American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 2, No. 4	April 1991

 

CONTENTS

The Rise of College ‘Racism’
Uses and Misuses of Altruism
Surveying the Survey Results
The Importance of Group Evolution, Part III
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

The Rise of College ‘Racism’

The reported revival of racism on college campuses is largely a distortion of the facts. Part I of an article in two parts.

by Jared Taylor

The popular press has, for some time, been treating us to long articles about the “resurgence of racism” at America’s colleges. These stories have a predictable political slant and, by now, almost a standard format. They are also a complete misreading of what is happening.

The usual story starts with a warning that today’s young people seem to be reverting to the “intolerance” and “bigotry” of more primitive times. Next comes a recitation of “racist” acts, almost always with the implication that only white students ever commit them. Then there is speculation about what may have caused this worrying trend, with a poke at President Reagan for having fostered an atmosphere in which “bigotry was acceptable.” A professor may be trotted out to say that today’s young whites are racist because they didn’t live through the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. The stories end with encouraging accounts of the stiff measures colleges are now taking to combat “ignorance” among white students.

Curiously, the weakest parts of these stories are what is presumably the heart of the matter: evidence of white bigotry. Even the average reader must be struck by how tame the reported acts of “racism” appear to be. But in the context of a major article on a major American problem, over which college presidents are wringing their hands, the absence of much discernible white “racism” somehow seems not to matter. If everyone says it is a terrible problem, then it must be.

Let us look at the sort of thing that has thrown the nation’s colleges into turmoil. During a late-night bull session at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, a white freshman reportedly said that Martin Luther King was a communist and then proceeded to sing “We Shall Overcome” in a “sarcastic” manner. For this offense, he was made to do 30 hours of community service at a local minority organization. A graduate student at the same university reportedly called a classmate a “Mexican” in a “derogatory” manner after an intramural football game. Presumably he could have called him any kind of obscenity and not been punished, but “Mexican” got him 30 hours of service also. These incidents were thought worthy of mention in the New York Times of May 6, 1990.

At Tufts University in Medford (MA), a student was put on academic probation for saying “Hey, Aunt Jemimah,” to a friend who was wearing a bandanna. A black bystander was offended and brought charges against the student for violating the college speech code. The University’s reasons for punishing the student were murky at best. “We did not find evidence to support [the] accusation [of racial harassment], nevertheless we decided [the student] still had no right to make the remark,” it reported.

When a Brown University fraternity advertised a recent “South of the Border” party with an invitation that showed a man sleeping under a sombrero, a student complained that this was “insensitive” to Mexicans. All campus fraternities promptly agreed never to have any more ethnic theme parties.

In 1989, 30 fraternity members from the University of San Diego were discovered by a park ranger as they were burning a cross in a nature preserve. They were quickly hauled before college authorities, to whom they explained that this was part of their initiation ritual, which was based on Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity. Each pledge was to make a list of his faults and burn it in the cross’s fire. The university was eventually made to understand that the ritual had no racial significance at all. Nevertheless, the fraternity was put on probation for three years, forced to abandon the ritual, and its members each made to do 25 hours of community service. For good measure, every member of every fraternity and sorority on campus was made to attend workshops on racism.

It would be hard to think of a more grotesque overreaction. The initiation ritual was held in private and was discovered only by accident. Everyone eventually agreed that it had nothing to do with race. And yet, the mere fact of having burnt a cross was reason enough not only to punish those who did it, but to take measures against every other fraternity. As in the case of the “Aunt Jemimah” incident, neither “racist” intent nor “racist” effect mattered. Anything that an over-imaginative non-white could possible construe as “racist” appears to be a crime.

Most of the time, when “racist” incidents are reported in the news, it is impossible to find out what the circumstances were. In the fervor to stamp out “racism,” what happened is less important than the excitement of unmasking another white “bigot.” Nevertheless, some campuses take “racism” so seriously that they make official investigations of it. The whole story may be markedly different from what the newspapers tell us.

Beethoven at Stanford

In the fall of 1988, Stanford was one of many campuses said to be afflicted with white bigotry. Newspapers and magazines repeatedly referred to a notorious incident, in which a white student drew thick lips and kinky hair on a poster of Beethoven to make the composer look black. This was all that was said about the incident, but the reader was to understand that the poster was a definitive act of racism at one of America’s most prestigious universities.

According to an official Stanford report — which no journalist seems to have read — the incident started with a conversation among undergraduates in which a black claimed that all music in America has African origins. A white asked about Beethoven, and was told that Beethoven was black. The white laughed at the idea. Later that night he came across a Stanford Orchestra poster of Beethoven, worked it over with a crayon, and hung it outside the black student’s room.

For this, the unhappy white was put on a kind of student trial, before more than 100 people. He defended the poster as “satirical humor,” and as a jab at the “ethnic aggressivity” of non-whites. This brought down the wrath of the assembled blacks, who called him an “arrogant bastard” and demanded that he be expelled from his dormitory. The meeting went into an uproar that left several students in tears.

Two days later, white students in a mostly-black dorm found notices under their doors telling them to leave. The same notice appeared on the residence bulletin board. Someone also defaced the photo display of residents by punching holes in the white faces. A few signs went up around campus calling for vengeance for the poster incident and urging students to “Smash the honkie oppressors!”

In addition to local coverage, the Beethoven poster has been mentioned in at least three different New York Times articles. It was cited in Newsweek, Harper’s magazine, and even in the ABA [American Bar Association] Journal. Not one story mentioned the claim about Beethoven being black or the anti-white hysteria that followed. Two years after the fact, the poster was still being paraded as an example of pure, white racial prejudice. Perhaps we may be justified in wondering whether we are getting the full story in other reports on white “racism.”

Sometimes, of course, “racist” incidents are deliberately provoked by non-whites who know that they can only profit from the collective breast-beating they know will follow. Some college administrators have wondered privately how much of the insulting graffiti that occasionally turns up on buildings has been the work of non-white provocateurs.

Some cases of racial “harassment” have been exposed as provocation. Sabrina Collins, a black student at Emory University in Atlanta, gained national attention when she received death threats in the mail, her dormitory room was repeatedly ransacked, and racial insults were scrawled on the walls and floor. She was so traumatized that she curled up into a ball and refused to speak. An investigation showed that the episodes began just as Miss Collins came under investigation for violating the school’s honor code, and that she had staged everything herself.

The head of the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP said that so long as the incident highlighted the pressures that blacks face on mainly-white campuses, “it doesn’t matter to me whether she did it or not.” Astonishingly, university officials agreed that worrisome questions about white racism had been raised, even if Miss Collins had done everything herself.

Anti-White Racism

Of course, there are also hateful acts by non-whites against whites. These are very lightly reported and never become national news. Furthermore, just as non-white crime against whites is rarely scrutinized for racial motives (see AR of Dec. 1990) student “racism” is usually thought to be an exclusively white failing.

Nevertheless, the worst outrages cannot be entirely ignored. For example, four black football players at the University of Arizona went to jail in 1989 for hunting down solitary whites and beating them up. Three of the blacks were on scholarship and the biggest was a 6-foot-4, 255-pound lineman.

In December, 1990, a white student attending mostly-black Tennessee State University was beaten in his dormitory room by a group of hooded black men. Another white student at the university carries a knife and sleeps with a baseball bat because of repeated death threats.

Brown University was considering asking for help from the FBI when, in the opening weeks of the 1989 school year, whites were attacked by blacks on 16 different occasions.

Why are crimes like these barely reported and quickly forgotten while the Stanford Beethoven poster lives on in the national news? Why was the poster itself big news but the anti-white reaction to it not worth reporting? Current dogma holds that racism is America’s most grievous affliction. Whites are guilty of it and non-whites are innocent. Whites are so guilty of it that even when a black student fakes a racial incident whites must search their souls. Dogma leaves no room for anti-white racism, so it’s best to ignore it.

Amidst all the talk of surging campus racism, the Carnegie Foundation actually spent a year studying the extent of it, and published a report in the spring of 1990. It surveyed 500 officials who are involved in the quality of student life, and asked them about trends in racial harassment on their campuses over the past five years. Eleven percent of the officials thought things had gotten worse, while slightly more — 13 percent — thought things had improved. Thirty-five percent said there had been no change, and the largest number of all — 40 percent — said there never had been any problems. When the officials were asked how many racial or ethnic incidents there had been on their campuses in the past year, fully 78 percent said there had been none, and 12 percent said there had been one. That left 10 percent who reported more than one.

It doesn’t sound as though there is a raging race problem that must be fought on all fronts. But the study does suggest why an incident like that of the Beethoven poster has been so widely reported: there’s not much else to write about. If the charge of pervasive white racism is to be made to stick, there must be examples of it. The same incidents — and the same distortions — can be written about over and over if necessary.

The second part of this article, to appear in the May issue, will look into some of the measures that have been taken on various campuses to combat alleged racism, and will investigate the gradual rise in white consciousness that these have provoked.

ARTICLE

Uses and Misuses of Altruism

Altruism is the willingness of a person to sacrifice himself for another or for his group. Since it can result in the death of the altruist, it is not always easy to explain in evolutionary terms.

Whatever its origins, altruism is most clearly useful in small groups. The family, the smallest evolutionary group of all, is where its genetic effects are most obvious. A man who risks or even sacrifices his life to save his children may be making an entirely sensible genetic decision. Half of the genes of each of his children are his (the mother provides the other half), and if by his death three children are saved, more of his genes survive than if he saved himself and let them die.

Likewise, a man who dies in a fight when his tribe is attacked may, through his death, keep the entire tribe from being killed. It is the kinship of tribesmen — shared genes — that make this kind of altruism understandable from an evolutionary point of view. Even if the altruist dies, his genes live on in others.

In larger groups, where kinship is more dilute, altruism makes less genetic sense. If the people one saves through one’s death are not blood kin at all, the sacrifice is a complete genetic loss. Nevertheless, as Professor Cattell points out, a useful altruism built up over half a million years of small-group evolution will not disappear simply because material circumstances permit men to live in ever-larger groups.

A certain amount of altruism and cooperation is necessary in order to make a large society work. Once that level has been reached, altruism may actually start working dysgenicly. As Professor Cattell warns, “there is little to prevent a genetic trend, at least, in which the more altruistic and culture-oriented are sacrificed for the idle, the anti-social, the incompetent welfare-dependent type.” This is the situation that prevails in America today, and which results in taxation of the slowly-reproducing competent to support the rapidly-reproducing incompetent.

Altruism is, nevertheless, a wonderful and inspiring quality. Our deep admiration for it doubtless harks back to the period of small-group evolution during which its beneficiaries may have owed their very lives to the heroism of those willing to make sacrifices. Professor Cattell speculates that this is why many religions put such emphasis on it. What was seen as good and noble in the small group was thought to be universally good. It is out of this admiration for sacrifice that may have come the Christian injunction to love one’s enemies and to treat strangers as one treats one’s family. The love of family was to be spread to all people.

Despite the lip service paid to this ideal, everyone knows that to live by it would be insanity. Only monks and nuns, who have no children, can even begin to treat strangers as they might treat sons and daughters. Anyone else, who would have to overcome the most powerful of human emotions to treat strangers as well he treated his children, would be guilty of an inhuman level of neglect.

But the most spectacular perversion of altruism is to extend it, as some one-worlders tend to do, to the level of nations. If it is noble for a man to lay down his life for others, would it not be infinitely more noble for an entire nation to sacrifice itself for another? Put in political terms, the proposition is an absurdity; no one would argue that the world would be better off if France were obliterated in order for Bangladesh to survive.

And yet, this is precisely the thinking that underlies the insistence that white nations must open their borders to immigrants. One hundred years from now, when the United States has been transformed into a non-white nation, America will have truly laid down its life for Mexico, Korea, Africa, Vietnam, El Salvador, and every other nation that will have occupied it. Whites will have sacrificed their homeland for non-whites.

As Professor Cattell points out, in this sense, altruism is a self-limiting quality. A society in which it is highly developed is likely to be one in which cooperation and self-denial have produced an unmatched level of civility and material wealth. If a society then extends the altruistic habits of the family or small group to the entire world, the result will be the destruction of that society, along with its altruism. Altruism itself can survive only when men limit its practice to the small groups in which it first appeared, and where alone it is appropriate.

ARTICLE

Surveying the Survey Results

Press accounts of white “prejudice” should have been headlined, “Poll rates Southerners lower than Jews and Asians.”

by William Robertson Boggs

In the February issue of American Renaissance we mentioned a recent survey on racial “stereotypes” that prompted considerable clucking in the press about persistent white “racism.” It was widely reported, for example, that a majority of whites think that blacks and Hispanics are less intelligent, more prone to violence, and less hard-working than whites.

Newspaper accounts mentioned that the survey also included questions about Jews, Asians, and Southern whites, but gave scarcely any indication of the results. We have since obtained this data and think some of it worth passing along.

The survey worked like this: Researchers asked 1,372 adult Americans, face to face, how they would rate different racial groups in terms of intelligence, patriotism, wealth, etc. The ratings were on a scale of one to seven, and the average ratings for whites were established as the base line (zero on the graphs to the left). Any group that had an average rating higher than the average for whites got a positive score for that trait, and any group with an average rating lower than that for whites got a negative score.

Thus, to take the first graph, the people surveyed rated Jews, on average, as nearly 0.2 points (on the seven-point scale) more intelligent than whites, and blacks as more than 0.8 points less intelligent than whites. The other graphs show how the survey group compared other races to whites on several other traits: whether they were non-violent or violence prone, self-supporting or willing to live on welfare, patriotic or unpatriotic, hard-working or lazy, and rich or poor. In all cases, a positive score means that the survey subjects rated the group better than whites, and a negative score means that they rated the group worse than whites.

Indeed, blacks and Hispanics are at the bottom of the heap on all counts, except for patriotism, in which Asians share bottom honors with Hispanics. Nevertheless, low ratings for blacks and Hispanics should surprise no one. Only the very ignorant could think that they have more money than whites, for example, though the survey managed to find a few such people — 3.8 percent thought that blacks are richer than whites and 6.0 percent thought Hispanics are.

The question about violence, at least as it relates to blacks, should be just as clear cut. Black men are easily the most violent group in the nation, and commit murder at ten times the rate white men do. Their assault rates are higher still. This didn’t keep 13.9 percent of respondents from saying that blacks are less violence-prone than whites.

Likewise, on the subject of intelligence, despite determined efforts in the media to discredit IQ testing and the very notion of IQ, many people know that blacks and Hispanics get low scores. Those who do not know about IQ scores are likely to draw private conclusions from the conditions in which blacks and Hispanics are seen to live.

On the other hand, no matter how overwhelming the evidence for different racial characteristics may be, today’s social dogmas have officially eliminated them by fiat. In some respects, it is remarkable that over 70 percent of all respondents said they thought blacks and Hispanics more likely than whites to prefer living on welfare, and that more than 53 percent were brave enough to say that blacks and Hispanics are less intelligent. In some cases, the answers are less a test of what a survey subject actually thought than a test of what he dared say to a stranger in a face-to-face interview.

The surprises, if there are any, are in how Americans rate Jews, Asians, and Southern whites. Despite their constant chatter about “anti-Semitism,” Jews were the only group to get higher ratings than whites, and they managed this in every single category but patriotism. Southern whites, on the other hand, were rated well below Jews in every category but patriotism, and were even rated lower than Asians in half the categories, including the crucial one of intelligence. At least in the South, the headlines on the press accounts should have read, “Poll rates Southerners lower than Jews and Asians,” but racial convention required that the entirely predictable assessments of blacks and Hispanics be highlighted.

Finally, the entire survey is complicated by the fact that the 1,372 respondents reflect the current racial mix in the United States. Non-whites are less likely to rate themselves as worse than whites, so an all-white survey population would probably have produced even more negative values. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to note that 30 percent of blacks said they thought blacks were less intelligent than whites, and 35 percent of Hispanics likewise rated themselves as less intelligent than whites. Here again are interesting results that are not likely to be widely reported.

The survey was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, with a grant from the National Science Foundation.

BOOK REVIEW

The Importance of Group Evolution, Part III

Raymond B. Cattell, A New Morality from Science: Beyondism, Pergamon Press, New York, 1972, 482 pp.

Reviewed by Thomas Jackson

The first part of this review examined what Professor Cattell calls Beyondism, or the conviction that morality consists in promoting human evolution. The second explored some of the implications of this morality for the way in which a society is governed. The final part follows these implications into the realm of international relations.

At present, the foreign affairs of Western nations are an inconsistent jumble of might-makes-right along with the sentimental principles of the welfare state. The United States, for example, invades Panama and launches war on Iraq, but at the same time makes a great show of helping backward countries through foreign aid. If nations operated according to Beyondist principles of “cooperative competition,” their mutual relations would be entirely different.

Cooperative competition is based on the evolution of groups. Men do not evolve as individuals but as members of groups. Nor do they all evolve together as part of an undifferentiated human mass, but in distinct populations. The races of men have been evolving separately for at least a quarter of a million years, and the species has thrown up astounding diversity. This is as it should be. Nature is always experimenting.

For these myriad different experiments to have any meaning, they must be left alone and given time to succeed or fail. It is only through separate paths of human development that the concept of diversity has any real meaning in nature. The separately evolved races of man are a first step towards the divergence into separate species. Just as members of the same species must be genetically different in order not to fall prey, all at once, to the same diseases, Professor Cattell makes the radical suggestion that the ultimate survival of human beings would be better assured if they branched into different species with different capabilities.

To this extraordinary notion, Professor Cattell would add the importance of letting social systems evolve undisturbed, together with biology. No society has a monopoly on either political or biological fitness, and in both realms evolutionary good health requires diversity. If many different societies around the world were conducting their internal affairs according to an evolutionary ethic of continued human improvement, there might be no end to the variety and beauty of those improvements.

Our planet should be habitable for another 5 billion years, and evolution has plenty of time, if it is not thwarted, to produce a remarkable flowering of human talent and ability that we cannot now foresee. It is precisely because we cannot foresee it that the human species must be allowed to develop in many different directions.

Current popular thinking is the very reverse of what is necessary for this flowering. Though “diversity” is much on the lips of the well-intentioned, they are working towards the destruction of diversity through forced amalgamation of different peoples, and the world-wide application of a single form of “social-democratic” government.

Professor Cattell issues a warning:

Just as the scientist aiming to discover some new and effective product tries out his various mixtures in a carefully segregated and labeled array of test tubes upon his shelf, so must evolution keep some self-contained, inward-developing apartness in its treasures. For evolution has no alternative but to proceed by diversification and selection, culturally and biologically. In the usual goal of homogenistic universalism we are actually being asked to applaud the crowning disaster of all the test tubes crushed in one confused mess in the sink.

The one-worlders and amalgamators — who are the same people who promote the dysgenic welfare state — are foreclosing the most promising biological options open to man. Without so much as acknowledging it, they are halting in its tracks the painful progress that nature has made over millions of years. It is curious that people who will go to great lengths, in the name of biological diversity, to save such species as the snail darter or the spotted owl, are happy to see the diversity of their own species collapse into an undifferentiated, hybrid mush.

Evolution, therefore, is best served when groups seek their own, independent paths. This does not require isolation. Trade, cultural exchange, the imitation of good practices and the avoidance of bad are natural parts of Professor Cattell’s “cooperative competition.” The proper attitude between evolving groups is “wish you well,” with some care taken to ensure that the contents of the different test tubes do no slop carelessly into each other.

There is, to be sure, a brotherhood of man and a common endeavor in which all groups are engaged. Nevertheless, to deny racial and cultural differences is folly. Professor Cattell describes as “ignoracists” those who insist, against all evidence, that the races of men are equivalent or equal. Races, like cultures, should maintain their separateness and seek their own paths towards progress.

What are most to be avoided in inter-group relations are war and charity. War has the obvious evolutionary drawback of destroying diversity. It artificially ends experiments before their time. Even for the victorious side, war is dysgenic because it rewards cowardice and passivity while it punishes bravery; it is the brave and public-spirited who are most likely to die.

Inter-group charity, the foreign aid of which Western countries are so proud, also reverses the course of group evolution. Just as welfare payments reward incompetence, foreign aid may artificially keep alive an evolutionary mistake. Professor Cattell describes the process thus:

Defective internal morality, failure to control birth rate, unwillingness to sacrifice luxuries to education, adherence to superstitions, and many other deficiencies may cause a group to fail either in the struggle with another group or in the economic tussle with nature. At that point external “charitable” support from other groups, or even their failure to expand as the defective group retracts, are immoral acts militating against evolution. They are to be avoided in the interests of the highest inter-group morality. For, by the basic laws of learning, such rewards merely reinforce the strength of the faulty community habit systems. Or, if the defect is genetic, they postpone the reduction of genetic defect.

Thus, when one group helps maintain another despite its unfitness, it is not the equivalent of mutual assistance between individuals, which may be worthy and noble. Instead, says Professor Cattell, it is “a pernicious and evil interruption of group evolution.” True inter-group morality calls for “goodwill and fair play among groups in a plan of adventurous, separate group development.”

Needless to say, Professor Cattell’s proscriptions for human progress are not likely to be embraced soon by Western societies. In an era of slack thinking and lax morals, rigorous analysis is an anathema. In an era of agreeable fantasies, an unsentimental portrayal of the prospects for our species lacks “compassion.” In an era in which short-sighted American legislators blithely impoverish future generations by piling up huge debts that their descendants must repay, a mind that fits national policy into evolutionary time is hopelessly out of step.

The social implications of genetics and evolution are scarcely permitted within the bounds of respectable discourse. They stand outside it, unacknowledged but also unrefuted. Professor Cattell does not anticipate the imminent replacement of older religions by his vision of scientific morality. An understanding of the direction of human progress or retrogression must be its own reward:

One can predict no triumphal tide of Beyondist sentiment … Its satisfaction … [is] mainly aesthetic, in participating in the magnificence of our unfolding view of the universe. Here it joins with and needs the aesthetic experiences of music and art, as older religions have done in the organ music and the architectural grace of a great cathedral.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

The Truth about Freedom of Speech

A few people in the popular media are finally beginning to complain about how hard it is to express a dissenting view on certain subjects. Richard Cohen of the The Washington Post says this:

I think there are issues the media just can’t discuss. No one knows how to deal with charges that you’re a racist, you’re an anti-Semite. It’s easier not to do these stories than to face the consequences.

Actually, it’s easy to deal with charges of racism or anti-Semitism. Anyone who calls you a racist is calling you names, not attacking your ideas. You need only point this out and observe that name-calling is the most graceless way someone can admit that he has lost an argument.

Here’s a Solution

Jon Carroll has been musing about the end of free speech in the San Francisco Chronicle. “If one wishes to be sensitive’ on racial matters . . . one is required to deny the evidence of one’s sense,” he writes. “I perceive that African American men are different from Caucasian men . . . Can we compare these differences? No, we cannot. We may say for the record that these differences are beautiful, equally beautiful, precisely geometrically equally beautiful, but that’s it.”

Quite so. Mr. Carroll is off to a good start, but where does he finish? Since it is officially impossible to talk about racial differences, he throws up his hands and decides that intermarriage is the only solution. When everyone is the same shade of brown then there will be no racial differences to embarrass us. “Of course, we’d lose a lot of interesting specific cultures that way, but the battle is pretty much over already,” he concludes philosophically.

Sad though it may be that Mr. Carroll proposes to toss the whole race into the stew, it is useful for the mainstream media occasionally to tell us where our racial and immigration policies are leading us.

Student Loan Default

Many student loans are guaranteed by the American government, which means that when a borrower defaults, the taxpayer is stuck with the bill. Lately, students have been welshing on more than $2 billion in loans every year. Congress has decided to reduce this figure by removing from the guarantee program any school with a student default rate of more than 35 percent. So far, so good. If schools want the guarantees, they will have to be more careful choosing their students.

Unfortunately, the 35 percent figure turned out to be politically unacceptable, because it removed from eligibility a number of schools that Congress felt it could not afford to leave on their own. Written into the law is an exemption for 117 black colleges and two dozen Indian colleges. They will continue to get federal loan guarantees no matter how high their default rates.

Hazardous Duty

The 1989-1990 school year was a bad one for New York City public school teachers. Crimes committed against them by students were up 28 percent over the previous year, with serious offenses — assault, robbery, sexual assault — leading the way with a 41 percent jump. This, in spite of the introduction of metal detectors at a number of high schools to keep students from smuggling in weapons.

Conditions in America’s big-city, largely non-white schools are getting so bad that only teachers who are tough and even brutish will be able to work in them. This can only decrease the chances of a decent public education being even theoretically possible in cities like Detroit or New York.

‘Hear the Word’

Last January, the United Church of Christ issued a pastoral letter to be read from every pulpit in the 1.7-million member denomination. Its purpose was to condemn what it calls “the sin of systematic racism.” Here are some excerpts:

We call upon every member . . . to increase our commitment to stem the resurgent tide of racism in our increasingly multiracial and multicultural society.

The letter goes on to pronounce a sweeping diagnosis of just about everything that is wrong with America: “As a result of this systematic racial discrimination, there are quiet riots all across the United States in the form of unemployment, poverty, social disorganization, family disintegration, homelessness, school deterioration and crime.” Well, that about covers it — and it’s all due to “systematic racial discrimination.”

As the clerics note, our country is becoming increasingly multiracial. Some time in the next century whites are projected to become a minority. If prejudiced white people are causing all the problems the churchmen describe — poverty, unemployment, crime — can we expect the problems to diminish as the number of white people declines?

Inquirer Makes Amends

In the February issue of AR we reported on the trouble the Philadelphia Inquirer got into when it very sensibly suggested that the problems of the black underclass would be reduced if welfare mothers were induced to use an implantable contraceptive called Norplant. Blacks claimed that the proposal was tantamount to “genocide,” and the paper took the very unusual step of writing an editorial apology.

Now it is going even further. Editor Maxwell King has announced that henceforth the paper will hire newsroom staff according to a strict racial quota: Half of all new employees will be non-white. Mr. King explains that it was the flap over the Norplant editorial that made him adopt the new plan. He conceded that it would make it harder for whites to get jobs, but says, “the diversity of the staff . . . is of great importance to the paper.” Some white staffers are publicly calling the quotas institutionalized racism.

Mr. King points out that his paper has already hired a great many non-whites, but complains that the paper “seemed to lose a lot of them later to other papers and other opportunities.” Well, yes, when the fashion is to hire because of race rather than ability, the competition for non-whites gets very keen.

Asians Dominate Science Prizes

The Westinghouse Science Talent Search is probably the most prestigious science competition for high school students. When the latest finalists were announced, 12 were from New York City. Of those 12, six were Asian: Sunmee Kim, Jim Cheung, William Ching, Linda Tae-Ryung Kang, Debby Lin, and Tien-An Yang. The other six, Tara Bahna-James, Ani Fleisig, Petal Haynes, Yves Jeanty, Nuri Kodaman, and Ciamac Moallemi, rounded out a list that contained few recognizably European names.

Although Asians are less than four percent of the population of New York, they accounted for half of the finalists. Current racial dogma requires that “culture” explain this dominance, just as it requires that “environment” explain an average black IQ of 85.

Immigration Fraud

Amnesties, special deals, and complicated procedures always invite fraud. The 1986 immigrant amnesty that legalized over one million illegal immigrants is no exception.

The original deadline for filing the amnesty was May 1988, but courts were persuaded to extend the deadline for illegals who had left the country for certain periods and had returned by a certain date. Filing would be tricky enough for native, English speakers; it is a nightmare for illegals, many of whom are illiterate.

Into the breach have stepped a number of immigrants “rights” organizations, which, for a fee, will shepherd the process along. Some have apparently taken the money and done nothing. Last year, the INS investigated the Las Vegas office of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a prominent, foundation-funded Hispanic organization. The INS charged that LULAC had collected thousands of dollars each from 800 amnesty applicants but had filed only 17 cases, some of which were highly questionable. LULAC is one of the organizations that sued to have the application deadline extended in the first place.

In Los Angeles, the head of a group called Social Outreach Services has pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges. Cesar Condes made false residency claims on behalf of 500 illegals, most of whom were Filipinos. Mr. Condes’ group collected $1.5 million in fees from the illegals, some of whom did not know that they were ineligible for amnesty.

Corrupt INS Agent

An Immigration and Naturalization Service agent has been charged with taking more than $100,000 in bribes. In return, he reportedly gave permanent residency (green) cards to Colombian drug smugglers. The agent, Christopher Matos, was a customs inspector at JFK International Airport from 1985 until 1987. His latest position was head of the INS’s Hispanic employment program at INS headquarters in Washington (DC).

Like all branches of the federal government, the INS has a full-blown affirmative action program designed to bring non-whites into the service. INS field offices in California and Texas are under particular pressure to hire Hispanics, since there are so many in the local population. Is it unreasonable to wonder whether some Hispanic agents really put their hearts into a job that often involves the apprehension and deportation of other Hispanics?

Corrupt Society

It is easy to complain about how non-white immigrants are turning the United Stated into a third-world country, but the fault is clearly our own. What happens to America is the responsibility of Americans.

Last year, the federal government officially declared a labor shortage in cowboys — a profession that virtually symbolizes America. Apparently, there aren’t enough natives willing to work on a ranch, even at $800 a month plus room and board. The official shortage cleared the way for cattlemen to hire Mexican vaqueros to do the work. Some ranchers expect to bring in sheepherders from Mongolia.

Most of the time, cowboys don’t even have to ride a horse. They fix fences, clean corrals, feed cattle, and help with calving. It’s hard, physical labor. One imported Mexican, asked why there weren’t Americans doing the job, explained, “They don’t have the balls.”

He’s right. Welcome to the new America. Millions on welfare and no cowboys.

Enlightenment at University of Michigan

The University of Michigan has become the first college in the country to require that all students take a course in racial discrimination in order to graduate. The requirement will become official this fall. Other colleges make students take courses in non-white cultures, but Michigan is the first to insist that they study “racism” itself. It is difficult to imagine that the course will be anything but officially sanctioned white bashing.

Other campuses may soon follow. The University of Washington in Seattle is considering a proposal to set up a similar undergraduate requirement. The move was spurred by a $343,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to encourage the development of new ethnic studies courses.

Yahweh Update

The trial of Hulon Mitchell, head of the black, Miami-based Yahweh cult has brought to light some details about the cult’s educational practices that may not have been mentioned in your local newspaper.

One of Mr. Mitchell’s favorite subjects of instruction was “The White Woman As She-Devil.” He liked to demonstrate this theory by showing his congregation — men, women, and children alike — the crudest possible pornographic videos. These were of a white women having sex with a dog or a snake or even a black man. He would call the woman “Miss Ann,” and call attention to her she-devil degradation.

Another of Mr. Mitchell’s favorite themes was hammered home in what came to be known as the Killing Class. “How many of you would bring back a white head?” he would ask, and everyone would raise his hand. He would then shout, “One day, Yahweh is going to kill the white devil off the planet. We’re going to catch him and we’re going to kill him wherever we find him. All over America, white heads are going to roll!” On at least one occasion, Mr. Mitchell broke down and wept, so powerful was his desire to kill white men.

Mr. Mitchell is accused of masterminding at least 14 murders. Several of these were of whites, whose ears were brought back as proof of work well done. The national media continue to ignore the trial.

Black Racism Triumphs

Joseph Montuoro is a white man who was narrowly elected to the Essex County College Board of Trustees. The college serves a largely black student body in 58 percent-black Newark (NJ). Mr. Montuoro defeated an incumbent black woman, Clara Dasher, who had chaired the board for 11 years.

At his first board meeting in January, Mr. Montuoro discovered how important race is at Essex County College. A mob of black students poured into the meeting hall, chanting “traitor, traitor,” and demanded his removal. Zachary Yamba, the black president of the college, took the microphone and agreed that the problem was a “black and white matter.” Mr. Montuoro, who had naively assumed that election results rather than race determined who got the job, was shocked by attitudes he calls “clearly racist.”

These and other pressures have been so great that Mr. Montuoro has resigned. In a letter to the president he wrote, “I don’t think I could function effectively in an atmosphere in which racism (some would say “reverse discrimination’) is paramount in setting college policy.” President Yamba denies reverse discrimination but says that it is important as a “symbol” that a black person chair the board of trustees.

This is probably a good example of what whites can look forward to as they become a minority.

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — Every state in the union except for New Hampshire and Utah has passed “hate crime” legislation that adds heavier penalties to crimes committed because of race, religion, sexual preference, etc. One problem is that many such “crimes” turn out to be hoaxes or even self-inflicted. The case of Tawana Brawley is well know, as is that of Emory University student Sabrina Collins, who sent herself death threats.

At the State University of New York, a Jewish activist named James Oppenheim defaced a Jewish sanctuary and then led rallies against intolerance before it was discovered that he was the perpetrator. In San Francisco, a lesbian minister, Lynn Griffis, claimed to have been attacked and raped by skinheads but then fled to another state when police learned that her accusations were groundless.

Events such as these stir up a great deal of animosity between the communities involved. I therefore propose that any “hate crime” legislation should include the maximum penalty for anyone found to have made false charges alleging a “hate crime.” Finally, since it seems to be inter-racial violence that the proponents of “hate crime” legislation fear most, why not simply provide for stricter mandatory penalties for anyone who commits a violent crime against someone of a different race?

J.A.M., San Jose (CA)

Sir —  In the letters column of the February issue there was a lively and thoughtful discussion of why so many whites continue to favor offering privileges to racial minorities. The explanation seems simple: In years past, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, in their position of social and economic dominance, displayed such a brutal contempt for non-WASP whites that the latter have never gotten the foul taste of ethnic insult out of their mouths. Therefore, just at a time when whites have more than a little reason to pull together against the common threat, the preconditions for racial solidarity just aren’t there.

One could argue that such historical abuses of whites by whites is a thing of the past and that bygones should be bygones. I wonder. It’s still not difficult to an atmosphere of contempt for Italians, Slavs, and others in places like private country clubs, and an ethnic surname is still rare at the top rung of a corporation.

The sting of WASP exclusivism alone explains why immigrant ethnics of the 1930s voted with Jews and blacks for Franklin Roosevelt, why their children voted for JFK, and why, even today, America’s urban working class still pulls the Democratic lever.

The problem is that whites in America — particularly upper level whites — have never extended their allegiance beyond their own subgroup. If white identity in this country fails to materialize (and it certainly looks anemic today), it will be because the dominant groups never played fair with the rest. This is the dirty little secret that goes far to explain why the nation continues to suffer the outrages of minorityism long past the point of reason.

Ivan Hild, Falls Church (VA)

Sir — As a Canadian, I was pleased to see that your March issue devoted its cover story to my country’s head-long rush towards third-world disaster. It is gratifying that someone south of the border has taken notice of our plight.

Recently, in an in-flight magazine I found an ad placed by a government organization called Multiculturalism and Citizenship Canada. It was called “Get a handle on multiculturalism today,” and featured a picture of a brief case held by three hands — one black, one brown, and one white. The white hand, nestled between the other two, was that of a woman.

The ad copy, in toto, read as follows:

The face of Canadian business is changing. Smart business people know that multiculturalism is good for business. They know there are high dividends in using the country’s cultural diversity to its maximum potential. That’s because multiculturalism means:

• New opportunities for profit and growth both here and abroad.
• New skills, new markets, and new products.
• A more dynamic workforce.
• Better service to your customers.

The bottom line: multiculturalism is good for business and good for Canada.

Now, doesn’t that make you want to rush out and hire a few Pakistanis? Our government spends tax money on ads like this! I don’t suspect even you Americans are in the soup as deep as we are.

Ellen Fitch, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada