December 1996

American Renaissance magazine
Vol 7, No. 12 December 1996

 

CONTENTS

The Origins of the White Man, Part II
The Cost of Affirmative Action
Book Review: DNA Fingerprints 
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

The Origins of the White Man, Part II

Indo-European characteristics and the destiny of Western Man.

by Edwin Clark

The first part of this article described the distinctive characteristics of the ancient Indo-Europeans, which clearly prefigure those of contemporary Western Man. Mr. Clark noted there are three central traits of the Aryans that continue to shape Western Civilization. The first is a sense of an immutable Cosmic Order, which probably gave rise to the concepts of fate and universal morality, and also prompted scientific inquiry. The second is the restless dynamism that resulted in conquest, empire-building, and the principles of individual liberty. In this concluding section, Mr. Clark sets forth another fundamental Indo-European trait, and describes how these ancient characteristics must be put to the service of contemporary European man.

The third important characteristic is individuality. Indo-Europeans from their earliest history show signs of greater variation, in both physical appearance and individual behavior, than most other races. Some physical anthropologists have noted that there is more variety among Europeans than among Asiatics and Negroes. Whites exhibit more variation in skin pigmentation, hair and eye color, height, and facial features than Mongolians or Negroes, and this physical differentiation is paralleled and perhaps causally related to their behavioral differentiation as individuals, a trait that is closely related to their dynamism as a race.

Individuality or individuation in the sense I am using it is very different from “individualism,” a modern ideology that may have been encouraged by racial individuation but is not the same thing. Individualism as an ideology is the belief that the individual is sovereign, that the individual man is self-sufficient, exists only for himself and his interests, and has claims against the group (society, the race, the nation, class, religion, etc.) This ideology is in fact subversive of group loyalty and especially of racial consciousness and allegiances, and while people with a high degree of individuality may find it attractive, they need to remember that they, like every other human being, exist because of and within a group — the family and the community, as well as larger groups like nation, cult, class, and race.

Early Aryans, despite their tendency to individuate, were highly conscious of themselves as a distinct group. Both the Greeks and the Romans looked upon everyone else as “barbarians,” and we have already seen the high degree of racial consciousness that pertained among the Indo-Aryans. Aryans were also closely attached to family units, not only the nuclear family but also the clans in which their society was organized, and clan warfare in Ireland and Scotland, family-based political factionalism among the Romans, and conflicts among the many independent city-states of ancient Greece were notorious as forces that tended to keep these populations divided. It was groups like race, nationality, clan, community, class, and family that established the social fabric of early Aryan life, and individualism in the modern sense of a John Stuart Mill or Ayn Rand — as a belief that justifies the individual neglecting or betraying his social bonds — did not exist.

Nevertheless, the Aryans exhibited a high degree of individuation, and this is reflected in their mythology as well as in their art. The gods and heroes of the Greeks and the Norsemen have far more distinctive personalities than such Egyptian deities as Isis and Osiris, and the stories the Greeks and Norsemen told about their gods and heroes — the embittered and wrathful Achilles and the wily Odysseus, the imperious Zeus and the dashing Apollo, the angry Ares and the comic lame god Hephaestus, the jealous Hera and the lascivious Aphrodite — are far richer than the thin tales of Egypt and Babylonia. There is also a greater emotional and narrative range — adventure, humor, love, revenge, divine punishment, and even tragic failure — in the Greek myths than in the stories of the Old Testament, which mainly illustrate man’s obedience or disobedience to God and His laws.

With few exceptions, this range is also reflected in the art of the early Aryans in Europe — in the highly individuated and expressive statuary of the Greeks, as compared to the colossal but blank-faced images of the Egyptian pharaohs and Middle Eastern potentates — as well as in the highly developed literary and art forms of the later Europeans. European art and literature, far more than those of other peoples, give us the character, the individually distinctive human being, full of contradictory impulses but driven by some more than by others, characters we see in Greek drama, Homeric epic, Shakespearean plays, and the modern novel. Portraiture as well as statuary, dwelling on the individual external features to reveal the internal individual character, reflect much of the same trait, unlike the art forms of other races. Moreover, only in Western cultures has the lone hero become an ideal figure — not only the adventurer like Hercules or Theseus but also the lone explorer, the lone scientist, the lone scholar, thinker, poet, writer, often battling against daunting odds, persecution, or neglect. When Europeans invent things, they usually remember and honor the individuals who did it — the inventors who made the Industrial Revolution possible and those like Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, and Henry Ford, who created the basic technologies of modern civilization working alone in their attics and basements.

Even the modern comic book and film and television heroes of popular culture reveal this inherent Aryan tendency to go it alone, in the Lone Ranger, Superman and Batman, the heroes created by John Wayne and Gary Cooper, as do the myths of the American West, whether fictional, in James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo, or real in Daniel Boone, David Crockett, Wild Bill Hickock, and Wyatt Earp. The lone Aryan hero, like Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett, lives by the motto, “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead,” a counsel of individuality, and then proceeds to fight legions of dark-looking badmen (whose black hats may symbolize non-Aryan origins), Indians, accented foreigners, or other suspiciously non-Aryan types. His ancestors Siegfried and Theseus fought and conquered the Nibelungs and the Minotaur of non-Aryan Crete in the same way.

But the Aryan hero also pays a price for his heroic individuality. He stands as the perpetual outsider, whose distinctiveness usually forbids him from enjoying a normal life with wife and children or living to a ripe old age, and eventually, in the authentic myths as opposed to TV drama, he is slain, usually by treachery. The moral of Aryan individuality is that there is no escape from the laws of the Cosmic Order, even for heroes, whose heroic transcendence of the norms that bind more mediocre men does not exempt them from the iron regularities of the universe. Individuality is not for everybody, an important distinction between the Aryan ideal and that of modern universalist individualism, and only exceptional beings can excel despite the demands it imposes on them.

Aryan individuality, then, was supposed to be a supplement to, not an adversary of, the racial and social bond, and even then it was constrained by the price that those who developed it to its highest levels would have to pay. It was never supposed to be the kind of intellectual crutch for economic greed, social inadequacy, and personal alienation and resentment that modern individualism is. But the ineradicable tendency of Aryans to individualize themselves through singular personalities, achievements, thoughts, and expressions in art and literature no doubt lies at the root of modern individualism, despite the socially pathological and destructive forms the ideology has taken, and it is in part because of his innate proclivity to individuation and individual achievement and creativity that European Man has given birth to his distinctive and successful civilization.

Describing the contours of ancient history, the great American Egyptologist James Henry Breasted saw the ancient world in terms of an epochal struggle between “our ancestors,” the Indo-Europeans of Europe, Persia, and India, on the one hand, and the Semitic peoples of Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, the Hebrews and Assyrians, and Carthage, on the other.

“The history of the ancient world, as we are now to follow it, was largely made up of the struggle between this southern Semitic line, which issued from the southern grasslands, and the northern Indo-European line, which came forth from the northern grasslands to confront the older civilizations represented in the southern line. Thus . . . we see the two great races facing each other across the Mediterranean like two vast armies stretching from Western Asia westward to the Atlantic. The later wars between Rome and Carthage represent some of the operations on the Semitic left wing, while the triumph of Persia over Chaldea is a similar outcome on the Semitic right wing.

“The result of the long conflict was the complete triumph of our ancestors (the Indo-European line), who conquered along the center and both wings and finally, as represented by the Greeks and Romans, gained unchallenged supremacy throughout the Mediterranean world. This triumph was accompanied by a long struggle for mastery between the members of the northern line themselves. Among them the victory moved from the east end to the west end of the northern line, as first the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the Romans gained control of the Mediterranean and oriental world.”1

In this passage, Breasted captured the grand sweep of the saga of European Man and his seemingly victorious, millennial conflict with his rivals. But what he does not say, and what perhaps was not apparent to him when he wrote in the early 20th century, was that the conflict is far from over. The Roman political and military victory was not the end of the story, because the very success of Roman imperialism made possible and perhaps inevitable the eventual inundation of their people and culture by those whom they had conquered. The importation of masses of alien slaves into Italy, their eventual emancipation, and the massive immigration of foreigners from the Asiatic parts of the empire meant that the Indo-European racial and cultural base of Rome would eventually die.

Juvenal

Juvenal

The Roman poet Juvenal’s famous line that “the Orontes [the main river of ancient Syria] empties its garbage into the Tiber” expresses what was happening (it is noteworthy he did not say the Rhine or the Thames empties its garbage into the Tiber). Not only the peoples but also the religions and the political forms of the non-Aryan East crept over the Aryan imperium. Eventually, then, the non-Aryan rivals and enemies of the Aryans triumphed through a backdoor attack that is comparable to the backhandedness by which non-Aryans overcome Aryan heroes in the old myths.

Today, despite the conquest of virtually the entire planet by Indo-Europeans by the end of the 19th century, the same fate appears to face modern European Man. Only the European nations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and Europe itself face hordes of non-white immigrants who threaten to engulf us and our civilization. Having conquered them through military combat and technological and economic progress, we nevertheless face racial and cultural extinction as the perversion of our strengths into weaknesses is exploited against us and our rivals seek victory through our back doors. European Man can survive today only if he begins to recognize that victory through honorable combat is not enough; he must also be prepared to meet the challenges on the level of cultural combat, and the only way he can do so is through recovery of his racial heritage, the roots of who we are and where we come from as a people.

The Aryan Legacy

Throughout this essay, I have emphasized the ancient, archaic, and prehistoric expressions of the Indo-European peoples for two reasons. In the first place, examining the ancient patterns of behavior and thought among Aryans helps to exclude influences on them from more modern forces that have been acquired through the historical environment or are perhaps less “natural” — forces such as Christianity, philosophical and ethical systems, capitalism, and the modern ideologies of romanticism, individualism, socialism, capitalism, and liberalism. Secondly, by looking at the patterns of thought and behavior that seem to have been common to all or most of the early Aryan peoples, we can find what whites have in common and what distinguishes them from other races. When Aryans in medieval Ireland exhibit myths and beliefs very similar to those of ancient India, when Greek poets express ideas similar to those of Viking sea rovers, we are transcending the extraneous influences of other cultures and races, those acquired from the social and historical environment, and the physical environment, and are coming close to fundamental racial characteristics.

This survey of the ancient Aryans may seem as though it merely recounts cultural ideas and practices rather than racial characteristics, but as Jared Taylor noted in his own essay, “there is increasing evidence that personality traits . . . are under genetic control,” and therefore we should expect to find that the deep cultural beliefs and practices that are common to members of a particular population that is descended from the same ancestors derive from genes carried by those ancestors. This claim cannot be proved, mainly because we obviously cannot conduct genetic analyses of ancient Aryans, but given what we now know and are increasingly learning about the role of genetic forces (and therefore race) in shaping personality (and therefore culture), it seems to follow.

In the light of what we know of the early history of the Aryan peoples, then, we should be able to distinguish between those traits that are characteristic of our race and those that are not, between those that contribute or have contributed to our success as a population and as a people and those that have been destructive, and between those that continue to serve our identity and destiny, our consciousness as a people acting in history, and those that have been distorted or exploited to thwart our identity and destiny.

In his essay, Mr. Taylor identified by my count about 15 distinct traits that he believes constitute or derive from “a common thread to the modern characteristics of European man.” In the light of what we know of early Aryan man, some of the characteristics that Mr. Taylor attributes to whites are valid, some are distortions of valid traits, and some, I believe, are merely acquisitions deriving from other forces (which is not to say that they are necessarily undesirable). But what is important is that any trait that is really a characteristic of whites must have existed long before modern culture and independently of cultural, historical, or local influences on white behavior.

Thus, several of the characteristics that Mr. Taylor attributes to whites appear to have their origin in the archaic, natural impulses of the early Aryan peoples, but it is highly misleading to say that the modern and especially American manifestations of these characteristics are distinctively Aryan, Indo-European, or white. Mr. Taylor is certainly correct that whites exhibit “an abiding sense of reciprocity, a conviction that others have rights that must be respected,” but the modern expression of this trait in such institutions as democracy, free speech, and the rule of law are grotesquely distorted or exaggerated versions of the original and natural impulses.

The “sense of reciprocity” as well as the rule of law are no doubt reflections of the Aryan concept of Cosmic Order, a view of the universe that holds that both nature and man behave according to universal, perpetual laws or regular patterns and in which rights and duties are in balance. But the concept of Cosmic Order did not imply an egalitarian or homogeneous social order in which everyone is equal and there are no distinctions between groups, classes, sexes, races, and nations. Indeed, early Aryan society was hierarchical, organic, and aristocratic; the natural form of Aryan government was an aristocratic republic in which distinct classes and social groups participated and expressed their views and interests freely, and a high level of political participation was necessary for such dynamic and restless populations of independent, armed free men as the early Aryans.

The mass democracies and homogenized, produce-and-consume cultures of modern times may ultimately derive from this Aryan social and political model, but they deviate from it in important ways. Free speech, for example, certainly seems to have pertained in the tribal assemblies, and it is doubtful if the early Aryans were such bluenoses as their Victorian descendants or such totalitarians as late 20th century academics. But free speech did not include the right to commit sacrilege, subversion, or obscenity and was circumscribed by custom and the high courtesy that is universal among warrior peoples.

As noted earlier, the Aryan concept of Cosmic Order accounts for the European mental habits of universalism and objectivity. While these habits help explain European successes in science, mathematics, philosophy, ethics, and the rule of law, they also, in a misapplied and degenerate form, suggest why Europeans have shown a tendency to neglect their own racial interests and why they find developing their own racial consciousness so difficult. As Jared Taylor noted in his essay, every other race tends to think in terms of its own race and group, and “Only whites pretend that pluralism and displacement are good things and that the measures necessary to ensure group survival may be immoral.” We tend to think that way because we are naturally prone to transcend subjective and particular interests and to idealize what is objective and universal. But this misapplication of a natural and healthy Aryan instinct is not in itself natural but rather the result of ethical and philosophical confusions that have arisen in modern times.

Mr. Taylor is also correct in his remarks about sportsmanship, noblesse oblige, respect for foes in war, and respect for women, all of which derive from Aryan ideas about the Cosmic Order and from the warlike and heroic character of the early Aryans. All these traits reflect the nature of early Aryan warcraft — the single combat of individual champions, the unwritten and commonly understood rules of conflict, and acceptance of the terms of defeat have deep roots in the ways Aryans waged war. The comparative absence of needless brutality in Western warfare, until the advent of 20th century democracy, may be thought to derive from Christian ethics, but long before Christianity pagan conquerors like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar showed far less brutality in their warfare than such paladins of non-Aryan combat as Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, the Assyrians, the Huns, or even the ancient Hebrews, for whom genocide was a regular practice.

In Aryan society women have always enjoyed more respect, more freedom, and more individuality than in non-Aryan society, and this probably from the structure of their society. The relative independence and freedom that characterized the structured Aryan society would have meant that women could not simply be captured and enslaved but had to be bargained for or won, if not as individuals then as the daughters of other competing warriors. Disrespect for or cruelty to a woman, like discourtesy or injury to a free man, could result in endless blood feuds. Women and goddesses in Greek and Norse myths and legends have far more personality and a far more important social role than in most non-Aryan mythologies. Certainly such practices as foot-binding, clitoridectomy, and suttee, as well as polygamy and the harem, are rare or unknown among the early Aryans. (The word “harem” has entered Western languages because Westerners lack their own word for it.)

But the natural Aryan respect for women does not mean that modern feminism is consistent with ancient Aryan views of womanhood, and despite the honor that Aryans have always paid women, they never confused honor with equality or sameness. The assumption of the Aryan honoring of women is that women are different from men and require or deserve different treatment. It is for that very reason that modern feminists, wedded to the illusion of sexual egalitarianism, despise, ridicule, and try to abolish the expressions of male chivalry, even though, like most egalitarians, they also like to have it both ways — to abolish inequality when it offers an impediment but to insist on it when it serves their interests.

Similarly, respect for animals no doubt derives from the reliance of the Aryans on hunting and war animals, especially dogs and horses. Horses play a central role in Aryan myth, and the Indo-Europeans apparently were the first to domesticate horses and develop their use in war. There are sacred horses, horse sacrifices, horse gods, and horse burials among the Indo-European peoples. Similarly, dogs and wolves play a major role in Aryan myth, from Cerberus the three-headed dog of Hades (one for each social class perhaps) to the wolves of Odin. The individuation of Aryans may lead them to personify their animals and invest them with personalities, names, and special attributes in a way that no other race usually does.

I do not see that such traits as missionary activity, the passion to improve or change the world, the elimination of hereditary class differences, competition according to individual ability, or concern for the natural environment are particularly characteristic of Aryans, however. Some of these may be desirable traits, though they have obviously gone far beyond what was really characteristic of early Aryans and what can be useful for white racial survival. Nevertheless, some of them, like missionary activities and crusading to change or reform society, may well ultimately derive from Aryan dynamism and expansionism, while competition according to individual merit may be a modern form of single combat and a reflection of Aryan individuality. The modern demand to eliminate hereditary class distinctions may be an exaggerated but not very healthy version of this instinct.

What is important to understand, however, is that Aryans, because of their Faustian dynamism and individuality, seem to be especially prone to misapplications of their most ennobling traits, and when the modern ideologies of egalitarianism, leveling, feminism, and universalism are joined to forces like modern capitalism and technology, the danger of losing contact with and understanding of the natural propensities of our own racial character and of misunderstanding their limits and proper functions is great.

I do not think there is any great mystery as to how this perversion of the Aryan legacy occurred. Aryans eventually constructed societies far more complex in their economies, technologies, and ideas than any other race, and the very complexity of their societies tended to confuse and derail traditional expressions of Aryan impulses. Ambitious leaders, Aryan or not, have often exploited these complexities, and the confusions that result, for their own advantage, and the disruptions of wars, revolutions, depressions, and new technologies and social organizations that periodically afflict Western society have added to the alienation of modern European Man from his natural inclinations and ancient heritage.

It ought to be obvious that we cannot expect to restore the warrior cultures of the early Aryans, their archaic religions and mythologies, and their social and political customs. But we can work to correct the misapplications of our talents and traits, to eradicate the confusions and degenerations of modern mass democracy and culture, and eventually to restore or create anew a social, political, and cultural order that incorporates and reflects the healthy and natural instincts of our race. What we can do is learn from these ancient and noble warriors and their courage, their irrepressible restlessness and dynamism, and their heroically relentless realism; from them we can remember who we are and where we come from, what our most natural inclinations are and how those inclinations can help us or harm us, and, most of all, how we can make the enduring characteristics of our race serve us again in our endless quest to meet the destiny of European Man.


1James Henry Breasted, The Conquest of Civilization (New York: Literary Guild of America, 1938), 200-202.

Edwin Clark is an Indo-European writer living in Washington, D.C.

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ARTICLE

The Cost of Affirmative Action

Law school admissions as a case study in racial preferences.

by Warren Edwards

White Americans pay a high price for affirmative action. Most have no idea how high the price really is, both to the U.S. as a nation and to hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of individual whites.

Peter Brimelow, writing several years ago in Forbes,1 calculated that affirmative action cost the U.S. $350 billion, or 4 percent of Gross Domestic Product, for the year 1992. To calculate this figure, Mr. Brimelow totaled the direct cost of various government enforcement agencies, and estimated indirect costs in lost productivity, inefficiencies, extra staffing, etc. in private industry and government. If his figures are at all accurate (and to my knowledge no one has ever challenged them), the cost of affirmative action since it first began in the mid-1960’s is now well into the trillions.

This cannot but have hurt America’s international competitiveness. As far back as 1986, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone warned that America had a “low level of competitiveness” because of black and Hispanic minorities. He was reflecting the opinion of 40 percent of the Japanese people, who believe that our major economic problem is our high proportion of minorities. The Japanese, a polite race, generally keep such opinions to themselves. They aren’t good for business either, since American minorities buy a lot of Japanese products.

Prime Minister Nakasone did not point out how affirmative action only makes the American disadvantage worse: A national economy handicapped by large numbers of minorities is handicapped even further when poorly qualified candidates are hired or promoted strictly because of race.

Affirmative Action in Law School

Racial preferences begin well before Americans start looking for jobs. An excellent example of the opportunities lost to whites is described in a recent article in The Mankind Quarterly.2 The author concludes that in 1993, law schools turned away over 5,000, (perhaps as many as 5,537) white applicants to make room for protected minorities with lower Law School Aptitude Test (LSAT) scores. That represents over 10% of the total admissions of approximately 51,200 for that year.

Table 1 shows that of the eight different racial/ethnic classifications, whites scored highest in average LSAT scores both for applicants and for admittees. Since the scoring range is only 120-180, the significance of the differences in scores is greater than it appears. The fourth column shows the distance from the white mean, in standard deviations (SD), of the mean scores of non-whites admitted to law school. Readers familiar with the distributions of IQ scores will note that the 1.27-SD gap between the black average and the white average is even greater than the one-SD gap in IQ scores. The gap between whites and Puerto Ricans is greater still, at 1.35-SD, and even Asians appear to be receiving some degree of preferential treatment. To repeat, these figures represent substantial gaps in the scores of students admitted to law school, not just those who took the test.

Table 1. Average Scores by Race / Ethnicity
Racial/Ethnic Group Mean of
Applicants
Mean of
Admittees
St. Dev. Gap
Admittees
American Indian 149.1 153.7 -0.51
Black 142.4 148.4 -1.27
Chicano 148.4 153.4 -0.56
Hispanic 148.0 152.8 -0.64
Puerto Rican 140.2 147.8 -1.35
Asian/Pacific Islander 152.2 156.3 -0.14
White 154.0 157.3 0
Other 151.0 155.7 -0.23
All 151.9 156.2

What would be the effect of race-blind admissions? It is impossible to be certain, but Table 2 shows how admissions would have been affected if decisions had been based only on the LSAT, with a cut-off score of 150. The number of American Indians admitted would have fallen by 40, or 10.5 percent. Close to half of the blacks and Puerto Ricans scored lower than 150, and would not have been admitted, whereas 5,537 whites who were rejected scored 150 or higher, and would have qualified for admission.

Table 2. Admissions Based on Minimum LSAT 150
Racial/Ethnic Group Numerical
Difference
Percentage
Difference
American Indian -40 -10.5%
Black -1,878 -47.6%
Chicano -127 -15.9%
Hispanic -252 -16.3%
Puerto Rican -305 -46.7%
Asian/Pacific Islander 142 4.4%
White 5,537 14.1%
Other 23 1.8%

The combined gains for whites, Asians, and “others” are greater than the combined losses for the remaining non-white groups because good LSAT scores are necessary but not sufficient for admission. In 1993, about 54,000 applicants had LSAT scores of 150 or higher but only 51,000 places were available at law schools. Some high scorers were rejected because of arrest records, poor grades, or for other reasons. The fact remains that 2,602 non-whites with scores below 150 were accepted while 5,537 whites who scored 150 or higher were rejected.

If thousands of whites are affected every year by affirmative action in the law school admissions process alone, what is the nationwide impact of such programs? As documented in such books as Illiberal Education, The Bell Curve,and Paved With Good Intentions, this pattern of racial discrimination is repeated by virtually all colleges, professional schools, and large employers. The number of whites affected every year must be well into the hundreds of thousands. The American majority is sacrificing the careers, ambitions, and future of many of its members to buy an artificial, immoral, and ultimately unsuccessful racial harmony.

1Brimelow, Peter, “When Quotas Replace Merit, Everybody Suffers,” Forbes, February 1993, pp. 80-82.

2Nix, Dennis, “The LSAT and Affirmative Action in U.S. Law Schools,” The Mankind Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 3 & 4, Spring/Summer, 1996, pp. 335-361.

Warren Edwards is a first-year law student at a mid-western university.

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BOOK REVIEW

DNA Fingerprints

Science tightens the net on criminals, but O.J. Simpson got away (the first time).

And the Blood Cried Out, Harlan Levy, Basic Books, 1996, 223 pp., $24.00

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

How reliable is DNA testing? Can a single drop of blood incriminate a murderer? How good was the DNA evidence in the O.J. Simpson criminal case? These are the sorts of questions raised in a recent book written by a former New York City assistant prosecutor. It is a non-technical volume, padded with lots of crime details, but along the way it touches briefly on a controversy about race that for a time kept DNA evidence out of a few courtrooms.

And the Blood Cried Out

DNA testing is based on the fact that, except for identical twins, everyone has a unique set of genes and therefore a unique pattern of the material from which genes are made — DNA. Even the tiniest bits of the human body contain DNA. Skin, blood, hair, semen, even saliva can be tested for it. Thus, a semen sample taken from a rape victim can be compared with the DNA patterns of a suspect’s blood sample to determine the chances that the semen came from the suspect. If a DNA sample is exposed to the weather or to contaminants like gasoline or alcohol, it may degrade and become unusable, but it can never change in such a way as to produce a false identification.

Although all people have unique genes, the aspects in which individuals differ from each other are governed by just a small amount of genetic material; 99 percent of each person’s genome is identical to everyone else’s (and 97.5 percent of human genes are identical to those of chimpanzees). DNA testing must therefore find the spots that are different, and the more that can be matched the more accurate the identification will be. If the crime-scene sample is tiny or badly degraded, it may be possible to find only one DNA location where humans differ from each other, and where there is a match with the suspect’s sample. If every hundred or so people have that DNA pattern there is a one-in-a-hundred chance that the crime-scene sample came from the suspect.

If, at any point on a gene there is a mismatch, the samples cannot have come from the same person. However, as the number of locations that match increases, the odds against the suspect are multiplied. Two, three, or four one-in-a-hundred matches mean that only one in 10,000, 1,000,000, or 100,000,000 people could have the same DNA. New techniques can now be used to find many matches in very small samples, and it is possible to make a one-in-ten-billion identification, even though there are only five billion people on earth. The world population would have to double before random variation could produce someone with that many matching segments of DNA.

Numbers like this make DNA testing a very persuasive means of identification. As Mr. Levy points out, it is so persuasive that between 15 and 20 people who had been convicted and gone to prison have been released on the basis of post-trial DNA testing. The tests alone were enough to overturn a verdict thought to be “beyond a reasonable doubt.” For example, there have been cases in which a rape victim swore she could identify her attacker, but a DNA test showed that the semen in her underwear could not have been his.

Testing can prove in other ways that justice has not been done. In the case of the rape and near-murder of the Central Park jogger by a gang of blacks and Hispanics, at least one semen sample taken from the victim did not match any of the suspects. The jogger was raped repeatedly, and since there were 50 to 75 boys in the “wilding” gang that attacked her, some rapists were never identified or punished.

“Weak” DNA matches are increasingly unlikely because of new techniques, but can still be important evidence. Mr. Levy notes that in the case of the World Trade Center bombing, a DNA match of the saliva used to lick and seal an envelope gave a one-in-50 match with a suspect. This was not decisive identification but was very useful in combination with other incriminating evidence.

One of the most promising uses of DNA is to maintain an inventory of samples from known violent criminals and sex offenders. This way, if a criminal leaves behind even a hair or a drop of blood it can be compared with samples in the DNA bank. Whenever there is a struggle, the victim should pull some hairs from the assailant or wound him enough to draw blood. Samples can make the difference between conviction and acquittal. This is particularly important in rape cases, approximately 50 percent of which go unsolved.

Mr. Levy points out that a suspect can be compelled to give a blood sample. Even if it is likely that the sample will send him to jail or to the electric chair, this is not impermissible self-incrimination because blood is evidence, not testimony. Forcing a man to give blood is no different from getting a warrant and forcibly searching his home.

The Race Card

DNA testing is very new — it was first used in a criminal trial in 1987 — but it has already been the subject of much needless controversy. Gene frequencies differ by race, and when crime laboratories announce the likelihood of a match they offer different odds for different races. A sample from a suspect may represent a match for one of every 10 million blacks but for only one in a billion whites. This is another way of saying that the crime-scene sample was more likely to be from a black, but if the matching suspect sample is from a white, the odds that he was the perpetrator are that much higher.

Richard Lewontin of Harvard has spent many years trying to discredit IQ testing and genetic explanations for differences in IQ. In 1991 he co-authored an article in Science, in which he argued that broad racial categories are meaningless, so the numbers usually reported for a match are also meaningless. A few courts actually disallowed DNA evidence on these grounds. The New York Times also published several unfavorable articles about DNA testing that misrepresented the science in ways that Mr. Levy finds unaccountable.

People who wanted to discredit testing on racial and ethnic grounds argued that DNA matches should be calculated to produce the smallest likelihood of identification. In other words, if one DNA pattern in a crime-scene sample were found in one in 50 Sicilians and another pattern in the same sample were found in one in 100 Koreans (but both were found in only one in 1,000 or more of every other racial group) then the smallest numbers should be multiplied together to produce the likelihood of a match. This technique would have required that every possible suspect be thought of as an improbable racial mix of each of the ethnicities that happen most frequently to have each of the DNA combinations found in a crime-scene sample. This would have weakened the odds against a suspect by 100 or even 1,000 times, such that prosecutors could claim only a one in 1,000 match as opposed to a one in 1,000,000 match. Subsequent scientific findings have confirmed racial differences in DNA patterns, and it is once again standard courtroom procedure to calculate different odds on the basis of race.

Some people think that O.J. Simpson’s acquittal damaged the credibility of DNA testing. In a chapter devoted to the case, Mr. Levy explains that the science is so powerful that the defense never attacked it. Instead, it systematically cast doubt on two other things: the motives of police officers and the quality of laboratory procedures. It turned Detective Mark Fuhrman’s empty boasting to a screen-writer about how he despised and mistreated blacks, into motivation for a massive frame-up. It also turned evidence of a few sloppy procedures at the Los Angeles police laboratory into the theoretical possibility that all of the incriminating DNA evidence had been “contaminated.”

In fact, some of the techniques used by the lab do require great care. When samples are very small, they may be contaminated if the same tweezers are used to pick them up. However, the idea that many samples of the blood of O.J. Simpson and his two victims could have been consistently “contaminated” in ways that implicated Mr. Simpson beggars the imagination. Likewise, the police could not have framed Mr. Simpson unless a number of key investigators had spontaneously decided to railroad an innocent man and had stuck to their frame-up story throughout the trial.

Although Mr. Levy does not say so directly, the facts he presents confirm the view that the mostly-non-white jury was simply looking for excuses to acquit. That preposterous theories of contamination and police dishonesty were all the jurors needed is yet more evidence of the racial solidarity blacks take for granted.

Although the Simpson case, with its high-priced experts and flashy lawyers, may have shown that a receptive jury can be distracted from damning DNA evidence, it has by no means discredited such evidence. As Mr. Levy points out, it is simply not possible to deny a strong DNA identification. If the laboratory finds the suspect’s semen in a rape victim, he cannot deny it is his. Instead, he must claim that he and the woman had consensual sex. Likewise, there is no way for a suspect to claim that the blood on his shirt did not come from the victim; he must think up some non-incriminating way to account for its presence.

DNA testing has leapt all the liberal and racial hurdles in its path and, when properly conducted, should provide unshakable evidence.

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IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Prop. 209 Wins in California

Prop. 209 Wins in California

Once again, the citizens of California have shown better sense than politicians and mediacrats. The voter initiative to ban state-sponsored race and sex preferences won handily with some 55 percent of the vote. This was a margin of victory similar to that of the 1994 initiative to deny schooling and welfare to illegal aliens. Whites, at 60 percent, were the only racial group to support the measure. Seventy-four percent of blacks opposed it, as did 70 percent of Hispanics and 55 percent of Asians. This was a result roughly similar to that of the 1994 initiative, and is a sign of what whites can expect if they become a minority. Of all religious groups, only Jews (53 percent) and “others” — probably mostly Muslims — (63 percent) voted against the measure. (Prop. 209 Poll, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 6, 1996, p. A12.)

california-flag

The campaign against Proposition 209 was an Orwellian tour de force, arguing that abolishing systematic discrimination meant the beginning of systematic discrimination. One ad highlighted David Duke’s support for the proposition, reminding viewers of his KKK past. Women were targets in one particularly desperate commercial. A woman appeared on camera only to have men tear off her lab coat, stethoscope, hard hat, and policeman’s cap, while male voices shouted, “Take it off. Take it all off.” “Want to be a doctor? Police officer? Hard Hat?” asked the commercial. “Forget it!” At the end of the ad, the woman is left with torn clothes revealing her underwear, as a male hand strokes her face appraisingly. Kathy Spillar, a spokesman for something called Stop Prop. 209, which produced the ad, cheerfully confirmed that the message was that the end of preferences might leave women no choice but prostitution: “The suggestion is that a woman can always sell her body.” (Burt Herman, “Ads Target Women,” AP, Sacramento, Nov. 1, 1996.)

Pro-209 forces wanted to run a commercial excerpting Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he looked forward to the day when people were judged on character rather than color. “Civil rights” leaders went into a fury, with Jesse Jackson calling the ad “blasphemy.” King’s widow said it would misrepresent her husband’s life’s work which, apparently, was not about equal treatment for blacks but special preferences. The plagiarist’s estate threatened a copyright infringement suit. Proposition 209 supporters dropped the ad. (Burt Herman, “GOP Pulls King Clip From Ads,” AP, Sacramento, Oct. 24, 1996) It was weak of them to appeal to the words of a low character like King and weaker still to back down.

In a bow to judicial power, the initiative will require a judge’s approval to go into effect. Republicans, including California governor Pete Wilson, started backing the measure only when it became clear it had public support, but are now squarely behind it. There appears to be a good chance that equal treatment can withstand a court challenge.

In Kentucky, a ballot initiative received much less national attention but still caused consternation. The state constitution had old, unenforceable language requiring that “colored” children be educated separately from whites. Black state legislators thought this was shameful, and a symbolic initiative was set up to remove this language. The measure passed, but was opposed by one third of the voters — more than enough to scandalize the orthodox.

Meanwhile, a number of observers have noted something the country has been spared by keeping a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. With a Democratic majority, the following blacks would have become chairmen of the following important committees: Charles Rangel — Ways and Means, Ron Dellums — National Security, John Conyers — Judiciary, William Clay — Economics. Black congressmen often establish themselves as district potentates and are impossible to unseat. They build up seniority and automatically become chairmen of committees.

Criminal Behavior

During the past year, approximately 1,300,000 people became naturalized citizens — a new record for a single year. There are allegations that the Clinton administration pushed very hard for quick naturalizations with the expectation that new citizens would vote Democratic. Indeed, an October poll of Hispanics naturalized in California showed that 84 percent supported President Clinton and only five percent favored Robert Dole — a 17 to one margin. (Patrick McConnell, New Citizens From Latin America Back Clinton, Poll Finds, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 23, 1996.)

The INS has been farming out the citizenship test to private companies in order to speed up naturalizations and some of the testing has been extremely lax. A whistle-blower who worked for Naturalization Assistance Services told Congress that many candidates spoke no English and would get irate if they could find no one in the office who spoke Spanish. Congressman Mark Souder of Indiana says “Tens of thousands of applicants who do not speak or understand a word of English, and could not possibly pass a legitimate English and civics test, are receiving ‘pass’ certificates.” (Carol Rosenberg, No English No Problem for Would-be Citizens, Miami Herald, Sept. 11, 1996, p. 1A.)

In another measure that has increased the number of new citizens in this election year, the INS has sometimes skipped the standard crime check that automatically disqualifies rapists, murderers, and other felons. The FBI estimates that as many as 100,000 criminals may have become citizens. Previously, the INS was insisting that no more than 100 new Americans were criminals, but according to New Hampshire Congressman, Bill Zeliff, INS officials are now conceding that the figure may be as high as 130,000. One INS clerk claims that the agency simply threw away thousands of fingerprint files rather than turn them over to the FBI for investigation. (Ruth Larson, FBI Fears INS Let in 100,000 Criminals, Washington Times, Oct. 24, 1996.) In November, House Republicans called for an independent counsel to investigate the naturalization program. The INS promises to revoke the citizenship of ineligible felons.

Loyal Dominicans

The Dominican Republic sends 40,000 or so legal and an unknown number of illegal immigrants to the United States every year. Practically everyone in the country has a family member living in America, so the country paid close attention to welfare reforms that will deny some benefits to non-citizens.

The president of the country, Leonel Fernandez Reyna, grew up in New York City, where he was educated through high school. In September, he spoke to the nation about the new American laws:

Many Dominican families residing in the United States that have benefited from welfare and food stamps will begin to experience difficulties once this law is promulgated . . . If you, young mother, or you, elderly gentleman, or you, young student, feel the need to adopt the nationality of the United States in order to confront the vicissitudes of that society stemming from the end of the welfare era, do not feel tormented by this. Do it with a peaceful conscience, for you will continue being Dominicans, and we will welcome you as such when you set foot on the soil of our republic.

Fernando Mateo, who has already become a U.S. citizen, agrees: “Indirectly, the Republicans are doing us a favor by encouraging us to empower ourselves by becoming American citizens,” he says. He urges Dominicans to retain their old loyalties but become U.S. citizens for the welfare benefits and vote for the interests of Dominicans. (Larry Rohter, Fewer Immigrant Benefits Do Not Faze Dominicans, New York Times, Oct. 12, 1996.)

Clinton’s Character?

Robert Steinback is a black columnist for the Miami Herald. In a recent column, he wrote that the fuss about William Clinton’s character is overblown. “For most jobs — aside from, say, minister — character is optional.” He does suggest that some traits might be disqualifying. “It would be hard to overlook extreme character flaws — say, misogyny or virulent racist beliefs.” (Robert Steinback, Why Clinton Survives the Character Issue, Miami Herald, Oct. 22, 1996.)

Blacks Less Likely to be Convicted

The Center for Equal Opportunity, of which Linda Chavez is president, has released a study showing that blacks are less likely than whites to be convicted when they are arrested for crimes. In an investigation of all 56,000 felony cases filed in state courts in the nation’s 75 largest cities in May, 1992, researchers found that blacks were less likely to be convicted in 12 out of 14 federally designated felony categories. Generally, the disparities were not large, in the range of three to five percent. However, on drug trafficking charges, 24 percent of blacks escaped conviction while only 14 percent of whites did. Whites got off more often than blacks in only the least serious cases — felony traffic offenses and a miscellaneous category of crimes that are against neither property nor people.

Most felony cases are settled out of court, but when one actually goes before a jury, the black acquittal rate skyrockets. Sixty-nine percent of blacks were acquitted by juries, as opposed to 29 percent for whites. Since the study focused on crime in big cities, it included those areas where juries are most likely to be composed largely of blacks. Nationwide, the acquittal rate at trial is 17 percent, but for black defendants in the Bronx, for example, it is approximately 50 percent. (Walter Olson, Is it Really an Injustice System? N.Y. Post, Sept. 30, 1996.)

The all-cops-are-racist school will argue that the results of the study prove only that police routinely arrest blacks on insufficient evidence and the justice system wisely sets them free. The study had no way of controlling for this factor. However, police hate to see a collared man go free, and are not very likely to make “racist” arrests that will not hold up in court. Moreover, the great disparity in jury acquittal rates suggests that it is juries, not the police, who are influenced by race. Whatever the case, we can be sure that if the numbers showed that whites were being convicted less often than blacks, the press would consider this proof of racism.

Australians Waking Up

Until the 1970s, Australia allowed only whites to immigrate. Since the abolition of the “white Australia” policy, there has been little public criticism of the flood of Asians that is changing the country. Suddenly, a newly-elected lady legislator, Pauline Hanson, has given voice to the silent majority. “I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians,” she said in her first speech to Parliament on September 10. “We may have only 10 to 15 years to turn things around.” She also said that aborigines get far too many government handouts.

Pauline Hanson

Pauline Hanson

Public expression of such sentiments is as much a surprise to Australians as it is to Americans, and the now-famous Miss Hanson has set the country on its ear. The people are, of course, behind her. A recent poll found that 48 percent agree with her on immigrants and aborigines, 38 oppose her, and 12 percent are undecided. It is probably safe to say that even more agree with her than dare say so. In the face of roars of disapproval from politicians and editorial writers, Miss Hanson has stuck to her guns. After Parliament passed a pious resolution decrying “racism,” she said: “If the members of this house are so confident that they are echoing the views of mainstream Australia, they should let mainstream Australia have its say. I call on the government to have a referendum on immigration and multiculturalism.” The government has refrained. Miss Hanson has become the toast of Australia. (Alan Thornhill, “Bigotry Reappears in Australia, Associated Press, Canberra, Australia, Oct. 9, 1996. “Australian Referendum on Immigration? Reuters, Canberra, Nov. 1, 1996.)

This is Research?

It has been well known for years that blacks have higher blood pressure than whites. Thirty-seven percent of black men have hypertension as opposed to 25 percent of white men. The figures for women are blacks: 31 percent, whites: 18 percent.

It is fashionable to claim that “racism” causes this difference, and in October, the American Journal of Public Health reported a study that tried to prove it. Researchers asked blacks how much “racism” they experienced and what they did about it — whether they just submitted to it, talked about it, or reacted to it. The researchers doubtless hoped that blacks who suffered lots of “racism” had the highest blood pressure but that it was lower if they “reacted.”

The data were not cooperative. Working class black men who said they suffered no racial discrimination had higher blood pressure than those who reported discrimination. Nothing daunted, the researchers decided that any blacks who reported no discrimination had “internalized oppression” and were, in fact, suffering from racism worse than anyone. The study also concluded that complaining about racism lowered blood pressure for working class women but raised it for working class men. White collar men showed a different pattern from working-class men.

As one of the researchers, Nancy Krieger, explained in a burst of candor, “One approach to our results is that to say that they don’t intuitively make sense, and to ignore them.” (David Brown, Study: Discrimination May Cause Hypertension in Blacks, Washington Post, Oct.24, 1996, p. A4.)

What, No Blacks?

A reader has sent us a full-page public service ad from the New York Times, with the headline, “Not All Great Minds Think Alike.” He said the ad caught his eye because the three photographs of attractive children — an Asian, and two whites — did not include the usually obligatory black or Hispanic. When he read the ad he understood why: It was to promote greater sympathy for children with learning disabilities. (Coordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities New York Times, Oct. 11, 1996, p. A24.)

Atlanta Race Wars

The Atlanta public library has become embroiled in a low-level but typical racial controversy. Suburban whites borrow far more books than urban blacks, but get much less funding. For example, last year at the downtown Bankhead branch, patrons checked out only 8,264 items. In suburban Roswell, patrons checked out more than 50 times as many items but got only twice as much funding. Blacks who control city government resist giving the white branches more money. Mitch Skandalakis, chairman of the Fulton County Commission wishes that race were not an issue in the discussion but says, “Virtually every issue in Fulton County somehow gets wound up in race.” (Carlos Campos, Race Plays Role in Debate Over Library Funding, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 17, 1996, p. F4.)

Meanwhile, police have arrested the killer of an Indiana National Guardsman who was shot while providing security during the Atlanta Olympic Games. John Echols, age 19, killed the man and wounded another as part of a gang loyalty test. He was acting on orders from his “Crips” gang boss, Micah Durden. It has not yet been reported whether the order was specifically to kill whites. (Robin McDonald, Police: Killing Was ‘Loyalty Test,’ Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 15, 1996, p. E1.)

African Medicine

The Pelanomi hospital in Bloemfontein, South Africa, was suffering from a string of unexplained deaths in its intensive care ward. Almost every Friday, for a period of months, the patient lying in a certain bed would be found dead, of no apparent cause. At first doctors thought it coincidence, then began to worry about some unknown disease. Finally a nurse discovered the cause. Every week when the black cleaning lady came to do her chores, she unplugged the life-support equipment by one of the beds and plugged in her electric floor polisher. After she finished cleaning she plugged the patient back in, leaving no trace of what had killed him. (Polishing Off the Patients, Sunday Times (London), June 23, 1996.)

Cultural Enrichment

Chagas’ disease is the most serious parasitic killer in Latin America, taking some 45,000 lives every year. It is transmitted by the triatomine insect, about the size of a tick, which sucks human blood. The disease can be without symptoms for years, but the carrier can still infect others through blood transfusions. Hispanic immigrants are bringing the disease to the United States; an estimated 370,000 are infected.

So far, there have been only a few deaths from Chagas’ disease contracted in this country, all from transfusions. There is no approved way to screen blood for the disease. The insect carrier has not yet been sighted here, but there is no reason it could not thrive in the southern states. Like AIDS, the disease is thought to attack the immune system, and common symptoms are an enlarged heart, colon, or esophagus. (Katherine Ellison, Expert Eye Sneaky Bug-borne Killer, Miami Herald, Oct. 20, 1996, p. 1A.)

Rubber Checks

Last year, the Nation of Islam promised to give ten percent of the take from the Million Man March to the Washington, D.C. city government. One of the ways it raised money was to charge vendors — there were 720 of them — between $700 and $1,000 to operate during the march. The D.C. government, anticipating a windfall, cooperated closely with the march, and closed off 14 blocks of Constitution Avenue for two days so that the vendors could set up booths.

D.C. will finally get its money — $24,568. Ben Chavis, one of the organizers of the march, explained why it took so long to hand over: “The truth of the matter is, is that we had more than $60,000 in bad checks. That was the crux of the problem.” (Barrington Salmon, Chavis Says City Will Get Million Man March Money, Washington Times, Oct. 16, 1996, p. C5.)

Fighting Racism

Levi Strauss & Co. has announced donations of $300,000 to “address the climate of bigotry and hatred that fosters hate crimes.” Recipients include the Center for Democratic Renewal and the National Council of Churches, which promoted the church-burning hoax, as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Leadership Conference Education Fund, and the National Conference Against Racism. (Levi Strauss Expands Effort to Combat Racism, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 4, 1996, p. B1.)

More Hoaxing

In February of 1996, an Oregon black man named Markus St. James gained much press attention when he reported that the house he shared with a white girl friend had been ransacked and that racial slurs had been scrawled on walls and mirrors. The FBI has now arrested Mr. St. James, whom they say did the ransacking and scrawling himself. (Man Arrested in Attack on House, The Oregonian (Portland), Oct. 25, 1996, p. B15.)

‘Mind Frame of Entitlement’

In 1994, Chicago’s most famous woman, black talk show host Oprah Winfrey, announced that she would finance a program to get 100 poor families off public aid. Two years and $1.3 million later, only five families have gone through the self-help training — with indifferent success — and the program is on hold.

Even the most ardent uplift experts are scratching their heads over the results. The program was called Families for a Better Life, and was administered by Chicago’s most famous benevolence agency, the Jane Addams Hull House Association, which heavily loaded the dice in favor of success. After Miss Winfrey’s much ballyhooed announcement, 30,000 people called, asking to take part. Hull House ended up sending out 4,000 applications to people who met the criteria for participation: poor people who lived in public housing. Out of the 1,600 applications they got back, they picked six women with children and one married couple with children. These people were thought to have the best possible chances of getting out of poverty, and were not typical welfare bums. No one had a drug or alcohol problem, and four of the seven families had a member who had completed some college. One woman was actually in college when the program started and another was in nursing school.

The eight-week training program involved intensive doses of such mumbo-jumbo as “setting directions,” “preparing for change,” and “taking risks.” All participants got spending money and, if necessary, driving lessons, help with house-cleaning, and cooking lessons. Two families dropped out.

The progress of the remaining has not been stunning. Four of the five families were on AFDC when the program started. One is still on it, and another is getting food stamps. Four of the families had an adult who had at least a part-time job when the program began. Two now work full-time, two still work part-time, and the one who started out with no job still doesn’t have one. The women who were attending college and nursing school are still in school.

Isabel Blanco, who ran the program for Hull House says that no matter how carefully the candidates were screened they still had “the mind frame of entitlement.” “We had to keep emphasizing that this is not about what you get. This is about what you do.” Even the Chicago Tribune, in a lengthy account of the program, concluded that poor people lead such disorganized lives and have been so bred to a hand-out mentality that these “defy even programs designed to overcome these obstacles.” (Louise Kiernan, Oprah’s Poverty Program Stalls, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 27, 1996, p. 1.)

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LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I wish to take issue with your derogatory description of learning-disabled children in your diatribe against equality in the September and October issues: “Public education has degenerated into a preoccupation with incompetents, defectives, and other beneficiaries of ‘special’ education.” Here I think you are guilty of that typically white failing you yourself describe: the failure to make distinctions.

You do our cause no good when you throw around words like “incompetent” and “defective.” You disregard the actual facts as well as the painful emotions of the parents and children who struggle with such problems and try to transcend them. Such children are as much the raw material of our race as any other and we are obliged to form that new material as best we can.

Richard Culley, Chatham, N. Y.

Sir — A line of demarcation is emerging in AR between Christians and pagans. Here are a few comments from someone on the Christian side of the argument.

It is not enough to survey what Indo-Europeans have believed historically, as Edwin Clark does. One must judge whether those beliefs are true, but Mr. Clark leaves his readers in the dark about this. Each Indo-European is responsible for what he himself believes, and he does not discharge that responsibility simply by making an inventory of ancestral lore.

It will not do merely to suggest, as Mr. Clark does ever so gently, that Christianity goes against the spiritual grain of the Indo-European. One must offer a substitute and prepare to be interrogated about it by Christians. Who represents the genius of the anti-Christian mind? Gibbon? Nietzsche? Spengler? Mencken? (Francis Parker Yockey? William Pierce?) Let the champion be named and put to the test! Racially conscious Indo-European Christians will increasingly have to deal with this friendly rivalry, but dealing with it will always include evangelizing unbelievers. Race is more important than our enemies would have us believe, but it is not everything. Those who say it is can count on a challenge.

Tony Flood, New York, N.Y.

Sir — I think Edwin Clark’s “Roots of the White Man” beautifully expands on the ideas in Jared Taylor’s “The Ways of Our People.” Mr. Taylor states that concern for the rights and feelings of others is a defining trait of white peoples while Mr. Clark emphasizes the recognition of an objective, absolute reality which has enabled the Indo-European to master his environment. Both characteristics stem from the same source. Whites recognize the objective fact that others experience more or less the same feelings they do. Their respect for the truth makes it harder to demonize enemies and sharpens their empathy.

However, these virtues have become hypertrophied and exploited so that whites actually listen to thugs and crackpots and feel guilty when they hear their society called “fascist,” “racist,” “sexist,” and so on. In effect we have invented and given them the morality with which they assault us. Anti-Christians appear to regard appeals to compassion with suspicion, believing Christianity to be part of an alien, corrupting morality that our ancestors were duped into accepting. However, I am proud of our morality. It has helped us establish a way of life that is the envy of the world. We arc losing that way of life partly because of our own corruption and partly because we have allowed people alien or even hostile to the West to dictate how charitable we ought to be with our unique resources.

Paul Neff, Cambridge, Mass.

Sir — It was with considerable disappointment that I read Mr. Clark’s essay on the roots of the white man. I have studied mythology and have concluded from the vast and varied material available that it is impossible really to know the minds of ancient peoples. Tempting though it may be to draw firm conclusions about “Aryans” or “fellaheen peoples,” there is simply too much variety and inconsistency in the record to support any but the most cautious and tentative generalizations.

Mr. Clark appears to me to have forced the facts to fit his theory. His distortions are not nearly so great nor, I believe, are his intentions dishonorable, but is his purpose any different from that of the Afro-centrists — to create an agreeable and self-aggrandizing “history” for his people, perhaps even at the expense of verifiable fact?

Name Withheld, New York, N. Y.

Sir — Please don’t undermine your credibility with false commentary on matters you do not understand. In a Nov. 1996 O Tempora item, “Exporting Money,” you write, “Remittances to Mexico are, of course, lost to the American economy, a fact overlooked by most analysts of immigration.” In fact, every dollar that leaves the U.S. for whatever reason must eventually come back to the U.S. in exchange for exports or be invested in the American economy. It is therefore not lost to the American economy. Unless, of course, the foreign holder destroys his dollars, and you probably agree that even Mexicans wouldn’t do that.

Geb Sommer, Lexington, S.C.

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