American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 22, No. 1	January 2011

CONTENTS

The Great White Wave
Immigration and Human Nature
The Galton Report – Asians: The Model Minority
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters

COVER STORY

The Great White Wave

Midterms show how much white votes still matter.

by Stephen Webster

On November 2, voters took the Democrats to the woodshed. The party of Barack Obama lost at least 63 seats in Congress and six in the Senate. By the time you read this, they may have lost more because as this issue went to press, there were still two undecided congressional races. Whatever the results, the Democrats will have suffered their worst defeat since 1938, when voter anger against Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal cost them 72 House seats. When the new Congress convenes in January, the Republicans will enjoy their largest House majority since 1949.

How did this happen and what does it mean for whites? Back in 2008, after Mr. Obama drubbed the hapless John McCain, the left proclaimed a new era of ascendancy. Former Clinton retainer James Carville even wrote a book about it, called 40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation. John Judis, writing in The New Republic, hailed the election as “the culmination of a Democratic realignment” that reflected “a [fundamental] change in political demography and geography.”

Such claims seemed plausible. Mr. Obama won 28 states with 365 electoral votes (he needed 270 to win), including such formerly reliable Republican states as Virginia, North Carolina, and even Indiana. Many looked at the voters who put Mr. Obama in power and saw a permanent majority: a brown-Red coalition of non-whites and white liberals. As expected, 95 percent of blacks voted for Mr. Obama, but so did two-thirds of Hispanics and 62 percent of Asians. Mr. Obama won among young voters, first-time voters, suburban voters, Catholics, college graduates, and women. He even managed to win a plurality of men (49 percent to 48). John McCain won only among whites, the elderly, and voters living in small towns and rural areas — a combination Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg derided as “a relic of the past . . . an aging and frayed bunch, living off the fumes of a day and politics gone by.” More than one liberal pundit chortled that it was the destiny of the “white” GOP to become a regional party of the South and parts of the Midwest.

Wishful thinking

The liberals were wrong. We do not yet have a permanent brown-Red governing coalition, but given the demographic trends, with non-whites — already a third of the nation — predicted to become the majority around 2040, it may be only a matter of time. Liberalism and innumeracy tend to go hand in hand, so the media lefties fail to understand that many in their brown coalition are not eligible to vote because they are illegal aliens, non-citizens, or too young. 2010 will probably be the year births to non-whites outnumber those to whites, and some future Congress may yet amnesty all illegals. Demography is destiny, and numbers will eventually tip the scales. But for now, and for the next several elections, the majority of voters will be white, and as the 2008 and 2010 elections proved, their votes matter most.

The 2008 vote was the most “diverse” so far, with a record non-white turnout. Blacks (13 percent of all voters), galvanized by the chance to give the top job to one of their own, flocked to the polls. Black women, at 70 percent, actually had the highest turnout of any demographic group. Whites accounted for 76 percent of the vote (despite being only 66 percent of the population), down from 79 percent in 2004, and 85 percent if you got back to 1988.

White turnout was also lower than in 2004, 66.1 percent vs. 67.2 percent, reflecting the miserable choice whites faced: either a black Democrat or John McCain. The Arizona senator was a strong supporter of amnesty for illegals and was closely associated with the policies of George W. Bush, who left office under a very dark cloud. A majority of whites — 55 percent — still voted for Sen. McCain, however, a figure that suggests some racial bloc voting even among whites. Until recently, Sen. McCain’s 55 percent of whites would have been all he needed to win. Even now, despite the shrinking white electorate and Mr. Obama’s huge success among non-whites, if Sen. McCain had made a strong pitch to whites and had captured just five percent more of them, he would have won handily.

This year, Republicans won more than 60 percent of the white vote — the figure that would have put Mr. McCain in the White House. Whites accounted for 78 percent of the vote (blacks, 10 percent, Hispanics, 8 percent), up two points over 2008, and 62 percent of them voted Republican.

The result was a landslide. In addition to historic gains in Congress, Republicans gained six seats in the Senate, seven (possibly eight — Minnesota is still counting) state governorships, at least 680 seats in state legislatures, and took control from the Democrats in six (possibly seven) state senates and thirteen state lower houses. Sixty-nine percent of white Protestants voted Republican (up from 63 percent in 2008), but so did 54 percent of all Catholics (42 percent in 2008). Fifty-seven percent of men went for the GOP (a 9 percent jump over 2008), as did 51 percent of woman (an 8 percent rise). Apparently it is the Democrats who now face a “gender gap.” They’re facing an age gap too. Fifty-eight percent of voters aged 65 or more voted GOP (10 percent more than in 2008), as did 54 percent of voters aged 45 to 64 (up 5 percent).

The only age group won by Democrats was 18 to 29-year-olds, and even among them there was a 14 point swing to the Republicans, and they made up a smaller percentage of the electorate in 2010 than they did in 2008, 11 percent vs. 18 percent. The lefties were right about one thing, however — GOP support remains strongest among Southern whites, 73 percent of whom voted Republican.

As they say, in politics two years is an eternity.

Repudiation

Like the 1938 election, the 2010 Democratic rout was the result of voter anger, with Barack Obama standing in for FDR. The difference, of course, is that voters didn’t turn on FDR until midway through his second term. President Obama’s approval rating is in the low 40s, and the president’s party can expect midterm losses when the numbers are that low.

Voters have a lot to be angry about: persistent unemployment, anemic economic growth, fears of a “double dip” recession, rising fuel and food prices, falling home prices. These would be daunting challenges to any chief executive, but Mr. Obama isn’t just any chief executive. He is the Messiah, the miracle worker who, when he clinched the Democratic nomination. said he was “absolutely certain” that future generations would recognize that “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we . . . restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”

Given the fawning treatment by the media and the sycophancy of his inner circle, Mr. Obama can perhaps be forgiven for believing that 52 percent of the vote represented a mandate of 1984 Reagan proportions. In fact, Mr. Obama won because of voter disenchantment with George W. Bush and the Republicans, which began with the midterm elections of 2006, when they put Democrats back in control of Congress.

The revolt against the GOP was driven by anger over the war in Iraq, excessive congressional spending, and Mr. Bush’s stubborn push for amnesty for illegal aliens. Democrats won because many whites did not vote at all. Demoralized voters usually don’t vote for the other party; they stay home. John McCain was never going to excite white voters no matter whom he ran against. His only hope was to “racialize” the election by hammering Mr. Obama on his ties to Jeremiah Wright and his other anti-white positions, but Sen. McCain didn’t have the guts to do that.

Ironically, it took Barack Obama himself to light a fire under these voters. Convinced he had a mandate, and assured by the media and his own advisers that America was no longer a center-right country, Mr. Obama governed from the far left. Bank bailouts, a trillion-dollar “stimulus plan,” nationalized auto makers, the so-called Cap and Trade bill, never-ending glitzy parties at the White House, constant travel, deeper and deeper deficits — the sheer excess of it all — alienated many white moderates who had voted for Mr. Obama to expiate racial guilt.

But what most turned voters against Mr. Obama was the centerpiece of his presidency: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. National health care, socialized medicine, a single-payer system — whatever it is called — has been a major goal of the American left since at least the 1930s. It has also been opposed by the majority of Americans, which is why no president before Mr. Obama managed to get it through Congress. Democrats had the votes to ram it through in the 1940s, the 1960s, the 1970s, and the early 1990s, but before 2010, most congressmen preferred their careers to forcing socialized medicine on a public that poll after poll showed did not want it. Mr. Obama, insulated by his arrogance, convinced Democratic leaders in Congress that his election was a historical turning point that liberated Congress from the will of the American people.

The last failed attempt by Democrats at socialized medicine, so-called “Hillarycare” (named after then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, who helped shape it), was largely responsible for the Republican takeover of the House in the 1994 midterm elections, ending more than 40 years of Democratic dominance. Democratic congressman Marion Berry said he asked Mr. Obama why his plan for government-run medicine would succeed when Bill Clinton’s failed. Mr. Obama reportedly replied, “Because this time you’ve got me.” It was opposition to Obamacare that fueled the anti-tax, anti-spending Tea Party movement in 2009, and the 2010 midterms were the first in which self-styled Tea Partiers were able to express their anger at the polls.

By then, the scales had fallen from the eyes of many whites who voted for Mr. Obama because they wanted to make “history,” and the midterm elections were a chance to express buyer’s remorse. Some voters didn’t have to wait that long. In November 2009, voters in two states that went for Obama, liberal New Jersey and formerly conservative Virginia, elected Republican governors. In early 2010, voters in Massachusetts, the heart of American liberalism, elected Republican Scott Brown to fill the remaining two years of Ted Kennedy’s Senate term.

Results

Exactly a decade ago, the late Samuel Francis analyzed the 2000 election results in American Renaissance and concluded that “race and ethnicity are the driving forces in American politics today” (see “It’s Race Stupid,” AR, January 2001). Francis suggested that Republicans “could become and remain a majority party by seeking to raise white racial consciousness.” His analysis holds true today. In 1972 and 1984, Republican presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan won reelection with the support of 67 percent and 64 percent, respectively, of the white vote. This translated into 49-state landslides. The 2010 results suggest that the key to future Republican success is exactly what Francis recommended: maximize the white vote and drastically reduce immigration.

White support propelled Republicans beyond their stronghold in the South to significant gains in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. They did well in the Northeast, picking up both New Hampshire congressional seats, and the governor’s mansion in Maine for the first time in 40 years. After 2008, Republicans were nearly extinct in New York, but in November they took five and possibly six seats from the Democrats. They took five seats from the Democrats in Pennsylvania, along with a US Senate seat. (One of the new GOP congressmen from Pennsylvania is Lou Barletta, former mayor of Hazleton, who gained national attention when his city passed a law making it illegal to hire illegals or rent property to them.)

Throughout the South and Midwest, the Democrats who suffered worst were the so-called “Blue Dogs,” a group of 57 self-styled moderates or conservatives, many of whom sought to distance themselves from Barack Obama. Voters didn’t buy it, and more than half the Blue Dogs lost their seats. White “moderate” Democrats in the South were particularly hard hit, losing 19 House seats and one Senate seat. Two 28-year incumbents, John Spratt of South Carolina and Rick Boucher of Virginia have to find new jobs. Missouri congressman Ike Skelton had been in Congress for 33 years before losing to Republican Vicky Hartzler. When Congress convenes in January, there will be only 16 white Democrats (and 14 blacks) among the 105 seats from Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky.

The left’s reaction to the results ranged from delusion to rage. President Obama acknowledged that Democrats had taken a “shellacking,” but claimed it was only because he had failed to convey the benefits of his policies to the American public. He said part of his job is “making an argument that people can understand” and that “we haven’t always been successful at that.” In other words, Americans are too stupid to understand what great things he has done for them. This is the attitude that created the Tea Party rebellion in the first place.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, like so many other lefties, insists the Tea Party isn’t a reaction to Mr. Obama’s policies or his arrogance, but his race. “The first African American president takes office,” he wrote “and almost immediately we see the birth of a big, passionate national movement — overwhelmingly white and lavishly funded — that tries its best to delegitimize that president . . .” Exercising that right all lefties claim — the right to read the minds of white people — he says Tea Partiers don’t like the president only because he is black.

Perhaps the most unhinged reaction came from “anti-racist” activist Tim Wise, who makes a living peddling “diversity” and anti-white bilge to colleges and corporations. He wrote a vulgar and vituperative “Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum:”

For all y’all rich folks, enjoy that champagne, or whatever fancy ass Scotch you drink. And for y’all a bit lower on the economic scale, enjoy your Pabst Blue Ribbon, or whatever shitty ass beer you favor . . . You need to drink up . . . Because your time is limited . . . I know, you think you’ve taken ‘your country back’ with this election — and of course you have always thought it was yours for the taking, cuz that’s what we white folks are bred to believe, that it’s ours, and how dare anyone else say otherwise — but you are wrong . . . It is coming, and soon . . . In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you hold so near and dear to your heart . . .

We just have to be patient. And wait for your hearts to stop beating. And stop they will. And for some of you, real damned soon, truth be told. Do you hear it? The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently? Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.

Mr. Wise later removed the part about looking forward to the deaths of millions of whites, but the letter serves to illustrate just how much some people hate us.

The left knows that for the time being, whites still have the power to take their country back — if they are willing to use that power. For now, whites have chosen the Republican Party to express their interests, but as the Tea Party movement shows, whites can build other organizations. Whether whites will ever build mass movements that express their interests as whites remains to be seen.

As for the Republicans, the 2010 midterms are yet another version of the lesson the GOP refuses to learn, and that is the importance of whites: With them, the party wins; without them, it loses. Of course, it has no long-term future at all if it fails to keep the electorate from turning brown.

SIDEBAR Did Hispanics Save Harry Reid? One of the myths emerging from the 2010 midterms is that Hispanics in Nevada saved Harry Reid from defeat. Despite being elected to the Senate three times, he has never been very popular. Nevada suffered more than most states during the recession, and still has the highest unemployment rate. Polls released just before the election showed Republican Sharron Angle winning by a few points. Mr. Reid won, however, with just over half the vote. Hispanics certainly favored him; he got 68 percent of their vote, but only two points better than the 66 percent Democrats won nationwide. His son, Rory Reid, got 64 percent of the Hispanic vote, and still lost a bid for governor by 12 percent. That extra dose of Hispanics his father got wouldn’t have saved Rory. Harry Reid won because Miss Angle managed to get only 53 percent of the crucial white vote (Mr. Reid won with only 41 percent of the white vote). Brian Sandoval, a Hispanic Republican, picked up no less than 62 percent of the white vote on his way to the governor’s mansion, so whites were there to be wooed. Miss Angle would have won with just another percent or two of them. Why did the polls predict an Angle victory? Matt Bareto, who runs a polling firm that surveys Hispanics, says that as many as 40 percent of Hispanics prefer to speak Spanish, so firms that poll only in English miss them. He thinks the big polls missed a significant chunk of Harry Reid’s support. Mr. Bareto also says Hispanics who prefer Spanish tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Hispanics make up about 15 percent of the population, but only eight percent of the electorate. Of that eight percent, two thirds vote Democrat, meaning Hispanics can, as a bloc, swing about five percent of the vote. That helps in a close election, but Republicans can generally overcome this disadvantage by getting more of the white vote. As Vdare.com analyst Steve Sailer has argued, even if non-white immigrants continue to pour in, if white voters turn out at 70 percent and Republicans manage to get 70 percent of them, the GOP could win the popular vote nationwide even in 2052! Or they could sharply reduce immigration and deport the millions of illegal aliens and their children. That would serve the nation and their own political interests at the same time.

SIDEBAR Notable ballot measures In addition to candidates, some voters had ballot measures to consider. Voters in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations heroically defeated a measure that would have removed “Providence Plantations” from the official name. Seventy-eight percent of voters rejected the idea that “plantations” invokes slavery, thus ensuring that the nation’s smallest state keeps the longest name. Arizona became the fifth state, after California, Michigan, Nebraska, and Washington, to approve Ward Connerly’s Civil Rights Initiative, which outlaws the use of racial preferences in public college admissions and state contracting and hiring. The measure passed easily, with 60 percent of the vote. Even in liberal San Francisco and Portland, Maine, voters refused to let non-citizens vote in local elections. In San Francisco, where one in three schoolchildren has an immigrant parent, the political establishment was all in favor of letting foreigners vote for school boards, but citizens said no by a nine-point margin. A similar measure failed in 2004, but by a much closer margin, 51-49. The proposal in Portland would have let non-citizens, but not illegal aliens, vote for city council and school board. It failed 52-48, leaving Chicago the only major city in the nation that lets foreigners vote. The people of Oklahoma showed good sense: 74.3 percent thought voters should show ID in order to get a ballot. Even more Oklahomans — 75.5 percent — voted to make English the state’s official language. A measure to prohibit the use of international law or Sharia law in state courts also passed easily, with 70 percent. On Nov. 9, the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) showed why the measure was necessary when it persuaded a federal judge to issue a temporary injunction preventing certification of the vote, pending a hearing on whether the measure violates the Constitution.

SIDEBAR Rainbow Republicans Republicans are embarrassed to be the de facto party of whites, and have worked mightily to change that. These efforts will never save them from charges of “racism,” but they met with some success. Here are some notable non-white GOP victories in 2010. Nikki Haley, governor, South Carolina. A darling of the Tea Party and endorsed by Sarah Palin, Mrs. Haley, the daughter of Sikh immigrants, is the second GOP governor of Asian Indian descent. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is the first. Mrs. Haley, who could pass for white, overcame charges of adultery to win 51 percent of vote. Tim Scott, Congress, South Carolina. In 2008, Mr. Scott won election to the South Carolina state legislature, becoming the first black GOP state lawmaker in more than a century. In 2010, Mr. Scott became South Carolina’s first black GOP congressman, winning 65 percent of the vote in a majority-white district. He is the first black Republican in Congress since J. C. Watts of Oklahoma retired in 2003. He says he will not join the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Allen West, Congress, Florida. Mr. West is a former Army Lieutenant Colonel. While he was serving in Iraq, he gained notoriety when he frightened a suspect into talking by firing a pistol past his head. He was fined, and left the service voluntarily. He won election to Congress on his second try, with 54 percent of the vote in Florida’s majority-white 22nd District, and is the first black Republican congressman from Florida since the 1870s. Unlike Mr. Scott, Mr. West intends to join the CBC. Marco Rubio, US Senate, Florida. The son of Cuban immigrants, Mr. Rubio prevailed in a contentious three-way race, winning over black congressman Kendrick Meek and Republican-governor-turned-independent Charlie Crist, whom he had defeated in the GOP primary. Mr. Rubio received the support of the Tea Party and mainstream conservative groups. Telegenic and well-spoken, Mr. Rubio is already being talked about as a possible presidential contender. Susana Martinez, governor, New Mexico. Miss Martinez, a tough state prosecutor, won 54 percent of the vote to become the nation’s first Hispanic woman governor. She opposes amnesty and any “pathway to citizenship.” One of the central planks of her platform was to secure the border against illegal immigrants. In 2008, 41 percent of the electorate was Hispanic, so the figure was surely higher by 2010. Brian Sandoval, governor, Nevada. Mr. Sandoval defeated Rory Reid, son of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with just over 53 percent of the vote. Mr. Sandoval’s fellow Hispanics were not exactly taken with him — 64 percent voted for his opponent. Raul Labrador, Congress, Idaho. Mr. Labrador, a Puerto Rican-born Idaho state representative, rode Tea Party support to a surprise win over “Blue Dog” Democrat Walt Minnick. Mr. Minnick was conservative enough to criticize Mr. Labrador for his work as an immigration lawyer, claiming in campaign ads of that half of Mr. Labrador’s work came from helping illegals stay in the country. Lefties called the ads “racist.” Mr. Labrador won, 51 to 41.

BOOK REVIEW

Immigration and Human Nature

A comprehensive diagnosis of our current insanity.

Byron M. Roth, The Perils of Diversity, Washington Summit Publishers, 2010, 577 pp, $29.95.

reviewed by F. Roger Devlin

The seismic shift now transforming the demographics of Europe and the United States is likely to leave a more permanent mark on our civilization than even the two world wars of the last century. The survivors of those conflicts returned to a life that was poorer than before, but otherwise much the same. This is never the case when one ethnic group displaces another. Barring wide-spread violence, the effects of large-scale immigration are irreversible. Byron Roth is therefore right to note in The Perils of Diversity that our current pattern of immigration is therefore “of world historical significance that will affect future generations for centuries to come.”

Mr. Roth, who is professor emeritus of psychology at Dowling College on Long Island, offers us a cornucopia of information and argument about the threat immigration poses to our civilization. Three chapters summarize the relevant racial science, three longer chapters recount the history of immigration to America and Europe, and the conclusion predicts the consequences of current trends. Though long and ambitious, The Perils of Diversity reads easily, and rewards the reader with a thorough grasp of the crisis we face.

The limits of public debate

Such debate on immigration as occurs in the mainstream press, the author notes, is usually framed as a contest between assimilation and multiculturalism. One side argues that today’s ethnic problems will be solved through “the magic of assimilation,” in which persons of all races and religions are gradually transformed into Americans (or Europeans) just by living and working among us. The other side argues that we have no right to impose our way of life on newcomers, and should instead let them live among us while retaining their own beliefs and practices. Multiculturalists see no reason why this cannot be accomplished peacefully, and ascribe current frictions to the failure of the host population to do enough to accommodate immigrants.

Prof. Roth points out, however, that both assimilationists and multiculturalists make false assumptions about human nature. Assimilationists believe all races are capable of taking on the behavior patterns necessary to maintain Western civilization; multiculturalists believe radically different groups can live together harmoniously. Both positions fly in the face of overwhelming scientific and historical evidence. The false terms framing public debate therefore require the suppression of information, and the academy, the legal profession, and philanthropic foundations are among the most energetic censors.

Mainstream science has now, for the most part, accepted the evidence that genes influence individual behavior, but it continues to resist genetic explanations for group differences. Terrible pressure is brought to bear on scientists who explore group differences. Prof. Roth recounts the travails of Chris Brand, Bruce Lahn, and James Watson, all of whom have been silenced for discussing race and IQ.

American universities that receive government funding (that is to say, virtually all of them) have “Institutional Review Boards” that approve or block research involving human subjects. Prof. Roth points out that most faculty members who serve on these boards are openly hostile to research that might reveal racial differences, often on the grounds that the results might get into the “wrong” hands.

Hate speech laws restrict public debate. Canadian journalist Mark Steyn notes that if an American writer approaches a publisher with a book criticizing immigration, he will be reminded that it may be illegal to sell it in Canada, and there goes 10 percent of the North American market. French and German translation rights cannot be sold because the book may run afoul of European xenophobia legislation, and a British edition may be impossible because libel laws are so lax that anyone mentioned unfavorably may be able to shut down sales. The result is that such a book may never reach the public, because it may no longer make economic sense to publish it.

Philanthropic foundations use their wealth and influence to direct public discussion into narrow channels. They sponsor publications and conferences under color of a disinterested concern but, as Prof. Roth explains, no one who speaks honestly about the facts of race will be sponsored as a “qualified expert.” Research on IQ goes unfunded, while millions are available for studies of “racism.” The Ford Foundation, in particular, has showered money on MALDEF, La Raza, the ACLU, and dozens of other pro-immigration groups.

Prof. Roth notes a left-right convergence in favor of mass immigration. For business, the issue is cheap labor. Many jobs can be outsourced, or shipped overseas, but those in services, agriculture, construction, and many others cannot. The way to cut labor costs in these industries is to import Third-World workers. This has brought massive rewards for those at the top of the corporate pyramid while impoverishing the great mass of workers. Lou Dobbs notes that CEO salaries have gone from 42 times that of a blue-collar worker in 1980 to 431 times today.

The political left, meanwhile, does not care about the fate of the Western working class because it has shifted its focus from class to race. Multiculturalism is simply a racialized Marxism in which whites are substituted for Marx’s “bourgeoisie,” and non-whites are cobbled together to form a “global proletariat.” The left sees the white working man as part of the “oppressor class,” and cheers his displacement.

Tribe, Nation and Empire

For most of our evolutionary history, as Prof. Roth explains, humans lived in bands of 50 to 100 close relatives. Within these bands there was a good deal of altruism based on inclusive fitness and reciprocity. Relations between bands, on the other hand, varied from suspicion to violent hostility. This “us-them” dichotomy appears to be part of human nature. Certainly it was constantly reinforced by the selective pressures of evolution; liberals did not last long in the Paleolithic period. Today’s remaining hunter-gatherers may go on raids and ambushes or do battle several times a year, and the percentage of killed and maimed can be greater than in warfare between civilized peoples.

Nations are formed by welding more or less related tribal bands into a larger whole. This makes it possible to raise larger armies, and it also permits a better division of labor, which is an important prerequisite for civilization. But for a nation to operate effectively, men must learn to expand their loyalties beyond their closest, most natural attachments. “The critical problem in fashioning a well-functioning nation-state,” writes Prof. Roth, “is the necessity of binding together the population into a cohesive whole whose allegiance is to the state.” A myth of common origin helps this process, but is most effective when there is genetic commonality.

As the state gets larger, kinship bonds get weaker, and more force must be applied to maintain political bonds. If the state conquers territory, it becomes an empire, whose subject peoples have no sense of ethnic kinship with their rulers. Loyalty is difficult to maintain, and usually requires that the imperial government provide physical and economic security.

Modern mass immigration is a lazy form of imperialism: the Western ruling class increases its client base, and hence its power, by tempting alien peoples with the prospect of greater material well-being instead of conquering them.

However, if an empire loses the ability to deliver material security, the bonds of kinship tear it apart it and it reverts to a more primitive social structure. This process can get very ugly. Historian Niall Ferguson has noted that “the most intense and brutal violence in recent history involved ethnic clashes among groups that were part of empires in the midst of disintegration and decline.” The nation-state is thus a fragile balance: large enough to provide the benefits of civilization, but small enough not to strain human bonds to the breaking point.

The Hierarchy of Talents

Mixing ethnic groups is hard enough when the groups are equally talented; strains on social harmony are far greater when certain groups are consistently more successful than others. Prof. Roth devotes three chapters to explaining racial differences in ability and how they came about, and offers a good summary of the effect climate had on selecting for intelligence.

These evolved racial differences pose special challenges for multiracial societies. For example, trial by jury is an important feature of the American legal system. We inherited it from England, where the average IQ is 100. But can a jury of blacks, with an average IQ of 85, be expected to make sound decisions in complex legal cases?

Mississippi governor Haley Barbour once remarked that his state was “America’s number one judicial hellhole for jackpot jury verdicts.” This was especially true of Jefferson County, which has a population that is 86 percent black. Until tort reform in 2004, it was America’s favorite destination for frivolous lawsuits. In one legendary case, a jury ordered a pharmaceutical company to pay $1 billion dollars in damages to the family of a woman who had used a supposedly defective diet pill. “Put bluntly,” says Prof. Roth, “it seems that juries in Jefferson County lacked the intellectual substance and mathematical acumen to determine what to most people would seem to be reasonable awards in such cases.”

But the worst problem for multiracial societies is envy. All multiracial societies are stratified, with the more capable races achieving more power and prosperity. Members of less favored groups resent this and complain of racial nepotism and “exclusion.” The state is usually called upon to intervene.

“Overseas Chinese” in Southeast Asia face this problem. In Indonesia, until just a few years ago, 70 percent of the private economy was controlled by ethnic Chinese, who made up just 3 percent of the population. This situation is not so extraordinary given that Chinese have an average IQ of 105 while Indonesians average around 87. In 1998, Indonesians looted and burned Chinese businesses and homes, killing 2,000 people. Wealthy Chinese fled the country, taking most of their capital with them, but many Indonesians thought that any economic harm was a small price to pay for ridding themselves of the Chinese.

The governments of Western democracies have developed a wide variety of programs to counteract perceived discrimination against non-whites. In America, Edwin S. Rubenstein estimated in a 2008 study for the National Policy Institute that they cost around 8 percent of GDP, or $1.1 trillion per year. Such programs inevitably fail, however, because racial disparities in achievement are not caused by discrimination, and the lower-achieving groups only grow more resentful and call for more radical solutions. “It is difficult to escape the conclusion,” writes Prof. Roth, “that this is an intractable problem that is simply not amenable to solutions by democratic government.”

How the disaster came about

Immigrants to the American Colonies and the early United States made an expensive and dangerous voyage of four to eight weeks to a land that was largely wilderness. Those who completed the journey were bold, enterprising people, quite unlike the average Mexican who walks across a land border into a modern welfare state.

Until 1880, American immigrants came mainly from Northwest Europe. Between 1880 and the early 1920s, a larger share came from Southern and Eastern Europe, particularly Italians, Poles and Jews. In 1924, immigration quotas were passed to ensure that the United States maintained a white majority. Although there were no restrictions on immigration from the Western Hemisphere, few Latin Americans arrived.

By the 1960s, the country’s elites viewed immigration restriction as, in Prof. Roth’s words, “morally compromised” and “inconsistent with American ideals.” The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had banned racial discrimination in employment and public accommodation. It seemed only consistent to let in foreigners without regard to race as well. When the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed the very next year, Pres. Lyndon Johnson piously declared that it repaired a

deep and painful flaw in the fabric of American justice. It corrects a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American Nation . . . The [former] system violated the basic principle of American democracy — the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man. It has been un-American in the highest sense, because it has been untrue to the faith that brought thousands to these shores.

By this standard, 58 percent of Americans were cruel and un-American in 1965, for that is how many declared themselves “strongly opposed to easing of immigration law.” Sen. Byrd of West Virginia pointed out that “every other country that is attractive to immigrants practices selectivity (in favor of their founding nationalities) without apology,” and expressed wonderment at America’s “guilt complex.”

The 1965 Act abolished national preferences favoring Europe and set a total limit of 290,000 admissions per year, but also admitted immigrants’ extended families outside the quota. One analyst pointed out that it was possible under the act for a single immigrant to bring in 18 relatives in 10 years.

During the 1950s, 2.5 million immigrants had come to America, with 55 percent from Europe and Canada. In the 1970s, 4.3 million came, and the European-Canadian share dropped to below 25 percent. By 1977, former INS commissioner Leonard Chapman concluded that “we have become the haven for the unemployed of the world. I think it is going to be catastrophic.”

The 1965 Act was surprisingly stingy toward refugees, allotting them a low preference and a maximum 6 percent of admissions, but this has hardly limited the actual flow. By means of a constitutionally dubious “parole power,” presidents have granted entry to 750,000 Cubans and 900,000 Southeast Asians, among others. Once here, refugees have their status “regularized;” in other words, the law is changed so they can stay.

In 1986, amnesty was granted to 3.1 million illegal aliens who had arrived in the country before 1982. By this time, 600,000 people were coming legally every year, so in 1990 Congress formally raised the quota to 700,000. The adjustment of law to reality — rather than the reverse — has become a regular feature of immigration legislation.

The flow continued to increase, reaching one million annually in the 1990s, thanks to the many family reunification arrivals not counted toward the quota. Just 16 percent of the total was now coming from Europe or Canada, and this did not include the estimated 500,000 to 800,000 illegal immigrants who came every year.

Until 1986 it was actually legal to hire illegal aliens. Even now, the law is worded so that an employer need only check to see that an immigrant’s documentation “reasonably appears on its face to be genuine.” In fact, if you ask an Hispanic employee too many questions about his papers, he can sue for discrimination. The 1986 law thus created a thriving market in forged documents. By failing to pass a law requiring employers to use the new, electronic “E-verify” system, Congress has made clear it has no intention of stopping the hiring of illegal aliens.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the corruption of the immigration system than the history of the H-1B visa program. This was instituted in 1990 to let in 65,000 skilled workers who would fill jobs for which there were not enough American applicants. Eight years later, during the dot-com boom, the computer industry claimed it needed more engineers. Congress raised the limit to 115,000 but promised to cut it back to 65,000 by 2002. Two years later, in 2004, the ceiling officially returned to 65,000, but with so many exemptions that by the following year 266,000 workers got H-1B visas.

The real scandal is that the worker shortage used to justify this program never existed. Prof. Norman Matloff of the University of California at Davis proved with data from numerous studies that even at the height of the dot-com boom there were many qualified Americans who could not get work. “It was clear,” he concluded, “that what the industry wanted was cheap labor.” Prof. Roth quotes several other authorities to confirm this point.

Europe

Prof. Roth explains that before the Second World War, almost all European immigration took place between the nations of Europe, but since 1945, outsiders have also been coming to Europe. There were two main reasons for this: an acute shortage of manual labor (especially in Germany), and a backflow of subjects from former European colonies.

Germany brought in large numbers of Gastarbeiter or “guest workers” to help rebuild the country in the 1950s. Most came from Southern Europe, and either returned home or integrated, but a large contingent from Turkey neither left nor integrated. In the 1970s, just as the German economy slumped and the demand for labor was drying up, Turkish workers began bringing their families and creating closed communities.

There are now over three million Muslims in Germany, mostly Turks. A government survey in 2004 found that they are becoming more, not less alienated from German society. Mosque attendance is rising, and about 40 percent consider “the use of physical violence as a reaction to the threat presented to Islam by the West as legitimate.” Nearly two-thirds of those aged 14 to 18 report having few or no German friends.

Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Portugal have all accepted many immigrants from their former colonies. The nucleus of France’s large immigrant population was a contingent of 350,000 Algerians who had helped maintain French rule in Algeria. In 1962, after the Algerian war for independence, they sought refuge in France. Many more followed who were in no danger but wanted to live in the West. Within 20 years, there were 800,000 Algerians in France. They are now the core of France’s Muslim population, which is estimated to be 5.7 percent of the country.

Britain, too, has been filling up with non-whites from former colonies, and has admitted a great many refugees. London has become notorious as a place of exile for fanatical clerics that have been kicked out of relatively moderate Islamic countries, such as Egypt and Syria. In 2006, the British Home Office had a backlog of 450,000 asylum cases. All could claim welfare benefits while their cases were pending.

A 2006 report on Islam in Britain found that 84 percent of Muslims acknowledge being treated fairly by British society. This did not prevent 37 percent of younger Muslims from advocating the adoption of sharia law, nor 36 percent from favoring the death penalty for Muslims who convert to another religion.

Muslims commit a disproportionate amount of crime all over Europe. In British jails they are overrepresented by a factor of 3.67; in France by four to five, and in Germany by six to seven. Rape is a Muslim specialty: in Denmark, where they constitute only 4 percent of the population, Muslims commit more than half the rapes, and almost always rape non-Muslim women.

Europe’s rulers are determined to defend immigration at any cost to their citizens, and have shown themselves capable of breathtaking dishonesty. In 2004, British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared immigration “economically vital” due to “serious worker shortages” — at a time when 72 percent of Muslims in Britain were unemployed, with many on the dole.

European Union bureaucrats are even more mesmerized by immigration than national politicians. Under the recent draft constitution, which French and Dutch voters had the good sense to reject in 2005, immigration policy would have been made in Brussels, and Europeans would have lost all local control over who lives in their countries. Plenty of EU officials view the rejection of this constitution as a temporary setback.

Where we are headed

The final chapter of Prof. Roth’s book speculates about the future. He writes that continuing Third-World immigration can be expected to lower the average American IQ from 98 to 95 by mid-century. This small drop will have drastic effects at the upper end of the bell curve. The percentage of Americans with an IQ of at least 120 — necessary for doctors, research scientists and other demanding jobs — will fall from 7.1 to 4.8.

An increasing demand for skills combined with the diminishing share of Americans capable of acquiring them will widen the gap between rich and poor; egalitarian thinking is therefore bringing about a less egalitarian society. One possible outcome is an America along the lines of a South American oligarchy, with a rich White-Asian elite, a relatively small middle class, and black and brown masses whose main work is to provide services for the more successful. As Prof. Roth notes, this is a far cry from the founders’ vision of a republic of independent yeoman farmers and skilled tradesmen.

These changes will profoundly affect America’s place in the world. Over the next 40 years, the number of well-trained Chinese with IQs over 120 will soar. By mid-century, they will outnumber their American counterparts by about eight to one. “The upshot,” writes Prof. Roth, “is that the gap in the potential for innovation and economic growth between China and the US will grow enormously and begin to have its effects in the very near future.”

Prof. Roth also predicts an American fiscal disaster that will produce high inflation and an inability to fund social programs. This will lead to a political showdown between the productive, mostly white part of the population threatened by inflation, and the less productive, mostly non-white part threatened by the loss of handouts. The sooner such a showdown takes place the better, since the balance of forces is leaning ever more strongly in favor of the less productive. Internationally, the United States will no longer be able to maintain dominance. Again, the sooner our rulers accept this loss of status and curb their ambitions, the less jarring our decline will be.

Prof. Roth is even less optimistic about Europe. Although the percentage of non-whites is smaller than in America, the elites are even more contemptuous of their subjects and resistant to reason. EU leaders, in particular, are left-wing authoritarians who despise the Western liberal tradition. Prof. Roth suggests that these ideologues want to turn the EU into a centrally controlled empire similar to the Soviet Union. If so, their current policies make sense: they are flooding the continent with people who have always lived under autocratic regimes. Such people may be willing to tolerate repression provided they can maintain a moderate standard of living while keeping traditional religions and other practices.

Much depends on whether European elites succeed in getting Turkey admitted to the EU. Turkey has a population of 75 million that is 99 percent Muslim. Its admission would raise the proportion of Muslims in Europe from 3 percent to 20 percent. Only 16 percent of Europeans favor this, but they are likely to ignore the wishes of the other 84 percent. Even without Turkey, differential fertility rates could Islamize Europe by the end of this century.

Like America, Europe could be headed for a crisis. This could take the form of Muslim terrorism or, more likely, a prolonged economic downturn like that of the 1930s. A season of bombings or a severe depression with unemployment rates of 20 to 25 percent would make it clear to even the most brainwashed Europeans that immigration is a mortal threat. Some nations might withdraw from the EU, perhaps even causing it to collapse. “If this were to occur today rather than 30 or 40 years from now,” Prof. Roth notes, “the non-European population will be too small to engage in civil war and public order will be much easier to restore.”

Let us hope it does not come to that. Let us hope nationalist political parties will be able to stem the non-white tide before it is too late. In the short term, a nationalist breakthrough may be more likely in Europe than in the United States, but it must happen somewhere. The survival of our common European heritage depends on it.

ARTICLE

The Galton Report

Asians: The Model Minority

by Hippocrates

Asian Americans have been called the model minority. They have won this sobriquet because, unlike other minorities — Hispanics, blacks, and American Indians — they have done well in the United States. Or rather, some have done well. The successful ones are the Northeast Asians from Japan, China, and Korea. Southeast Asians — Filipinos, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Hmong, Laotians, Thais, Indonesians and Malays — have been less successful.

The economic achievements of ethnic Chinese and Japanese were apparent in the 1979 census, which recorded average annual earnings of men, aged 25-54, of 37 different ethnic groups. The median was $25,500. The lowest earners were blacks ($18,600) followed by Puerto Ricans ($19,600). Chinese ($26,800) and Japanese ($26,400) had average earnings slightly higher than the median. The earnings of Koreans were not given.

The differences between Northeast Asians and Southeast Asians in the United States has been documented by Richard Lynn in his book The Global Bell Curve. Northeast Asians do better than whites in math and science in eighth grade, have higher average incomes and socioeconomic status, and a greater proportion obtain college degrees. Southeast Asians do less well than whites in all these regards. Prof. Lynn attributes these results to differences in intelligence, estimating the IQ of Northeast Asians as 104, and that of Southeast Asians as 92.

The gap in earnings between these two Asian groups has recently been confirmed by Professor Arthur Sakamoto of the University of Texas and two colleagues. They calculated the average hourly earnings for 2005-2006 as $33.0 for whites, $39.3 for Northeast Asians, and $24.1 for Southeast Asians. When they calculated earnings by Asian ethnicity they found the following: $41.1 for Japanese, $39.3 for Koreans, and $37.4 for Chinese, $32.3 for Filipinos, $30.7 for Malays, $26.1 for Thais, $25.4 for Vietnamese, $24.2 for Indonesians, $22.5 for Cambodians, $22.5 for Hmong, and $19.5 for Laotians. Thus, the three Northeast Asian groups have higher average earnings than whites, while the eight Southeast Asian groups have lower average earnings.

Prof. Sakamoto also noted interesting differences in higher education. Fifty point two percent of Northeast Asians have college degrees, compared with 29.9 percent of whites. Only 15.7 percent of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Hmong and Laotians have college degrees, while a surprising 48 percent of Filipinos, Thais, Indonesians and Malays do.

The professors note that the success of the Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans violates the majority-minority paradigm, which posits that minorities have “lower socioeconomic characteristics because whites exploit minorities by maintaining racial and ethnic discrimination in society.” What explains the achievements of Northeast Asians? The professors explain:

“The typical answer is that Asian Americans are a sociological minority that is often not officially classified as a minority because their socioeconomic attainments are not significantly lower than those of whites. The socioeconomic characteristics of Asian Americans are thus the critical issue that leads them to be popularly regarded as the non-minority minority.”

In other words, any minority that does well ceases to be a minority. This means sociologists can carry on whinging about the prejudice of whites without having to explain the success of Northeast Asians because they are no longer minorities! Completely absent from this study is any mention of IQ differences, which apparently do not exist in the parallel universe inhabited by sociologists.

Asians have been confounding the sociologists for a long time. The typical college professor explains high black crime rates by claiming that poverty and squalor breed crime. Professors James Wilson and the late Richard Herrnstein pointed out that during the 1960s, Chinatown was the part of San Francisco that had the most unemployment and poverty, the highest rate of tuberculosis, the least education, and the most substandard housing. Nevertheless, in 1965, only five people of Chinese ancestry went to prison in the whole state of California. Profs. Wilson and Herrnstein also noted that in the 1920s, at a time when Asians faced widespread discrimination, and foreign-born Asians could not even be naturalized, the arrest rate of ethnic Chinese and Japanese in California was only half that of the rest of the population.

The New Century Foundation report, The Color of Crime (2005), gives the incarceration rates of the major racial groups in 2001. The rate for Asians was only 22 percent of the white rate. Blacks had the highest rate at 7.2 times that of whites, followed by Hispanics at 2.9 times the white rate, while Native American Indians and Pacific Islanders were imprisoned at about twice the white rate. Northeast and Southeast Asians are usually aggregated in official statistics, but if they were distinguished, incarceration rates for Northeast Asians would undoubtedly be even lower. There is a cloud on the horizon, however, because according to the same report, Asians are nine times more likely than whites to be members of youth gangs.

In most respects, however, Asians excel. They are the longest-lived race in America, outliving whites, on average, by about 5 years. They are least likely to be obese as children (19 percent less likely than whites), unlike blacks, who are 31 percent more likely, Hispanics (38 percent more likely), and American Indian children (twice as likely). Asians are also about half as likely as whites to be suspended from school. They are also about half as likely as whites to have illegitimate children or to give birth as teenagers.

Thus, of all the huddled masses who have reached the United States in search of “the American dream,” Northeast Asians have been the most successful — apart, of course, from the Jews — but this may have to be the subject of another column.

Richard Lynn. The Global Bell Curve. Augusta, GA: Washington Summit Publishers, 2008.

Arthur Sakamoto, Kimberly A. Goyette & Chang Hwan Kim. Socioeconomic attainments of Asian Americans. Annual Review of Sociology, 2009, 35:255–76

James Wilson & Richard Herrnstein. Crime & Human Nature. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Undivided Loyalty

Nine-term Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez, whose parents were Puerto Rican, works tirelessly for amnesty. He is against deporting illegals (he says it splits up families) and opposes any efforts better to secure the borders. He is sharply critical of President Barack Obama, whom he once strongly supported, because he believes the president isn’t pushing hard enough for amnesty. He says Mr. Obama “was clear in his [amnesty] commitment to me” during the campaign but since then “everything has been enforcement, enforcement, enforcement.” “How,” he asks “is this different from what George W. Bush did?”

He says Hispanics are “angry and disillusioned,” and losing patience. Mr. Gutierrez is also becoming more militant. In May, he got himself arrested at an immigration protest in front of the White House, and last summer he threatened to urge Hispanics to boycott the midterm elections if Democrats didn’t deliver amnesty.

The Pew Hispanic Center ranks Mr. Gutierrez as the second most important Hispanic leader in the US, after Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Frank Sharry, founder of the pro-amnesty group America’s Voice, says Mr. Gutierrez is “as close as the Latino community has to a Martin Luther King figure.” Mr. Gutierrez is shameless about his advocacy. “I have only one loyalty,” he says, “and that’s to the immigrant community.” [Arian Campo-Flores, Keeping Obama to His Word, Newsweek, Nov. 29, 2010.]

Licensing Illegals

After the September 11 attacks, most states made it harder to get driver’s licenses. New Mexico made it easier. Since 2003, applicants no longer need proof of US citizenship or legal residency. They need only show a utility bill or a rental agreement with their name and address. This had made the state a magnet for foreigners from all over the world, and some are willing to pay a lot of money for forged papers. In November, police arrested three Chinese, Shu Sheng Lui, Hiew Fongyee, and Lam Fong Siu, who admitted they paid $500 for phony documents showing they lived in New Mexico. In October, police busted two other Chinese who flew to New Mexico from China just to get illegal licenses. In September, the authorities nabbed applicants from Costa Rica and Brazil.

Motor vehicle department spokesman S.U. Mahesh says the arrests show it isn’t as easy to get New Mexico licenses as some people think. “We have a good process in place that is meant to detect any fraud or anyone trying to get a license without proper documentation,” he says.

If the safeguards worked, illegals wouldn’t be flocking to the state. A poll of New Mexico residents found that 67 percent think the law is too lax, and so does governor-elect Susana Martinez. She wants to tighten up requirements and revoke licenses granted to illegals. [Astrid Galvan, N.M. Driver’s Licenses a Global Attraction, Albuquerque Journal, Nov. 12, 2010.]

Utah and Washington are the only other states that grant driver’s licenses without proof of citizenship or legal residency.

Browning of Britain

It is well known that if current demographic trends continue, whites will become a minority in the United States sometime around 2040. It is less well known that whites in Britain are headed in the same direction. An Oxford don recently “shocked” British media by predicting that “white Britons” will be a minority by 2066. Demography professor David Coleman blames soaring immigration, coupled with high immigrant birthrates and the mass exodus of natives (thousands of Britons emigrate each year). He forecasts the overall population will jump from 61 million today to 77 million by 2051 and 85 million by 2083, with the number of whites declining from 55 million today to 45 million in 2051. “Were the assumptions to hold, the ‘white British’ population of Britain would become the minority after about 2066,” he says. “It’s a milestone that would be passed much earlier in younger age groups.” Even if Britain cut immigration to the point that new arrivals matched departures, non-whites will still become a majority by the end of the century because of high birthrates. Prof. Coleman points out that this will “represent an enormous change to national identity — cultural, political, economic and religious.” [Graeme Wilson, White Britons a Minority by ’66, The Sun (London), Nov. 18, 2010.]

2066 would mark the 1,000th anniversary of the last successful invasion of Britain, the Norman Conquest.

Bad Juju

Traffic in Lagos, Nigeria is so bad that many motorcycles act as taxis, zipping fares through crowded streets. Speed does not equal safety, however. During the first half of 2010, about 2,500 people died on okadas, as motorcycle taxis are known. Many local hospitals have special wards to treat people who are hurt in crashes. Theoretically the law requires okada passengers to wear helmets but many do not. They are afraid previous passengers may have hexed the helmets so as to steal a person’s good fortune or make him disappear altogether.

“People believe that if you put on a helmet, [others] can take away your brain, or your good luck,” says entrepreneur Ralph Ibuz, who came up with a way to protect okada passengers from bad juju. He sells the “Original Lapa Guard,” a cloth cap to wear under the helmet to keep it from touching the head. He says it protects from germs — and from sudden, involuntary disappearance.

There is bad juju all over. A popular instant noodle dish was once rumored to be made of worms from Asia, and a drive in the 1990s to get people to use condoms stalled when tales spread that men who used them were vanishing. When cell phones became popular, some people thought they would die if certain numbers appeared on the caller ID. [Will Connors, Putting a Cap on Bad Juju Conjures Up a Good Business, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 19, 2010.]

Sikhing to Serve

Sikh immigrants first served in the US Army during the First World War, but stopped enlisting in 1981 when the Army banned “conspicuous” signs of religious faith, such as their turbans and beards. Sikhs could still enlist, but they had to get special exemptions for turbans and beards. These were rare, so few Sikhs joined up. (The Army prohibits beards because they make it hard to get a successful seal with a gas mask.)

Although the policy has not been entirely abandoned, the Army is granting more exemptions. Last March, Captain Tejdeep Singh Rattan, a dentist, became the first Sikh commissioned officer in more than two decades, and in September, Captain Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi, a doctor, became the second. In November, 26-year-old Simran Preet Singh Lamba became the first enlisted Sikh soldier in more than 20 years to complete basic training in full beard and turban. The Army was eager to recruit Mr. Lamda because he speaks Hindi and Punjabi. [Sikh Soldier Completes US Army Training with Turban On, AP, Nov. 12, 2010.]

Adios, California

California’s future is likely to be written in Spanish. There are now nearly twice as many Hispanics as whites in California public schools, 3.1 million versus 1.7 million. There are also more Asians than blacks, 527,000 versus 425,000.

David Gomez, the president of the California Association of Latino Superintendents and Administrators, says nearly 1.5 million California students are classified as English-language learners. Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at UC Berkley, believes it’s time for whites to start speaking Spanish. “If the majority of the population is becoming bilingual,” he asks, “why shouldn’t the white minority also become bilingual?” [Will Kane, Latino Kids Now Majority in State’s Public Schools, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 13, 2010.]

Weighing Anchor?

When Congress reconvenes in January, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), the incoming chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees immigration and citizenship, will be spearheading an effort to repeal birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens. Mr. King says it is an incentive to enter the country illegally and has led to an “anchor baby industry.” Hispanic activists are appalled. “For us, it sort of flies in the face of what America is about,” says Chad Silva of the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California. “That’s our strength. And to start splitting hairs like that will only make the immigration issue worse.”

The debate will center on the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, which reads, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Proponents of the proposal believe that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means legal immigrants only, and excludes illegals, tourists, and diplomats. California Republican Congressman Tom McClintock, who supports the proposal, says the United States is unique among developed countries in still granting birthright citizenship. In recent years, Britain, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, France, and India have all changed their laws to require that at least one parent be a legal resident.

According to a 2008 analysis from the Pew Hispanic Center, some 340,000 of the 4.3 million babies born in the United States annually are children of illegal immigrants. [Rob Hotakainen, GOP Majority in House Will Push to End ‘Birthright Citizenship,’ Sacramento Bee, Nov. 18, 2010.]

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I read the December cover story (“What to Make of Black Conservatives?”) with great interest but with some reservations. I have real sympathy for conservative blacks — the charges of “Uncle Tom” and “Oreo” must be very tiresome — but I am not sure I consider them allies. The same holds true for conservative Hispanics and Asians. If we are to live with non-whites, by all means let them be “conservative.” They uphold standards and they are basically fair-minded about race.

However, our interests are different. The best of them want a color-blind America; I want a majority-white America, and like Sam Francis, I would use state power to achieve it. Furthermore, given the penchant for conservative non-whites to marry across racial lines (Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, and Ward Connerly are all married to white women), I do not think they would be happy in a society that disapproved of miscegenation. It may be possible to find common ground with black conservatives in the short term, but in the end, it is up to whites, and whites alone, to advance their own interests.

John Morris, Philadelphia, Pa.

Sir — In his December review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel, Steven Farron presents her book as a defense of Western Civilization, but it would more accurate to call it a left-wing criticism of Islam. The extent of her praise of the West is to note that we have a higher standard of living than the Third World and to celebrate the liberal views of homosexuality and feminism held by secular Europeans. Nowhere does she defend the West on cultural, historical, or ethnic grounds. In fact she attacks those who do, calling the Vlaams Belang “a racist, anti-Semitic, extremist party that is unkind to women and that should be outlawed.”

Professor Farron is correct to say that she ignores the relationship between race and success, but Miss Ali does suggest where she falls on the bell curve: “Six months after I first registered at the government labor agency, they called me in to take an IQ Test . . . A lot of it was math, which I have always been hopeless at; the rest of it was psychological tests and language skills — Dutch language, of course. My results were poor” (page 221).

Ellison Lodge, Potomac, Md.

Sir — I greatly enjoyed Prof. Farron’s illuminating review of Infidel but was very surprised by one thing: Does Miss Ali really think American support for Israel had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks? America’s actions have alienated generations of Muslims, and Osama bin Laden himself said he had three reasons for the attacks: the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, our sanctions against the Saddam Hussein regime, and our support for Israel. I would add that a terrorist has every reason to be honest about his motives because he cannot change his target’s behavior unless the target understands the terrorist’s motives.

I believe Prof. Farron is also incorrect to say that whites are the only people in the world who do not put a premium on light skin. It is true that they would hesitate to admit it publicly, but their actions betray them. Almost all whites want white schools, white neighborhoods, and white institutions. The expression “a touch of the tar brush” is never a compliment.

Clyde Sharp, Bennington, Vt.

Sir — In the December Galton Report “Hippocrates” writes that blacks are less likely than whites to suffer from depression or to commit suicide, because they have higher levels of testosterone. He writes that testosterone tends to protect men from depression, noting that they are only half as likely as women to suffer from it. But if testosterone protects from depression and suicide, why is it that nearly everywhere in the world men are more likely than women to commit suicide?

I would suggest that at least a partial explanation for why blacks are less likely than whites to kill themselves is lower intelligence and less concern about the future. Intelligent people are better aware of the future implications of present misfortunes. They can also better imagine different lives for themselves and therefore find their current circumstances unbearable. I suspect blacks are better than whites at living for the moment.

Name Withheld

Sir — In November’s “O Tempora, O Mores,” you mention Theodore McKee, the Third Circuit federal judge who threw out the Hazleton, Pennsylvania, illegal-immigrant law. Readers should know that he is a 1994 Clinton appointee, and black. A website called Just the Beginning Foundation (it is committed to “honoring the legacy of African-Americans in the federal judiciary” and “increasing diversity in the legal profession”) notes that Judge McKee serves on the “Task Force on Equal Treatment in the Courts” and co-chairs the “Commission on Racial and Ethnic Bias.” Given this background, we’d be wasting our time parsing his judicial opinion for legal infirmities. I’m afraid the will of the people of Hazleton was going to be thwarted the minute the case hit his desk.

Meanwhile, Lou Barletta, Hazleton’s immigration-reform mayor, was elected to Congress in the mid-term elections.

John Ingram, Duncannon, Pa.

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