger reality is that white guilt leaves no room for moral choice; it does not depend on the goodwill or the genuine decency of people. It depends on their fear of stigmatization, their fear of being called racist.”
Whites submit to just about any humiliation if that is what it takes to demonstrate that they are untainted — what Dr. Steele calls “dissociation from racism at almost any cost” — and he emphasizes “the classic liberal mistake of trying to pass off mere dissociation from racism as selfless virtue and real human empathy.” Liberals preen themselves on their compassion, but, as Dr. Steele writes, “in the age of white guilt, whites support all manner of silly racial policies without seeing that their true motivation is simply to show themselves innocent of racism.” Blind to his real motives the liberal genuinely believes he is “a better man than the world has seen before.”
One of the best recognized ways to demonstrate guiltlessness is to practice racial preferences, to join the scramble to lure indifferently qualified blacks onto college campuses. “And what is enough minorities?” asks Dr. Steele. “Enough is just enough to clearly dissociate the institution from America’s old racist patterns. Without preferences it would be utterly impossible to admit enough minorities for a convincing dissociation. Dissociation requires evidence of a proactive effort, a self-conscious and highly visible display of minority recruitment.”
Dr. Steele points out that all American institutions do this. The army angers its white soldiers and stigmatizes its blacks and browns with racial preferences — not because this improves the army but because the white officer corps that merit would produce would not meet today’s standards for moral authority.
White self-absorption goes further. As Dr. Steele points out, since it would be “racist” to say blacks have any responsibility for their failings, white liberals ride forth to smite racism, promising uplift that does not require blacks to move a muscle. Dr. Steele puts it this way:
“If a young black boy cannot dribble well when he comes out to play basketball, no one will cast his problem as an injustice . . . But if the boy’s problem is reading or writing . . . [c]areer-hungry academics will appear in his little world, and they will argue that his weaknesses reflect the circuitous workings of racism. . . . The boy will not be asked to truly work harder.”
Low black test scores cannot be due to laziness, stupidity, or brutish parents. Instead, whites lather black students with Afrocentric math, black history, Negro role models, and multi-culti voodoo of every kind. Blacks can never save themselves, “so the very structure of the liberal faith — that whites and ‘society’ must facilitate black uplift — locks white liberals into an unexamined white supremacy.” Dr. Steele notes that all this anti-racist posing gives liberals a moral glow, but their inability to treat blacks like real men with control over their lives makes it impossible for them to accomplish anything.
Merit, excellence and ability, writes Dr. Steele, are “unforgivingly exclusionary.” “Inclusion” requires that excellence be ignored, that mediocre Third-Worlders be treated like great artists, that black tinkerers be hailed as geniuses, and that every obscure Negro be put on a postage stamp. This racial climate creates a demand for snake-oil salesmen, black and white, who claim to confer authority on whites by teaching them how to genuflect.
Dr. Steele pushes his argument a bit too far, however, when he suggests that liberals may actually want blacks to stay degraded: “Whites needed responsibility for our problems in order to gain their own moral authority and legitimacy. So they set about — once again — to exploit us, to encourage and even nurture our illusions, to steal responsibility from us, to take advantage of our backwardness just as slave traders had once done on the west coast of Africa.”
People in the uplift business might worry for their jobs if they actually succeeded in helping anyone, but probably not even the most cutthroat liberals take real joy in black degeneracy.
The Souls of Black Folk
It did not take blacks long to discover the fun to be had in the brave new world of white guilt. “By the mid-sixties,” writes Dr. Steele, “white guilt was eliciting an entirely new kind of black leadership . . . bargainers, bluffers, haranguers . . . who could set up a trade with white guilt.” The militant Shelby Steele of 30 and 40 years ago “began to understand that my country was now repentant before me,” and that this brought a new power over whites: “This power to shame, silence, and muscle concessions from the larger society on the basis of past victimization became the new ‘black power.’”
Dr. Steele writes that the older generation of civil rights leaders believed their behavior had to be impeccable, that they had to act better than white people if their call for equal treatment was to be taken seriously. Things changed in the 1960s:
“[B]lack power would no longer come from being better than whites; it would come from not being better . . . [I had] the feeling that being black released me from the usual obligation to common decency and decorum . . . I was licensed to live in a spirit of disregard toward my own country.”
Even whites in positions of authority were cowed by black swagger. As Dr. Steele explains, black power grew in direct proportion to white guilt, and could not have been possible without it. Many people have noted that the black riots of the 1960s came after the passage of the major “civil rights” laws, not before, and it is likely that those concessions to black grievance encouraged the very violence they were supposed to prevent. As Dr. Steele explains in this particularly acute passage:
“Anger is acted out by the oppressed only when real weakness is perceived in the oppressor. So anger is never automatic or even inevitable for the oppressed; it is chosen when weakness in the oppressor means it will be effective in winning freedom or justice or spoils of some kind. Anger in the oppressed is a response to perceived opportunity, not to injustice. And expressions of anger escalate not with more injustice but with less injustice.”
The last three decades of the 20th century were therefore the golden age of the racial shakedown. The whole point of black militancy was to make whites responsible for black progress. Instead of feeling shamed by the failures of their own people, blacks could parade them as an accusation. And, of course, any hint of “racism” was — and still is — a trophy to be cherished, to be waved in the face of abashed whites as often as possible.
The most profitable pose a black could strike was therefore that of victim, and “when victimization is identity, then the victim’s passionate anger can be called out even when there is no actual victimization.” As Michael Levin has pointed out, the angrier blacks got, the more they were able to convince whites there was something to be angry about, and the more likely whites were to do as they were told.
The old left had been trying to make race an irrelevance; the new left discovered the tremendous advantages in being as black as possible. Dazzled by the rewards, not many realized that the victim pose came with a price. “[I]t quickly became the most totalitarian and repressive identity that black America has ever known. All dissent became heresy, punishable by excommunication . . .”
At the same time, “if you were black and thus a victim of racial oppression, this new morality of social justice meant you could not be expected to carry the same responsibilities as others.” This, writes Dr. Steele, was the worst possible trick to play on blacks. Just when unprecedented opportunities were open to them white liberals and black hustlers told them success would never come until whites transformed themselves and their society.
But once again, Dr. Steele pushes his argument too far: “It is always the black who pays the price for white self-delusion.” He writes that even when whites run elaborate programs of racial preference, they “will never suffer from the systems they devise, but will be forever celebrated for their good intentions, their courage in confronting such an intractable problem . . . [E]ven the most gifted and affluent blacks — many of whom can compete on their own — must pull on the Sambo mask and reinvent themselves as the sort of inferiors that will trade well with white guilt.”
Wrong on both counts. There are countless whites who have been denied promotions, recognition, or admission to university so that some black or Hispanic could be pushed forward. And we hardly need feel sorry for the unqualified black who gets a full scholarship to the Ivy League. He pulls on no Sambo mask. If he puts on a mask at all, it is the far more profitable one of aggrieved victimhood.
Global Racism
Dr. Steele recognizes that hardly anyone in America has the slightest desire to oppress blacks, and that it is nearly impossible to point to anyone with any power who is a “racist.” That is what gives rise to “the now common argument that racism is ‘systemic,’ ‘structural,’ and ‘institutional,’” or “global,” as he calls it. When no people can be found who are “racist,” then institutional racism has to be invented to explain black failure. Dr. Steele puts it neatly: “ ‘impersonal’ and ‘structural’ forces . . . worked by the ‘invisible hand’ to stifle black aspiration even when real racists were nowhere to be seen.”
This fiction solved an important problem: “For black leaders in the age of white guilt the problem was how to seize all they could get from white guilt without having to show actual events of racism. Global racism was the answer.” As Dr. Steele explains, “global racism enables blacks to frame racism to the scale of white guilt rather than to the scale of white racism — too weak these days to count for much.”
Dr. Steele writes about pampered black college students: “Global racism allows these students to feel aggrieved by racism even as they live on campuses notorious for almost totalitarian regimes of political correctness — and to feel more aggrieved than black students did forty years ago, before the civil rights victories. This is because their feeling of racial aggrievement is calibrated to the degree of white guilt on university campuses and not to actual racism.”
He continues: “Global racism prevails precisely where whites and institutions most aggressively search for moral authority around race. Even announcements of a new commitment to ‘diversity’ within an institution will very likely increase feelings of racial aggrievement in minorities. We blacks always experience white guilt as an incentive, almost a command, to somehow exhibit racial woundedness and animus.”
Even the most hard-nosed businesses can be shaken down for millions in the name of global racism, because “even a hint of racism proves the rule of systemic racism. So these corporations never pay to the measure of any actual racism; they pay to the measure of racism’s hyped-up and bloated reputation in the age of white guilt.” The golden age of the race hustler may slowly be ending, but there are a great many campus officials and corporate executives who would do well to ponder Dr. Steele’s words.
White Guilt goes on to make a number of larger points, the most important of which is the following:
“[W]hen white supremacy was delegitimized, whites did not simply lose the authority to practice racism. The loss of authority generalized well beyond that, so that whites also lost a degree of their authority to stand proudly for the values and ideas that had made the West a great civilization despite its many evils.”
Some of the values that were discredited along with “racism” were: “personal responsibility, hard work, individual initiative, delayed gratification, commitment to excellence, competition by merit, the honor in achievement, and so on. How could these principles be important when they had coexisted so easily with racism? Weren’t they, in fact, a part of the machinery of white supremacy?”
With all traditional standards discredited, there was virtually no check on adolescent rebellion for the generation of the 1960s. For college students, the crassest self-indulgence could be passed off as fighting “the system,” and the Hippies found “a far greater collapse of adult moral authority than previous generations had experienced.”
The result? “The sixties generation of youth is very likely the first generation in American history to have actually won its adolescent rebellion against its elders. One of the reasons for this, if not the primary reason, is that this generation came of age during the age of white guilt, which meant that its rebellion ran into an increasingly uncertain adult authority.”
“The loss of moral authority,” explains Dr. Steele, “went too far the other way. . . . After America admitted what was worst about itself, there was not enough authority left to support what was best.” One prominent side effect was widespread acceptance of “the idea that a lack of sexual inhibition signified a deeper and more compassionate humanity.” Dr. Steele adds: “It was white guilt that powerfully stigmatized (with racism, militarism, etc.) precisely the traditional values that had always prevented a sexual revolution.”
There is much truth in all this. Once the ancient distinction between black and white was broken down, the 1960s made short work of virtually every other distinction whites had taken for granted: man and woman, heterosexual and homosexual, normal and perverted, diligence and sloth, health and sickness, good and bad. As Dr. Steele points out, the collapse of so many traditions abetted the ‘60s generation’s illusion that it had a mandate to remake the world.
Good as this book is, Dr. Steele cannot be expected to understand that what he calls “racism,” though it undoubtedly gave rise to ugly excesses, was an essential part of Western consciousness. It was at the same time the part most vulnerable to clever appeals to Western principles. But when whites lost the will to conserve that which was most urgently to be conserved — the biological integrity of the people who built our civilization — they lost the will to conserve much of anything else. That is why, as Dr. Steele writes, “baby boomer-counterculture consciousness is now the establishment consciousness, while traditional American values now constitute a kind of counterculture.” When the central redoubt of racial consciousness fell, no outer rampart could remain standing.
Something else Dr. Steele cannot be expected to understand is that one of his assertions — tossed off as if it goes without saying — is a death sentence to a race and civilization. “[B]eyond an identity that apologizes for white supremacy, absolutely no white identity is permissible,” he writes. “In fact, if there is a white racial identity today it would have to be white guilt — a shared, even unifying, lack of racial moral authority.”
Dr. Steele is surely too smart not to know that filling the country with Third-Worlders will not bring back the standards of excellence he says must be reasserted. Surely he must see that Hispanics and other non-whites have taken their cue from blacks — not from whites — and have slipped into the pose of victim as if they were to the plantation born. Whites show no more backbone in the face of non-white immigrants than they show in the face of blacks, and unless they resurrect healthy racial pride, they will disappear as a distinct people with a distinct culture. It may be giving him more credit than he deserves, but Dr. Steele shows signs that he might not entirely favor consigning the white man and his civilization to oblivion, but until he understands the implications of denying to whites any identity other than that of penitent, he is as much our undertaker as the black frauds and con artists he despises.
But let us not make too much of the shortcomings of this book. Dr. Steele comes closer than nearly all whites to understanding the meaning and implications of white guilt. If whites are to have a future, they will have to see the precipice for themselves. Dr. Steele has shown us more than we can reasonably ask.
| ARTICLE |
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Who Profits From These Registrations?
France tries to cheat the National Front — again.
The French presidential elections will take place on April 22. There are four major candidates: the socialist Ségolène Royal, the centrist François Bayrou, the right-of-center former interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, and Jean-Marie Le Pen. If, as seems likely, no one wins an outright majority the two top-polling candidates will have a runoff two weeks later on May 6.
The mass media have been happily telling us that in 2006 the number of new voter registrations has broken all records. Registrations often rise the year before an election, especially a presidential election, but this rise has been extraordinary. A glance at the television images last December of long lines of people (of so many hues!) waiting to register at city halls around the country was enough to show what is happening.
Although the final voter lists have not yet been made public, we already know that the number of registered voters quadrupled in Metz, tripled in Toulouse, and doubled in Nantes and Lyons. At Roubaix, where it is well known that the majority of the population are foreigners, the number of voters rose more than tenfold, from 52 to 577! Since the previous presidential elections in 2002, the number of voters has increased 12 percent in Marseille, 60 percent in Nancy, and 76 percent in Amiens.
What is true in the provinces is just as true in Paris and the surrounding region. In the capital there has been an increase of 32 percent — 330,000 voters — since the last presidential race, as Bertrand Delanoë [the openly homosexual, Tunisian-born mayor of Paris] keeps reminding us. Heavily-immigrant suburbs like Saint-Denis (2,000 new voters this year) and Gennevilliers (up 2,300) have seen big gains, and Bondy, which was a notorious hot spot during the Ramadan riots of 2005 now boasts 20 percent more voters. Trappes, yet another “exotic” suburb, had a remarkable 90 percent increase. In France as a whole, there will be hundreds of thousands of new voters this spring.
The Specter of April 21
There has been nothing spontaneous about this huge increase. It is the result of a campaign mounted by the left and by showbiz and sports personalities like Moroccan actor Jamel Debbouze, rappers Joey Starr and Daim’s [sic], and Guadeloupian soccer player Lilian Thuram. They have been beating the drum, reminding people in the occupied suburbs that Jean-Marie Le Pen made it into the presidential runoff on April 21, 2002, and are also doing their best to make sure Nicolas Sarkozy loses. Leftist of all stripes can no longer count on the votes of native-born Frenchmen, whom they have continually betrayed, despised, and fleeced, and are looking to a new electorate: immigrants. This cynicism, which amounts to a crime against France, has born fruit, with immigrants voting massively for the left — 67 percent for the Socialists alone.
Will that always be the case, given that the Socialists as well as the mainstream “right” couldn’t care less about immigrants and are just using them for electoral cannon fodder? Will these foreigners realize, like Dieudonné, that they are being used? Dieudonné [a controversial mulatto comic who has been accused of anti-Semitism and who now supports the National Front] has certainly understood, and plans to perform between the first and second rounds of the election and to tell the audience to vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen if he is still in the running.
Even the leader of the National Front has come to understand the importance of the non-white vote, and tried to appeal to it by means of that controversial poster (see “The National Front: Going Soft or Getting Wise?” AR, March 2007). We will soon see whether that was a good tactic, but judging from press and TV interviews with these new voters — even if they have all been carefully selected — there is reason for worry. (They are invariably identified only by first name, which makes them sound less foreign.)
“Le Pen in the run off? I don’t want that to happen. That’s why I registered to vote,” explains 26-year-old Jennifer, waiting in line at the mayor’s office in Gennevilliers. “I’m afraid of France turning to the extreme right,” worries 22-year-old Quentin. “I don’t want Jean-Marie Le Pen as president,” says Rachid. “I have never voted before,” explains Nathalie, in her forties, “but now I have to. In 2002 I felt responsible for what happened . . . Now I have a clear conscience.” Dabia and Yacine registered “in response to an appeal by Diam’s and Joey Starr,” while Dorothy and Arc’hantael (yes, that is a real name), both students, say they woke up to politics in 2002.
The great tragedy is that the votes of young native-born French people, dosed from their early school days with anti-Le Pen propaganda, could be as disastrous as those of the neo-French.
Looking Out for Themselves
Ever since the last presidential election, we have seen how well appeals to the horror of April 21, 2002, have worked for all the parties that are part of the System. And let us not be deceived: Even if it is mathematically possible for Jean-Marie Le Pen to make it into the final round this year as he did five years ago, it will be infinitely more difficult. In 2002, the establishment was taken completely by surprise, and panicked all the way to the runoff on May 5.
Why was no one prepared? The right had split in late 1998 (See “Crisis in the National Front,” AR, Feb. 1999), and there had been poor results in the local and European elections in 2001. Let us not forget that just one year before April 21, 2002, the National Front had won only seven percent of the vote and the breakaway faction from the National Front, led by Bruno Mégret, had won only three.
This year, knowing that as Charles Maurras [monarchist and conservative theorist, 1869-1952] used to say, the republic governs badly but protects itself well, we can be sure that our rulers will do everything possible to prevent a second political earthquake. They have been ruthless in keeping out splinter candidates, thereby herding everyone behind their favorites, Sarko and Ségo. The plan is for Mr. Sarkozy and Miss Royal each to get more than 25 percent of the first-round vote, thereby putting them beyond reach of Mr. Le Pen, who could get as much as 24 percent.
At the same time, we see this massive registration of freshly naturalized citizens. It is hardly without precedent. In 1987, Charles Pasqua, who was interior minister for Jacques Chirac, sent convoys of buses to the projects to haul immigrants in to register in Marseille in the runup to the 1988 elections for the National Assembly. These Frenchmen-on-paper, who accounted for half the new voters that year, performed as ordered: Jean-Marie Le Pen, Bruno Mégret, and Jean-Pierre Stirbois, another National Front candidate, lost by a hair — and not a blond hair.
We have also seen in the recent municipal elections in Belgium how massive voting by immigrants, especially in places like Anvers, blunted the Vlaams Belang’s drive and kept it from winning a single mayoral election in Flanders (See “Men of the West, Stand and Fight,” AR, Feb. 2007).
Despicable Methods
Even when the System does not succeed in completely betraying the electorate and the nationalist right wins an election, as happened in Italy with Gianfranco Fini [leader of the National Alliance] and in Austria with Jörg Haider [former leader of the Austrian Freedom Party], the System fights dirty by using some administrative trick to invalidate the results or finds some kind of retrospective ineligibility. We saw this in the French cities of Toulon and Vitrolles, when three victorious National Front candidates for mayor — Jean-Marie Le Chevallier, Bruno Mégret, and then his wife Catherine Mégret — were declared ineligible one after another.
Republican France has frequently played this trick, not scrupling to violate the principles it is supposed to venerate: Less than five years after the Republic was established, the coup d’état under the Directorate of September 4, 1797 simply invalidated the results for every royalist deputy (member of the National Assembly) elected — and then went on to sentence most of them to banishment in Guiana. Only supporters of the Republic kept their seats, which made for less contentious politics. More recently, in 1952, the executive clearly violated the constitution by unseating 11 of 52 Poujadist deputies (named after nationalist and populist leader Pierre Poujade,1920-2003), thereby keeping the Poujadists from reaching the critical number of 50 deputies required to form a parliamentary group and thereby control committees, influence legislation, etc. (Twenty deputies are now required to form a group in the assembly.) It is worth noting that the 11 deputies so scandalously eliminated were promptly and arbitrarily replaced by men from the then-governing parties.
We can count on the System: It will show the greatest ingenuity when it comes to strangling any nationalist renaissance in its crib. Which is to say that it will take all the talents, cleverness, and force of conviction of which the leader of the National Front is capable, along with the combined effort of every patriot to overcome such formidable obstacles.
This article appeared in the Jan. 12, 2007, issue of the French weekly Rivarol (www.rivarol.com), and is translated and reprinted with permission.
| IN THE NEWS |
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O Tempora, O Mores!
Safe for Whites
Most of the 406 people murdered in Philadelphia last year died from gunshot wounds. Overall, the city had 2,004 shootings in 2006, up 31 percent from 1,528 in 2001, which means that on average five people are shot in Philadelphia every day. Most shootings take place on weekends (349 on Saturday, 336 on Sunday) between 9 pm and 2 am, with the most (192) from midnight to one am. Philadelphia criminals are not early risers — they shot only 23 people between 9 am and 10 am. Most shooting victims (75 percent) are black men, and most are between 18 and 25 years old. The majority of shootings are in poor black neighborhoods. There is very little violence in rich, white areas.
Criminologist Lawrence W. Sherman of the University of Pennsylvania spouts the usual mush: Shootings reflect a “systematic placement of black males at the bottom of the social structure,” leaving them feeling “rejected” and prone to violence. “We have to recognize the role of concentrated black poverty,” he says.
He may have a point, however, when he says that “the untold story, the story the hotels want you to write, is that Philadelphia is a very safe place for white people.” Indeed, of the 2,004 shooting victims in 2006, only 341 were “white.” Since the Philadelphia police call Hispanics white, the actual number of white shooting victims is probably very small. [Robert Moran, Phila. Shootings Up 31% Since ‘01, Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 18, 2007.]
Rape in Liberia
According to a survey by the medical aid agency Merlin, three out of four Liberian women have been raped. Some of the victims are as young as three years old. Claire Parker, who is reproductive health coordinator for the agency, says nearly half the victims she sees are under age 12, and that some are as young as three. As she explains, “If a person is seeking a position of power here, there is a traditional belief which says that if you spill the blood of a child, or take the virginity of a child, that will give you increased power.”
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected woman head of state, has promised to crack down on sexual violence but Miss Parker doesn’t think much will change. “The vast majority of rape cases don’t even make it to a conviction, let alone to the imprisonment of the perpetrator,” she says. “People are reluctant to report rape cases because of the shame that goes along with it.” [Kate Thomas, Three Out of Four Liberian Women Have Been Raped, Survey Finds, Independent (London), March 8, 2007.]
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin seems to have a habit of saying what he really thinks. The mayor angered many whites when he predicted last year that despite the population decline that followed Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans would still be a “chocolate city.” In March, Mr. Nagin told an audience of black newspaper publishers and editors that the slow recovery of his city is part of a conspiracy against New Orleans and other black-run cities to dilute their racial makeup and change their political leadership. “Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere,” he said. “They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community.” He added that his “chocolate city” remark made him a target for people who want to make sure he goes no further. [Hamil R. Harris, Nagin Suspects a Plot to Keep Blacks Away, Washington Post, March 17, 2007.]
According to US Census Bureau estimates, native-born Americans are fleeing US cities. Between 2000 and 2006, more than 600,000 natives moved from New York, 200,000 from Los Angeles, 188,000 from San Francisco, and 101,000 from Boston. The native-born are even leaving smaller cities like Ames, Iowa and Battle Creek, Michigan. These cities are not losing population, however, because immigrants are replacing the native-born. Despite losing more than half a million natives, New York City actually grew 2.7 percent between 2000 and 2006, and Los Angeles grew 4.7 percent.
The Census Bureau says there are 36 million immigrants living in the United States — the most ever — and suspects that at least a third are here illegally. [Without Immigrants, Metro Areas Would Shrink, AP, April 5, 2007.]
Still Milking It
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center recently sold a collection of the great man’s papers — more than 10,000 documents — to the city of Atlanta for $32 million. The papers will be kept at King’s black alma mater, Morehouse College. Given this windfall, one would think the King Center wouldn’t mind if others collected a few crumbs from the “King legacy,” but no, the center wants it all.
A woman who claims to be a childhood friend of King’s plans to auction off a small collection of his papers she has had for nearly 40 years. The unidentified woman says she got the papers, which include first drafts of speeches and letters, as part of a debt settlement with a radio station with which King was once affiliated. Bidding starts on April 15, and the 25 documents could fetch $100,000 to $300,000.
The King family is fighting the sale. “Unless the woman has documentation that the papers were given to her, they are owned by the King Estate,” says Isaac Newton Farris, president and chief executive officer of the King Center. [Another Set of King Documents Set for Auction, AP, April 3, 2007.]
Too Old, Too White
New York state’s Division of Human Rights enforces the state’s anti-discrimination laws. A black woman, Kumiki Gibson, who had been acting head of the division since January, was officially appointed to the job in March. Miss Gibson is a former senior vice president of the National Urban League and was once an advisor to Al Gore.
The day after the New York senate confirmed her appointment, two white former employees filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), accusing Miss Gibson of age and race discrimination. Michele Heitzner, 60, former deputy commissioner, and Martha Furlong, 63, who worked in the personnel department, say Miss Gibson fired them because they were old and white. They say that when Miss Gibson took over as acting commissioner, she had a conference call with all her employees, in which she said she wanted “young folks, young people” working for her, and that as a “woman of color” she wanted to bring “diversity” to the agency. Miss Heitzner says Miss Gibson told her “that she did not see a place for me in ‘her vision.’” Miss Furlong says Miss Gibson told her “that I did not ‘fit’ in with her plans for the division.”
The lawyer for the two women says they will also sue in federal and state courts. Miss Gibson denies any wrongdoing. [Fredric U. Dicker, Rights Wronged Us: Suit, New York Post, March 8, 2007, p. 5.]
Britain has well established racial gaps in school performance. Passing rates for the national curriculum test for English, given at age 11, are: Chinese – 86 percent, Indians – 85 percent, whites – 80 percent. For many Indians and Chinese, English is not their native language.
Between the ages of 14 and 16, British children are tested for what is called the General Certificate of Secondary Education, or GCSE. Again, there are well established racial differences in the percentages of students who get top grades in five or more subjects: Chinese – 65.8 percent, Indians – 59.1 percent, and whites – 44.3 percent. Blacks do poorly, with only 22.7 percent, but they are not the worst group. That honor goes to Gypsies, or Roma as they now like to be called. Only four percent get top grades in five or more subjects.
At the next level of secondary achievement, Chinese boys are four times more likely than white boys to earn three or more A (advanced) level ratings in science, and Indian boys are three times more likely. [Richard Garner, Chinese Pupils Eclipse All Other Ethnic Groups in English Tests, Independent (London), Feb. 21, 2007.]
The Central Intelligence Agency has done a lot of hiring since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Forty percent of all current personnel have joined since then, with the agency setting a hiring record in 2006. It expects to set another record next year. The agency particularly wants people who speak Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and other so-called “mission critical” languages (only 12 percent of agency hires are proficient in foreign languages).
Director Michael Hayden is using the hiring boom to get a more exotic racial mix, on the assumption that in many countries non-whites will make more convincing spies. In 2006, 23 percent of new employees were black, Hispanic, Asian or Indian. The CIA also wants Americans of Arabic, Iranian, and South Asian descent.
Today, half of all CIA managers are women or non-whites. Thirty percent of CIA station chiefs are either women or non-whites, as are 35 percent of Director Hayden’s senior advisors. That’s not enough, says associate deputy director Michael Morell: “We need to do better.” [Stephen Barr, Fast-Changing CIA Puts New Emphasis on Recruiting, Washington Post, Feb. 19, 2007.]
The CIA is also airing radio spots, touting America as the most diverse nation on earth, and claiming it is our greatest strength. The ads are voiced by a black man.
Better than Detroit
In a March radio interview about Iraq, Congressman Tim Walberg (R-MI) told host Jack Elbing that 80 to 85 percent of the country “is reasonably under control, at least as well as Detroit or Chicago or any of our other big cities. That’s an encouraging sign.” When Mr. Elbing said he hadn’t heard Iraq compared to Detroit before, Rep. Walberg added, “Well, in fact, in many places it’s as safe and cared for as Detroit or Harvey, Illinois, or some other places that have trouble with armed violence . . .”
Spokesmen for Detroit and Harvey, both 80 percent black, denounced the congressman’s remarks. “It’s absurd to compare Detroit and Iraq in any way,” complained James Canning, a spokesman for Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. “Unfortunately, for years people have beat up on the city of Detroit. Detroit is the word for negative. We are working very hard to transform that image of our city.”
Harvey mayor Eric Kellogg was less diplomatic, saying Rep. Walberg’s comments take “racial profiling and stereotyping to extreme levels . . . [W]e still have members of Congress who suffer from the highest levels of ignorance and stupidity.” [Michigan Congressman Who Says Parts of Baghdad ‘As Safe’ as Detroit Draws Criticism, AP, March 22, 2007.]
France will be holding the first round of presidential elections on April 22, and polls show a tight race between Socialist Ségolène Royal and conservative frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy.
During a campaign swing through the Caribbean island of Martinique, Miss Royal gushed, “Miscegenation is an opportunity for France.” She added that as president she would encourage immigration and would be “president of a France that is mixed-race and proud of it.”
Not to be outdone, at a campaign rally January 14 in Paris, Mr. Sarkozy departed from his prepared text to praise “a France that understands that creation comes from mixing, from openness, from coming together, and from — I’m not afraid of the word — miscegenation.” [Ségo et Nico Apôtres de la France Métisse, Rivarol (Paris), Feb. 2, 2007, p. 2.]
Too Many Handouts
Hanne Nabintu Herland is a mixed-race Norwegian religious historian who grew up in Africa. She’s also the author of a new book that claims Norwegians and their over-generous welfare system are the reason so many immigrants are unemployed.
“To criticize the [jobless] foreigners is like criticizing the symptoms and not the problem,” she adds, accusing social workers of “waiting at the airport and doling out social services available for asylum seekers and immigrants” instead of sending them to classes where they could learn to be “Norwegian.” “Lots of people have interpreted this as an invitation not to work. Many have viewed Norway as a country where the state pays your monthly salary and where housing is provided.”
Norwegians, she concludes, “automatically feel sorry for people with dark skin. We put them on welfare, instead of putting them to work.” This is because Norwegians think Third-Worlders cannot work; Norway has developed “a rock-hard segregated society, where people are evaluated in terms of ethnicity, not competence.” [Historian Blames Immigrant Woes on ‘Segregated Society,’ Aftenposten (Norway), Jan. 15, 2007.]
The senate of the state of North Carolina has unanimously voted an apology for the state’s role in slavery. Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand, who is white, said the apology will help legislators “to try to be better children of God and better representatives of all the people of this state.”
Black senators called the vote a good first step: “This is a noble gesture, but . . . don’t let it end here,” said Democratic Sen. Larry Shaw. “There’s plenty of work to be done.” The North Carolina house has yet to vote on the bill, so the apology is still unofficial. [N.C. Senate Apologizes For Slavery and Jim Crow Laws, AP, April 6, 2007.]
In March, the Maryland legislature unbosomed a similar apology, expressing “profound regret” that the state’s citizens once “trafficked in human flesh.” [Maryland Issues Apology for Its Role in Slavery AP, March 27, 2007.] Virginia started this recent trend, and the Missouri legislature is considering a similar proposal.
| LETTERS FROM READERS |
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Sir — I wanted to express my appreciation for Jared Taylor’s “Banned in Halifax” in the February issue. It’s the best debunking I’ve ever read of the mandatory group think of our times. I’ve sent copies to several friends.
It’s also a sad and shocking requiem for a country of which the worst that could have been said was that it is a bit cold and boring. African gangs in Winnipeg? MS-13 in Calgary, beneath the glorious Canadian Rockies? How in Heaven’s name did they get there? No one could have even imagined this 20 years ago, and yet Canadians seem to be determined to close their eyes to what they are doing to their country.
Robert Michael, Ft. Collins, Colo.
Sir — So Jared Taylor was finally able to tell the people of Halifax what he thinks about racial diversity (see “Return to Halifax”). Last I heard, the city was still standing, and if Ottawa has begun mass deportation of non-whites, I must have missed the story. What were these people so afraid of? If the left believes racial diversity and multiculturalism are strengths, why not let people like Jared Taylor take an opposing view? If everybody believes millions of non-whites are a benefit to Canada, no one will listen anyway.
In fact, Mr. Taylor tells the truth, and the rulers of this PC empire don’t want the people to notice they are wearing no clothes. I don’t agree with the AR position on everything, but you make some valid points. There are problems with racial diversity. I support a multicultural Canada, and see absolutely nothing wrong with talking about its problems. That’s how solutions are found.
Michael O’Rourke, Nelson, B.C., Canada
Sir — I’m glad to see that you are selling copies of the Taylor-March debate on DVD. I know next to nothing about Peter March, but he has my respect. As far as I can tell, he got nothing out of the debate, except perhaps seeing his name in the papers. I’m sure he didn’t win friends in the faculty lounge at St. Mary’s University. Let us be thankful there is at least one man in Halifax who still believes in free speech.
Irene Santrock, Kittanning, Penn.
Sir — It is indeed inspiring to see that there are some whites who unapologetically stand up for the interests of their people, as do the men of the Vlaams Belang. What is even more encouraging is that the VB is a powerful electoral force. When will there be an American party that speaks for whites?
Bill Travis, Plano, Tex.
Sir — As an American, perhaps I am naive, but how can a court declare a political party illegal? I thought Belgium was a democracy. But I suppose in a country so sick that the establishment curries favor with a hostile alien minority — one that despises and seeks to destroy its host — anything is possible. What a pity Belgians don’t have Second Amendment rights. Frank Vanhecke and Philip Dewinter seem like the kind of men who would use them for more than duck hunting.
Charles Ford, Jackson, Miss.
Sir — The photo on the cover of the April issue is of a group of smiling Hispanics who must have been demonstrating for amnesty. One holds a sign that says humanity is una raza or “one race.” Another holds one that says, in English, “I love diversity.” Curiously, every face in this little group appears to be Hispanic.
Like all non-whites, Hispanics “love diversity” only for whites. They are keen boosters of mixing when that means admission for them into neighborhoods, institutions, or a civilization they could not create or maintain. Once they become a majority, they lose interest in “diversity,” instead preferring to turn whatever part of the United States they have conquered into foreign outposts. They take from us only our material advantages and the crudest bits of our popular culture; our demeanor, our way of being, our ideals, and our heritage remain utterly alien to them.
I suspect that the strong sentiment in this country against illegal immigration is a sign that more and more Americans understand this. Opposition to illegals has become the one more-or-less acceptable expression of a long-suppressed white racial consciousness, though even this is constantly scrutinized for signs of “hate.” I have some optimism that anti-illegal feeling now runs so high that Congress dares not pass a broad amnesty. If Congress does take firm action against illegals, I would like to believe that sentiment against them will not dissipate, that whites will begin to say more openly that it makes no difference whether it is legal or illegal — displacement will not be tolerated.
The giant is slowly awakening!
Aaron Harding, Columbia, S.C.
Sir — Thank you for “Hispanic Consciousness” in the April issue. I’m sick of pressing “one for English!” It’s refreshing to hear someone discredit Hispanics with their own words. Whatever these people are — saints or sinners — they ain’t us, and they don’t belong here.
I’m looking forward to reading part two. Articles like this, and the earlier series on black racial consciousness, are why I subscribe to AR.
John White, Littleton, N.H.
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