American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 12, No. 10	October 2001

CONTENTS

Rearing Honorable White Children
When Whites Hunted Blacks
Race in “The Real World”
A Reply to Dr. Trask
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

Rearing Honorable White Children

Instilling racial identity in today’s children

by Robert S. Griffin

During the past several years, while working on a book about white nationalist William Pierce, I became acquainted with a number of white couples who are rearing their children in a racially conscious manner. I have noticed a pattern in the way these parents bring up children, and I believe their approach would interest those who align themselves with the views expressed in American Renaissance.

What links these parents is a conviction that they are bringing up their children in hostile territory. As they see it, their kind has been hammered relentlessly in the culture wars waged against whites in this country for decades. Their heritage — Western history and traditions — has been denigrated, their race linked to oppression and racism, and their racial consciousness, pride, and commitment demonized. The shallowness and egoism of modern life run counter to their values of dignity, discipline, and responsibility.

These parents are right to worry. For example, just after interviewing a racially conscious couple who spoke of their concern about the influence of popular music and the youth culture, I found an article in Talk magazine about rap music impresario, Dr. Dre (real name, Andre Young). “Dre,” the article reported, “watched from the stage of a concert as blacks and whites chanted the lyrics in a single voice and moved to the music as one. He has seen the races become a single happy entity as surely as if they had been on turntables and run through a mixer. The music is what blends the races together as decades of preaching never did.”

Rap music does bring black outlooks and values to young white people. Indeed, it blends the races, as does pop music generally. Clearly, to Talk magazine as well as most others in America, this is a good thing, but for whites who want to maintain their racial and cultural identity, what happened at that concert was not a good thing at all. They will do everything they can to keep their children out of Dr. Dre’s audience.

Greg and Kathryn, as I will call this couple, have concluded that the best way for them to deal with a society that runs counter to what they most treasure is to withdraw from it. Morris Berman in his recent book The Twilight of American Culture writes about what he calls the “monastic option.” Professor Berman writes of monks who lived in the disintegrating landscape of the Roman Empire, and who saw themselves as strangers in a strange land. What the culture saw as worthwhile, the monks saw as stupid and destructive. As the lights of their own culture faded, they turned their backs on what was taking its place and took upon themselves the task of preserving the treasures of Greco-Roman civilization.

Although the parents I have met would not use the term “monastic option,” this essentially describes what they are doing. They are distancing themselves and their children from the dominant culture and trying to preserve their race and its heritage.

How do they insulate their children from a poisonous world? Through their basic approach to being parents, and through their stance towards the media, schooling, and their children’s relations with peers.

They believe that to be effective as parents they must be authoritarian. They are not lenient or indulgent. They do not hold to the currently fashionable idea that children are basically good, and that a parent’s job is to support a child’s inclinations. They see all human beings as having the potential for both good and bad, and their view is that, ideally, parents and society should share the job of ensuring that children realize their positive potential.

These parents know that children are strongly influenced by the forces that surround them: primarily the mass media, the peer group, and the school. Since they disdain the direction in which these influences push their children, they want to be the most powerful forces in their children’s lives, and to protect them from what will hurt them. They are hands-on parents, who do not turn their children over to the influences of others.

As these parents see it, the major task of childhood is to pave the way to a responsible and productive adulthood, and they don’t hesitate to direct that process. They assert power and control. They set standards and limits. They transmit their fundamental values and what they consider to be the overall purpose of their children’s lives, which is to carry forward the best of their heritage and race. These parents teach their children that they are not isolated beings, but rather a continuous part of what their people represent and have accomplished over the course of history, and that they are responsible to their people as a whole, not just to themselves and their own happiness and well-being.

Although they are the authorities in their children’s lives, these parents are not harsh or cold. They can be stern, but they are affirming and loving. They exercise firm control, but also encourage curiosity and creativity. They encourage hardness and toughness, but also gentleness and compassion.

These parents think the media-television, movies, popular music, video games-promote everything they don’t want for their children: baseness, vulgarity, multi-racialism, egalitarianism, cosmopolitanism, materialism, rudeness, passivity and vicariousness. Perhaps there is a History or Discovery Channel program parents and children watch together, or a classic film; but no Nickelodeon, no MTV, no Disney films (or at least no recent Disney films — the old ones, when Walt was still around, are OK), no mind-infecting video games, and no Internet-surfing.

The first contact I had with parents of this sort was with a German couple, Frank and Hanna. They invited me to dinner at their home with their two boys, Marius, age thirteen, and Dirk, sixteen. After dinner, we all went into the living room. Contrary to my expectation, the boys did not immediately head for their rooms or out the door. Dirk sat ready to talk with the adults. Marius picked up a book and began reading. Later, after the boys excused themselves, I mentioned to Frank I had noticed that the children didn’t sit in front of the television or play a video game.

“Oh, I forbid those things,” Frank responded. “Forbid” — that is not a word I expect to hear these days.

“But you have to offer them other things to do,” he quickly added. “We read together and play chess, and we cross-country ski, and the boys and I work in my workshop in the basement.”

Since that time, I have witnessed the same control of the media in the United States. “Our television has a numerical code for activating the set so the kids can’t simply switch it on or off,” reports Keith, a parent of three. “We put a cap on television time. There are some decent programs, but even in those cases we mute out the advertisements. We do not buy video games. We filter everything that comes in — music, radio, everything. We believe it is a parent’s responsibility to do this. Raised right, children will make the right — and for us, that means the racially responsible — choices.”

Ken and Elizabeth live in New Hampshire and have four children ranging in age from five to thirteen. This New Hampshire family has, in effect, seceded from the mass culture. There is a television set in the home, but I have never seen it on except a few times when the family watched a classic film. I have not heard any popular music. I asked ten-year-old Helen whether she ever wanted to watch television, go to the movies, or buy a popular music CD. She responded to the effect that those things are low and not worth her time.

“It is inconceivable to us,” Ken told me, “that people actually sit in front of the television — videos included — hour upon hour, letting this degrading material into their homes. Something either inspires the soul or destroys it. For music, we listen to classical music. Our children read good books, play chess and backgammon, draw, paint, and sew. We take hikes as a family, go on picnics, cycle, and go to museums and concerts. We do things together in order to cement our bonds as a family.”

Just as significant is what the children do not do in this home: they take no interest in the personae and careers of pop musicians; they do not press their parents for cash for the latest video game; they are not preoccupied with the plot of a Fox television show; they do not stew over the fate of a professional sports team, or chatter on about a summer blockbuster film.

As far as I can tell, these parents have successfully embargoed the mass media. Before meeting people like this, I would have said that whatever the merits of getting the popular media out of the lives of children, as a practical matter it was impossible. Now I think if parents are committed, Hollywood, pop music, television, and websites can be kept out of children’s lives.

Education

Another pattern I see in racially conscious white parents is homeschooling. If they are not now educating their children at home, it is because of their present circumstances, and they hope to do so in the future.

Elizabeth, the New Hampshire parent, interrupted a career in investments to take over the education of her four children. “There is nothing more important I could be doing with my life than what I am doing now,” she explains.

I asked her what she wants most for her children. “Honor,” she immediately answered. “I want them to live honorable lives.”

“Your honor means everything,” Ken, who was sitting nearby, added. “Today, too few people understand that.”

“There is an old concept of wanting more for your children than you, yourself, had,” Elizabeth told me. “And part of that is you want them to have better educations than you did, or at least as good. With today’s schools that isn’t going to happen. Standards have been lowered. Kids aren’t being pushed in school. When Ken and I were going through school, you would fail if you didn’t do your work. But now everyone passes. There is a leveling going on in the schools. They operate so that no one is lower and no one is higher. The gifted children aren’t really encouraged to excel. The students don’t spend enough time reading, and they aren’t taught to think and analyze.”

“The worst kind of child abuse is to deny a child a decent education,” Ken added. “One of the strengths of this country used to be our public school system, but not now. We’ve lost something terribly important. Today’s graduates couldn’t compete with the graduates of the turn of the last century. And I think integration of the schools and immigration patterns since the 1960s have had something to do with that. Our schools are reflecting the needs and styles of a new clientele, and people like us are paying the price for it.

“You aren’t going to understand what is going on in education if you don’t take race into account — the direction federal programs take, the problems with city schools, what content is stressed, testing, whatever you are talking about. The schools are providing what amounts to an education for menials, not a great people.

“We point out more things to our children than the schools would. The schools are producing clones, everybody the same. A superior educational system promotes difference, not sameness. This whole egalitarian push that is the current fashion works against the advancement of the race. It is anti-selection. It keeps everybody at the level of the mediocre.”

“The problem from a racial standpoint,” Elizabeth offered, “is that we aren’t, as we once were, with our own. I want my kids to be in a stable environment, not one where there are various factions. Kids need stability. We used to have pride in our race and our heritage. We were proud of our forefathers. Now, if a white child says he is proud of his lines, proud of his race, he is considered a racist.”

“Before, Washington and Jefferson were our heroes,” Ken added. “Now, our idols are being wiped out and replaced by people like Martin Luther King. If you want to bring down a people, you rewrite its history and teach that to its children. You cut off children’s roots so they have nothing to tie into. They have abolished the study of Latin in the schools. Knowledge of Latin is essential to an educated person, and it is part of our racial and cultural roots. Over eighty percent of English words are derived from Latin. The Latin language has greatly influenced the development of the West. We make sure our children study Latin. There has been more than just a dumbing down in the schools. There has been a twisting down. The story of our race is being twisted. It is being perverted.”

I talked to James, their 13-year-old, about what he is reading. He said he is learning about Alexander the Great, whom he greatly admires — “He made history. I want to do that.” He told me he recently read Quo Vadis, Thomas Jefferson and His World, a book about John Paul Jones, some books about explorers, the Hobbit series, Alice in Wonderland, Arundel, by the historical novelist Kenneth Roberts, and some of the writings of Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Joseph C. Lincoln. He recommended that I read Roberts’ book, The Northwest Passage, and gave me his copy to take with me. What I gather from James is that he is on a quest: he is reaching out to learn; he is studying things. So many other youngsters his age go to class and do assignments, but do not actually study anything.

“We teach our children about their heritage,” says Ken, “the heritage of Western man. We give them the best our civilization has produced. The public schools aren’t doing that. We don’t get into every culture and subculture, because we don’t think those things are important. The schools impose doctrinaire opinions about the irrelevance of race. They push a concept of the role of women that in our view is unnatural. They promote internationalism. Schools are brainwashing white children to feel guilty about their heritage and turn away from it. Our children’s heritage includes Homer, Plato, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Beethoven. They have every right to be overwhelmingly proud of their people, but schools are molding them into raceless, historyless, malleable citizens of the world.”

It is true that teachers believe they have a responsibility to teach students new truths in the face of reactionary forces. This view is best articulated by the teaching profession’s most revered figure, John Dewey, who wrote, “Children must be conditioned, through gradual indoctrination, to reject the thought processes transmitted by their parents and churches, so that they may be prepared for the new world social order.”

Although Ken and Elizabeth are Catholic, they would not consider sending their children to parochial schools. In their view, Catholic schools reflect the same raceless view of man as the public schools, but add a religious aura that demands even more acquiescence.

Moreover, schools are where children congregate, all day, every day, year after year, and this has a big influence on them. School is where teenagers, especially, come to see themselves as a tribe apart, separate from their parents, from the larger culture, from the past and the future. The youth culture stresses what is happening now, with us, with our age group. The peer group has become so central, so consuming that the writer Judith Harris argues in her book The Nurture Assumption that culture is now being transmitted to a greater extent by peers than by parents and teachers. According to Mrs. Harris, the members of the older generation who most influence cultural transmission are those who have the attention of the peer group: product marketers and celebrities.

Ken and Elizabeth believe children are like sponges: absorbent and easily shaped. They want their children to have friends their own ages, but they chart directions and impose controls. They approve and disapprove of activities and associations. They want to know, at every moment, where their children are, whom they are with, and what they are doing. They screen the families with whom their children associate.

Elizabeth says her son James has become naturally selective in his friends: “He says there are a lot of children he has no interest in. He has nothing in common with them. He likes history and math, and all they want to talk about are CDs and sports.”

For people like Ken and Elizabeth, physical activity tends to be things like boating, hiking and swimming, or perhaps tennis or golf. They believe school and professional sports, television networks, and athletic shoe manufacturers make something trivial — team sports — appear vitally important. One parent described the physical activities for his children: “The great outdoors: hiking and camping and climbing. With us, there is no emphasis on organized sports.”

Elizabeth points out that there is no need to get along with everyone. “Unless you want to be a life insurance salesman,” adds Ken. “We want our children to make friends,” he continues, “but we want them to do it honestly and with integrity, and without losing their souls, which could easily happen. Life can be very unforgiving. Getting in with the wrong people can ruin someone’s life forever. That is why we set up protected environments and train our children from the beginning on correct socialization, correct interaction, and correct activities, so that when we are no longer there they can be proud of themselves and carry on their heritage and their race.”

As time went along, I noticed that the two girls in the New Hampshire family, ten-year-old Helen and eight-year-old Suzanna, always wore dresses. Ken explains that it underscores what he and his wife believe to be natural and healthy differences between boys and girls. “We teach our girls that the most important thing they can possibly do is be good mothers. We believe that the careers being pushed on girls by the feminists and the schools and the entertainment industry are a dead end. For our boys, we promote the manly virtues: responsibility, courage, hard work, and leadership.”

The last time I visited the New Hampshire family I spent a good amount of time with Helen. She has the bearing of a twelve- or thirteen-year-old, and I had to keep reminding myself she is only ten. She showed me some stories she had written, along with the illustrations she had drawn to accompany them, and I read aloud from her stories. She told me of the impressive list of books she had read and was reading, and of her love for horses. Throughout our time together, Helen was steady-eyed, positive, considerate, confident, unthreatened, respectful, self-expressive, and interested in me-and just ten years old.

At one point, I asked the question adults invariably ask: “I know it’s a long time off, Helen, but have you thought about college and what you want to do when you are older?” It has been my experience that most girls these days aspire to college and a career such as pilot, lawyer, or business executive. Not Helen. She matter-of-factly replied, “No, I don’t want to go to college. I want to train and board horses. I want a family.”

James says he plans to be a mathematician, and perhaps take over his father’s business providing actuarial advice to insurance companies. Like Helen, James seems older than other children his age. He has the bearing of a fifteen-year-old. My contact with Helen and James, as well as other children in similar families, has made me wonder whether today’s parents, schools, the media, and their peers keep children unduly immature.

James strikes me as a proud and independent young man. I mentioned to him that my students at the university assume that since he hasn’t been part of a school-based group he lacks social skills. “That’s ridiculous,” he quickly and forcefully replied. “If you’re congenial you can get along with anyone.” I found myself trying to remember the last time I heard a thirteen-year-old use the word “congenial.”

Keith, the father of three, describes his overall perspective on being a parent in a way that seems to speak for all the racially-conscious parents I have met. He says he and his wife are meeting what they consider to be their fundamental responsibility to rear children properly. They cannot count on the rest of society — schools, media, politicians, churches, journalists, intellectuals; none of them — to help. They are doing everything they can to pass on to their children, in his words, “racial idealism, the difference between right and wrong, personal responsibility, and strength of character — all the things our ancestors cherished and passed on to their children. We teach our children they belong to a great race of people. We teach them they should learn their own history, heritage, and culture before studying the ways of others. We teach them that their genetic inheritance and traditions must be protected and preserved and extended, and that they have a personal responsibility to do this.”

Robert S. Griffin is a professor of education at the University of Vermont. He is author of The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce.

BOOK REVIEW

When Whites Hunted Blacks

American race relations of 100 years ago.

Mark Bauerlein, Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906, Encounter Books, 2001, $25.95, 337 pp.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

Since the 1960s, race riots have consisted of blacks burning and looting their own neighborhoods, and attacking any whites they find. Racial mob violence has become a black monopoly threatened only occasionally by Hispanic rioters.

It was not always so. From the period after the War Between the States until the 1940s, race riots meant whites attacking blacks, usually in black areas. The last such riot took place in Detroit on June 20, 1943, when white mobs fought blacks in various parts of town, and even launched motorized raiding parties into black neighborhoods. Twenty-five blacks and nine whites died, in a culmination of tensions that arose from a sharp increase in the black population.

Today, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Cincinnati remind us that blacks still riot, but it is now almost impossible to imagine the reverse: whites stampeding through a city attacking blacks. Recent race riots are therefore the exact opposite of what they once were. Whites, who used to pursue and terrorize blacks are now, themselves, pursued and terrorized. What has changed in the last 50 years to turn prey into predator? Outwardly, very little. Whites are still the majority population and hold most positions of power. Blacks are still more crime-prone, and more likely to be poor and uneducated. Psychologically, however, American race relations have been turned inside-out, and to reconstruct the racial context of 60 or 70 years ago is to paint a picture of what might as well be a foreign country. This is what makes Negrophobia so interesting. A book-length account of a famous, early 20th-century race riot that relies on contemporary documents cannot help but reconstruct a social order that has vanished. Mark Bauerlein, who teaches English at Emory University in Atlanta, cannot forego a certain amount of shocked commentary, but his study of the 1906 Atlanta race riot largely lets participants and observers speak for themselves.

In 1906, Atlanta had approximately 150,000 inhabitants, of which about one third were black. The city had never had a race riot. As it does today, it liked to advertise itself as more interested in money-making than race-baiting. In 1895, Booker T. Washington had given his Atlanta Compromise Speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition, in which he denounced blacks who clamored for political and social equality. Negroes, he said, would make better progress by working hard and winning the genuine respect of whites than by agitating for voting rights and the abolition of Jim Crow.

Atlanta was, of course, segregated. Ponce de Leon Park had a prominent sign saying “Colored persons admitted as servants only.” There was very little social mixing of the races and no interracial “dating.” Even chain gangs and prisoners the state rented out to private employers might work together but had segregated housing. Whites were matter-of-fact about the failings of blacks. An 1899 report by the Georgia Prison Commission concluded that “after forty years of freedom and education,” the negro is “more criminal than when he possessed no education whatever.”

Just as they are today, black slums were hives of degeneracy, and both whites and respectable blacks were prepared to say so. A city council report of the period described the Decatur Street area close to downtown as full of “squalid negro hovels that teem with vice and vermin.” Here were the flop houses, cheap bars, and prostitutes that attracted a large, exclusively black clientele. Even the Voice of the Negro described Decatur Street as “a dark, almost impenetrable mass of humanity writhing in the densest ignorance and lowest morality,” and another black author called Decatur Street blacks “the dregs, the scum, the menace of municipal life.”

It was Decatur Street that prompted the Atlanta Evening News to ask, in an editorial, “Who will penetrate the darkened recesses of the negro mind?” The Atlanta Georgian (there were four daily newspapers in 1906) ran the headline “What is the Destiny of the Negro Race? Extinction?” and went on to speculate that health conditions were so bad in the slums that blacks might well die out.

At the same time, people of all races made a clear distinction between the unregenerate “Decatur Street negro” and the industrious, church-going “Auburn Avenue negro.” Blacks provided useful services as domestics and understrappers, and the more capable and ambitious had established a genuine middle class. According to an 1899 count, Atlanta had 61 businesses owned by blacks. Auburn Avenue was the favored address for black high society.

Despite the existence of a black middle class, this was not an era in which Southerners had illusions about racial equality or the desirability of integration. On August 4, 1906, the editor of the Atlanta Georgian wrote: “The best and only way to provide a political freedom for the white man and a social protection for the white race and sanctity for the women of the white race . . . is by reducing the negro for his own protection and for his own welfare, to the acceptance of a place of inferiority until such time as he can be separated from the white race and removed to another territory.”

This was a time when politicians voiced sentiments about race unimaginable today. In his 1906 campaign for governor, Hoke Smith said: “Those negroes who aspire to equality can leave; those who are contented to occupy the natural status of their race, the position of inferiority . . . will find themselves treated with greater kindness.” The press attributed his victory to a strong stand on the need to keep blacks from voting. In his victory speech, he said “a constitutional amendment must be passed . . . providing for the protection of the ballot box . . . against ignorant and purchasable negro votes.”

Even in a period when blacks were held in a distinctly subordinate position, there was still enough black crime to drive whites out of the city. Prof. Bauerlein reports that by the turn of the century Atlanta had already seen considerable white flight. Young families fled to the suburbs, away from the negro menace, but lived in areas with plenty of shrubbery that could conceal prowlers. Men took the streetcar into town to work, leaving wives and children at home, and this proved an irresistible temptation to black criminals.

Newspapers put crime stories on the front page and did not pretend, as they do today, that the race of victim or perpetrator were unimportant. It was common to find stories with headlines like “Miss Mittie Waits Given Bad Fright by Negro at Spring,” “$1,600 Reward to Capture Negro,” “Girl Jumps Into Closet to Escape Negro Brute,” or “Bold Negro Kisses White Girl’s Hand.”

Black crime was much on the minds of whites, and many took justice into their own hands. When a rape was reported, hundreds of white men — many of them armed — descended on the victim’s home. Some combed the area looking for blacks who matched the perpetrator’s description, while others waited at the house, hoping to serve summary justice. One 1906 headline in the Constitution claimed, probably with some exaggeration, “Mob of 2,000 Gathered at the Lawrence Home Anxious to Burn Negro.”

Search parties would return with terrified blacks, whom they exhibited to the victim. If the woman said he was the culprit, it was touch and go whether the authorities could save him from the mob. Prof. Bauerlein writes that policemen often showed great courage and finesse in spiriting black rapists out of the hands of vigilantes. Another 1906 newspaper account described a case in which they failed: “In less than two seconds after the negro brute . . . had been identified by the young woman . . . six bullets were tearing their way through his heart and he fell dying amid a solemn shout from half a hundred avengers.”

Although Southerners were sharply divided about the propriety of lynching, they were united in the view that violation of a white woman was a capital crime. They saw it not only as defilement of their women but as a deliberate attempt to humiliate whites as a race. Even at high levels of society, there was some support for mob justice which, through promptness and ferocity, was no doubt a strong deterrent. Rebecca Latimer Felton, who later became a Georgia state senator wrote: “If it needs lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession from the ravening human beasts — then I say lynch; lynch a thousand times a week if necessary.” The Georgian editorialized that “the negro has a monopoly on rape” and that if lynching didn’t stop them perhaps perpetrators should be surgically mutilated.

The early part of 1906 saw an effort to clean up the Decatur street “dives,” which many saw as a breeding ground for criminals and rapists. Reporters went along on inspection tours, and the Evening News described the discovery of a picture of a “horribly disgusting combination of a nude white woman with a negro man,” noting that such pictures were “the favorites among the negro frequenters.” (At the time, “nude” meant partially clothed and suggestively posed.) The Georgian wondered about the typical rapist: “Has he been in the habit of looking at the pictures which cover the walls of these low dives of iniquity?”

As was often the case with early race riots, it was reports of assaults on white women that sparked the violence on this occasion, and Prof. Bauerlein describes in detail how events unfolded. On Saturday, September 22, newspapers reported no fewer than three attempted rapes, with special “extra” editions on new developments. By the afternoon, men began to gather on street corners to discuss what should be done, and some beat up a few blacks. Mayor James Woodward, who was in the crowd, climbed onto a box and is reported to have said:

For God’s sake, men, go to your homes quietly and leave this matter in the hands of the law . . . What you may do in a few minutes of recklessness will take Atlanta many years to recover from. I implore you to leave this matter in the hands of the law . . .

The mob was in an ugly mood, and paid no attention to the mayor. A number of whites ran off towards Decatur Street to warn blacks there could be trouble. A crowd soon gathered at the corner of Decatur and Pryor Streets, but firemen set up water cannon to keep it out of the Negro quarter. A man is reported to have jumped onto a box and shouted: “It’s an outrage for men to let a little water scare them. I will lead the crowd right up Decatur Street.”

By 9:30 in the evening there were yet more newspaper “extras” predicting a race riot. Men poured into hardware and pawn shops to buy weapons. Anderson Hardware Company stayed open all night and sold its entire stock of 400 pistols and 100 rifles. The mayor and police chief ran from one end of town to another trying to cool passions, but the crowds only grew. Many men took streetcars in from the suburbs when they heard something was afoot, and by 10:00 p.m. there were an estimated 10,000 white men in the streets.

Rioting began in earnest, and continued through the night. There was some property damage, but the primary objective was to hunt blacks. The mob seems to have killed blacks who showed fight or shouted abuse, but did not generally beat to death those who simply cowered in fear. Most blacks fled, or found protection in the homes and businesses of white employers, and downtown was soon empty of blacks. The mob began to lie in wait for arriving streetcars, and pounced on unsuspecting black passengers. More than one conductor reportedly prevented further violence by pulling a pistol on assailants. Indeed, part of Prof. Bauerlein’s account reads like a tribute to an armed citizenry. Time and again, rioters looking for blacks sheltering in buildings were stopped by white proprietors who produced guns and announced they would shoot any man who stepped inside. Some police officers arrested rioters and saved blacks at considerable danger to themselves, while others let the mob have its way. Prof. Bauerlein notes that the mob was not indiscriminate; it seems not to have attacked women, and little black boys darted unscathed through the crowd, selling yet more “extras.” The death toll is estimated at 16, with perhaps 50 seriously injured.

By Sunday morning, the Fifth Georgia Infantry was on the streets, and the mob had spent its force. Streetcars ran according to schedule, but with extra conductors armed with shotguns. Peace returned to the city, but there were no shoeshine boys or porters at the railway station, and many black cooks, maids, and handymen stayed home.

All of the better element appear to have been outraged by the violence. By Monday, a number of whites were already in court for prosecution, where Judge Nash Broyles called them “a disgrace to Atlanta and the state in which you live.” Charles Hopkins of the Evening News board of directors wrote, “We have boasted of our superiority and we have now sunk to this level — we have shed the blood of our helpless wards.” He spearheaded a drive that raised $3,782 for the victims and their families. A committee of ten city notables issued a declaration saying: “The rioting of last Saturday night is a blot on the good name of the country, and an outrage on our Anglo-Saxon civilization.” The Evening News tried to explain the bloodshed this way: “There were thousands swept along by curiosity and with no intention of crime who added by their mere presence to the ferocity of the mob leaders, who saw these men behind them and imagined themselves supported by an army.” The Northern press was unanimous in condemnation, with the Philadelphia Press calling the riots “the most deplorable exhibition of race ferocity and savagery that this country has seen for many years.”

The police board charged several officers with dereliction of duty, and fired three, suspended two, and reprimanded one. Eventually, riot victims received more than $5,000 in compensation, both public and private. The book does not cite a single person, high or low, who is recorded as expressing the view that “the niggers got what they deserved.”

We find, therefore, another important difference between riots then and now. Today, virtually no one condemns black rioters in the blunt terms they deserve. Instead, black “leaders” point proudly to the savagery as proof of “institutional racism,” while whites fret about how they failed to “reach out” or “do more.” The contrast with white riots of the past could not be more striking. Even in a period of strict segregation, when politicians spoke about the necessarily “inferior position” of blacks, and newspapers discussed colonization, no one countenanced mob violence. No one agonized over the “root causes” of mayhem. No one thought rioters were anything but vicious thugs.

Today, in an era of invasive anti-discrimination laws and racial preferences, of celebrations of Black History Month and M.L. King Day, of constant glorification of diversity and black “culture,” at a time when white-on-black crime is so rare it makes headlines, politicians and commentators compete to see who can invent the most far-fetched excuses for black mobs. In the aftermath of the Cincinnati riots in April — or of any black riot — one would have searched the mainstream press in vain for the words with which whites condemned Atlanta in 1906: “shame,” “ferocity,” “outrage,” “savagery.” Indeed, for most blacks, the Los Angeles violence of 1992 — in which blacks killed ten whites — was not a riot but an “uprising.” Like the anti-white violence in Cincinnati it was a “wake-up call,” an expression of legitimate grievance whites had better redress. Needless to say, Prof. Bauerlein notes none of these contrasts.

Bits of racial history

Like any detailed study, however, Negrophobia turns up fascinating bits of racial history that run counter to current stereotypes of unanimous Southern contempt for the Negro. In setting the scene for the Atlanta riot, Prof. Bauerlein reports that Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman was a stage play before D.W. Griffith turned it into the movie Birth of a Nation. Many Southerners dismissed the play as “race baiting,” and the Chattanooga Daily Times called it a “riot breeder . . . designed to excite rage and race hatred.” It had toured Atlanta not long before the riots, and afterwards Montgomery, Savannah, Macon, and a number of other Southern cities tried to ban performances.

When the movie version came out in 1915, the city of St. Louis and the state of Ohio managed to prohibit it entirely, and children were kept out of screenings in Chicago. The New York Evening Post, along with the presidents of Harvard and the American Bar Association tried to prevent distribution, and Booker T. Washington called for a boycott. Today, “riot breeders” of a different kind — movies like Mississippi Burning, Malcolm X, and Amistad — face not the slightest resistance.

Negrophobia also gives interesting accounts of the career of Populist Tom Watson, of the struggle between the followers of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, and of the racial undercurrents of the 1906 governor’s race in Georgia. Whatever its ideological slant, there is much to be learned from any serious history that relies as heavily on primary sources as this one.

ARTICLE

Race in ‘The Real World’

Public humiliation of whites

by David Gancarz

Since 1991, MTV has been running a program called “The Real World.” It is considered the forerunner of “reality-based” television. (This should more accurately be called “situational stress” TV, since strangers are thrown together in a difficult environment to see who “survives” best).

In “The Real World,” seven volunteers from different backgrounds, races, ethnicities, erotic orientations, etc. live together for approximately five months in a luxury house or apartment while their interactions are taped. Depending on the mix of personalities and individuals, the scenes edited into each weekly episode can range from bland to titillating to explosive.

“The Real World” is now in its tenth season, and has returned to the city of its inception, Manhattan. The cast includes two black women, one black man, two white men, one white women, and one mixed-race Filipino-Irish woman. (I once wrote to the production company, Bunim/Murry Productions, to ask why they always choose stereotyped personalities such as the surfer dude, the angry black male, ad the scatterbrained blonde. I also said I thought an all-black cast would be very interesting to watch. I got a terse reply, saying they did not cast “types” but chose people to match the demographics of the MTV audience. They also said they thought an all-black cast would have limited appeal).

Since the producers tailor the cast for racial mixing, race inevitably erupts as an issue. Usually, it takes a good four or five episodes before people feel comfortable enough to talk about it, but in the latest installment, conflict begins in the very first episode.

Each season, MTV picks one wide-eyed, naïve young white man or woman who knows nothing about the etiquette — or, more properly, the minefield — of race. Last season, the victim was a young Mormon girl, Julie, who had to be told that, as a white person, she was never ever to use the word “nigger” or “nigga” at any time for any reason. Two black cast members explained that even if she heard black people use the word, if she used it she would be seen as an “oppressor” and would deserve whatever happened next. (Of course, Julie only awkwardly repeated the word “nigga” as used by someone else, but the two blacks thought it important to teach her this humiliating lesson, presumably for her own survival).

In this 10th season, the yokel is Mike from Parma, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb. Mike frequently describes his hometown as “white” or “really white.” In the casting preview in which Mike was interviewed, he said he had little contact with black people and that based on having met the select few chosen for the program he really wanted to get to know more. He said this was important, and would help him later in life. This innocent was not prepared for what he encountered.

In the first installment, Mike is seen going to breakfast with Coral (a black woman) and Malik (a black man). Coral and Malik start talking in general terms about how blacks in the past were denied access to education, and that it is important for them get into the best schools. Mike jumps in, agreeing that blacks have been denied good educations. With hopeless naïveté, he goes on to say he knows blacks in Cleveland don’t get quality education, because his uncle told him he won’t hire blacks. He had hired them in the past, but found them “slow,” and their educational background made them “slower.”

The race bomb explodes, and no one is safe from the shrapnel. Coral tries to remain calm but reverts to ebonics. “That ain’t got nothing to do with their education. Your uncle don’t like black people. Your uncle’s a racist.”

Mike protests and tries to explain, but the damage is done. Coral demands that she have the last word, and that the conversation end immediately. “Do you understand me?” she asks aggressively. Mike sheepishly withdraws.

Though he agrees that blacks do not get good educations the fact that a white man would even notice differences in results is enough to brand Mike as this season’s racist. Coral and Malik leave Mike behind. Malik, to his credit, tries to calm Coral by saying he thought it was refreshing someone could be that ignorant and therefore honest.

Coral will have none of it. Later in the program, she is on the phone saying things like “Once someone gets on my bad side, it’s very difficult to cross back over,” “I can’t see Mike and me having a ‘relationship’ where I’m not remembering ‘past errors,’” and that Mike is “going down.” She starts mocking Mike’s white mannerisms and speech, and makes fun of his hair.

The entire cast is put on notice that since Mike is a “racist,” he needs serious reeducation and that there will be no redemption unless he sincerely acknowledges his sins. The three black cast members naturally side together, though only Coral is directly confrontational. The white members all give Mike lessons in the fine art of racial survival. They take him on walks or to dinner, and explain to him that when he talks about race, he must think about what the other person may believe before saying a word. Basically, the whites explain that in order to maintain the appearance of good race relations, white people must censor everything they say to conform to what blacks may think. There must be general agreement on the thoughts we must profess in order to preserve a façade of racial harmony. The lesson seems to be that when a person of color is present or speaking, keep your mouth shut, nod in agreement, and keep your opinions to yourself.

Mike is left with his head spinning. He doesn’t understand how speaking honestly can get you into such serious trouble, but this, of course, is one of the great racial contradictions. Blacks say they want honest dialogue but that is not what they mean at all. What they really want is for whites to admit they are racists who oppress people of color. Anything resembling honesty is “racism.” Blacks don’t want an honest dialogue on race; they want a confession.

After much introspection and advice from others, Mike grovels. Coral forgives him but also makes it clear Mike is to watch every word he says. “Feel bad, be embarrassed,” she tells him.

The tragedy is that it is Mike’s intrinsic honesty and forthrightness, which in an all-white environment might have earned him respect, that do him in. A young man full of joy and excitement learns that to preserve a precarious racial balance, he must censor what he says and temper his enthusiasm. In just his first week on the program Mike learns an important lesson: that he is never to speak honestly about race.

David Gancarz lives in Buffalo, New York. “The Real World” is broadcast on MTV Tuesdays at 10 p.m. EST.

ARTICLE

A Reply to Dr. Trask

Christ’s injunctions are harder than Dr. Trask would have us believe.

Ronald K. Tacelli, SJ

H.A. Scott Trask has offered a startling and unique interpretation of Christ’s injunction to love one’s enemies. Jesus’ words, he tells us, sound “radical” and “all-embracing” — but only in English. Greek, he writes, “distinguishes between personal enemies and foreign enemies.” There is a specific Greek word — polemios — for one’s foreign enemy; but when “Christ commands Christians to ‘love their enemies’ (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:27, 35), he uses the word for one’s private enemy [echthros], that is to say someone with whom a Christian has quarreled. Never is this injunction applied to foreign enemies, the enemies of one’s people” (my emphasis).

This cannot, I think, sustain close scrutiny. The word echthros is used all the time in the Greek translation of the Old Testament for the enemies of the Jewish people: idolaters, those outside the covenant, foreigners (Egyptians and Canaanites, for example) whom the Israelites looked upon with (sometimes justified) suspicion and hostility. These were not necessarily people with whom the Jews were actually at war; that would have made them polemioi (from the Greek word for war). No, this attitude toward the other, the unchosen and uncircumcised, cut far deeper than official declarations of war and peace, or alliances forged and broken. The Lord himself hates those who worship idols, and for the faithful believer the enemies of God are his enemies, too (cf. Pss. 31:7; 139:22). The natural expression of deep-seated enmity is war. But before nations become full-fledged foes in battle (polemioi), they can still be foes of another, equally deep kind. That kind of enmity is what the word echthros normally conveys.

The opposite of enmity is love. And in Leviticus 19 Jews are commanded to love their neighbors [Gr: plêsion]. This means they are to love their fellow Israelites, the brethren of the covenant. They are not thereby commanded to hate non-Jews; and in fact the same chapter of Leviticus commands Jews not to molest the resident alien, to love him as they love themselves. The point is: loving one’s neighbor can (and did) co-exist with despising one’s enemy-especially nations and ethnic collectivities powerful enough to pose a possible threat to God’s chosen. In practice this surely meant that some segments of Jewish society instinctively viewed the Gentile world with mingled fear and loathing; in the Qumran community, for example, fully active at the time of Jesus, we find explicit expression of this attitude: One is to love all the children of the light and hate all the children of darkness.

Thus, when Jesus says, “You have heard it said, love your neighbor [plêsion] and hate your enemy,” he must have been making reference to attitudes prevalent among Jews of his day. And thus the word enemy cannot plausibly be taken to mean merely — or mainly — private enemy. He is saying that even those outside the covenant do not deserve instinctive hatred and contempt; that even they should be approached with love — i.e., with a will directed to their true good.

This does not mean Christians have to spurn the things that naturally claim their loyalty — family and nation and people. The love of these things is as noble and beautiful as anything in the created order. But the primary loyalty of Christians is to something — Someone — that may divide us from nation and family. The unifying life Christians share is deeper than these naturally good things and transcends the divisions intrinsic to them. That is why St. Paul makes the extraordinary claim: “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all”(Col. 3:13). That claim is extraordinary. Only a miracle of grace could bring it about.

But that miracle of grace does not eliminate nature with all its richness of distinction and division. Nor does it eliminate the need to respect the natural order of things and make decisions in conformity with it. The universal outreach of Christian love tells us nothing, for example, about immigration policy — except this: any such policy must genuinely cherish and seek to preserve the culture into which it invites others; it cannot have as its likely end social disruption and cultural decay. That would betray a callous indifference toward one’s own things, the things one has a natural duty to protect, as well as a lack of love for the other. After all, inviting people into a burgeoning social chaos — a chaos that the invitation itself helps set in motion — can hardly be called an act of willing their true good, can hardly be called an act of love.

The true love of enemies — the kind that includes “outsiders” and “foreigners” — need not therefore “do away with ethnic or national differences.” It is fully compatible with them. It is not, however, compatible with a vicious, dehumanizing contempt that can sometimes wear the mask of ethnic pride.

According to St. Paul, one of the glories of Christianity is the key it provides for overcoming ethnic hatred — and especially the bitter hostility between Jews and Gentiles displayed throughout sacred history. You Gentiles, he says, “were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For He himself is our peace who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility . . .” (Eph. 2: 11-4). The Greek word for “hostility,” by the way, is echthran.

Mr. Trask is right: self-hating madness has gripped many Christians in our time. But the antidote to madness is not self-delusion; and love for the faith is not shown by rejecting or diluting part of its message — sanding down the hard sayings to a scandal — free smoothness. If we Christians have to compromise the truth in order to defend ourselves, then we have already made the ultimate concession to the “enemy.”

Fr. Tacelli teaches philosophy at Boston College.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Special Forces to Save Whites

In South Africa, a former member of the special forces has founded a new security company to protect farmers. Wynand du Toit points out that more than 1,100 white farmers have been murdered since the ANC took power in 1994, and has no doubt about the purpose of the killings: “There are no traditional criminals involved in the farm attacks. It is well-planned, military-style operations that are taking place. It is a well-planned action [aimed at forcing] white farmers to abandon their farms so that blacks can move in.” Lately, he says, attackers let their victims call neighbors for help and then ambush and kill the rescuers as well. He adds that it is no accident blacks target children for rape and torture: “Children are the future. Destroying children prevents us from having a future. Of course, the killing of children is also a psychological onslaught against the farmer, which might force him to leave his farm in order to protect them.”

Mr. du Toit’s new security company, Lanseria Protection Services, has teams of ex-special forces men on call 24 hours a day, who can be helicoptered anywhere in the country or parachute out of airplanes. He says the attackers have been frightened away from the areas in which his men have been active, and that local farmers look on his service as their only hope for survival.

Mr. du Toit thinks the killings are orchestrated by the Pan African Congress, and that the ANC is not yet at the stage of systematically killing whites. At the same time, police morale is so low, and so many experienced white officers are quitting, he thinks that within several years it will not be possible to solve major crimes. He notes that whites cannot count on help from abroad: “I have not noticed any response from the U.N., U.S. or the UK to the killings by blacks of white farmers in South Africa. Remember, we are white. Only whites can be racist. Blacks can’t be racist. They do not lie, and in the eyes of many overseas people, these attacks must be seen as a justification of the past. I do not think that the U.N. will spend one minute a month on the murders in South Africa.” [Anthony C. LoBaido, Wynand du Toit, a Special Forces Hero Committed to Saving Farmers at Risk in Southern Africa, WorldNetDaily. com, Aug. 15, 2001.]

One of the more hideous recent attacks took place on July 27, when eight blacks attacked Mr. and Mrs. Johan le Grange, an impoverished rural couple in their 80s. They tortured both victims with hot irons and tore out fingernails before beating Mr. le Grange to death. Mrs. le Grange survived but remains severely traumatized. The men then went next door to the home of the le Grange’s daughter and her four-year-old daughter, whom they raped and tortured for several hours — but did not kill.

Henda Wolfardt, a South African farmer who lives near Ventersdorp with her husband and two sons has noticed a world-wide pattern: “The blacks are killing whites in Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa and even in the U.S. in the recent riots in Seattle and Cincinnati. In Australia, the Aborigines are calling for the blood of the white farmers. The Russians are fighting against Islam in Chechnya. White Christians are attacked in the Balkans and Macedonia. What will it take for people to wake up?” [Anthony C. LoBaido, Killing of South Africa Farmers Intensifies, WorldNet Daily.com, Aug. 1, 2001.]

Zim: Bad to Worse

Deterioration continues in Zimbabwe. On August 26, the British newspaper The Telegraph reported that it had received a copy of a secret government document called “Operation Give up and Leave,” which outlined a terror strategy for ridding the country of whites. “The operation should be thoroughly planned so that farmers are systematically harassed and mentally tortured and their farms destabilised until they give in and give up,” it read in part. It says the “Pamire-silencing method” should be used on any farmer who resists, a reference to Chris Pamire, a businessman who fell out with President Robert Mugabe and died in a mysterious road accident.

A Zimbabwe government spokesman says the document is rubbish, but events seem to be following its plan. Though the area around the town of Chinhoyi has been particularly hard hit by blacks looting and vandalizing white farm houses, the town itself has been safe. Recently, Pres. Mugabe’s followers forced all whites off the streets of Chinhoyi, beating up any they could find. Joy Moolman, a white farmer’s wife, has circulated an e-mail message reporting that blacks later went on an especially nasty tear through the countryside, turning out whites and making off with wagon loads of their possessions. Mrs. Moolman writes that her husband is a pilot and flew over the area reporting which way the gangs were headed so farmers could evacuate their families.

Under the title “Whites Finished in Zimbabwe,” the August 12 issue of the British newspaper Daily Mail published a letter from a white Zimbabwean that read, in part: “There is a fin de atmosphere among white people now, a sad, bitter resignation to the fact that our world is crumbling around us. It’s like going through a bereavement for the beloved country many of our families came to from England 100 years ago. It’s an agonising process: anger, denial, bargaining — then maybe death.

“The entire younger generation of whites know they are not wanted and have left or are leaving. The older generation is still desperate to live out what remains of their lives in what is left of British colonial style . . .”

“Suburban street signs have been removed wholesale — we think they are being melted down and made into coffin handles. Graves have been opened, corpses dumped in the bush and coffins taken for resale, spruced up with the aluminum from the signs.”

He writes that the whole country feels like one big departure lounge, as whites clear out. At 50,000, whites are 0.6 percent of the population, down from 200,000 when Robert Mugabe came to power and asked whites to stay. Even face to face with hatred, whites seem unwilling to shed their illusions. The man writes that one white “revealed that what really depressed him was the seeming indifference of most black Zimbabweans to what is happening to the whites.”

He continues: “The government knows if it can drive whites out of Zimbabwe the rest of the world, and particularly the Western media, will lose interest and then it will be able to deal with its political opposition in no uncertain terms. If that happens, there will be a descent into poverty and terror from which Zimbabwe, once a civilised and sophisticated nation, may never emerge.”

What has been the reaction in white nations to this clear example of ethnic cleansing? Australian MPs have discussed the possibility of asking Mr. Mugabe not to come to the October Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Brisbane. Members of the European Parliament have urged the 15 member states to freeze any bank accounts held by Mr. Mugabe, to refuse to let him visit, and to consider suspending financial aid to Zimbabwe. American congressmen have considered — but not passed — legislation to impose financial sanctions.

In the latest round of pusillanimity, Britain has agreed to head up a group to compensate whites for the farmland to be taken from them, if Mr. Mugabe will only agree to an orderly, non-violent program of dispossession. Mr. Mugabe says he will study the agreement, announced September 7 in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, in late August, Britain denied asylum to a white Zimbabwean fruit farmer who was beaten unconscious by Zimbabwean authorities who also murdered his girlfriend. Roy Page says he is afraid to go home, and says a number of his 300 former employees were killed simply for saying they wanted him back. The British position is that Mr. Page has nothing to fear if he returns, but has permitted him to appeal the ruling. [Christina Lamb and David Bamber, Mugabe’s Secret Plan to Evict All Whites, Telegraph (London), Aug. 26, 2001. Zimbabwe Denies It Plans to Evict All White Farmers, Reuters, Aug. 27, 2001. Kathy Kittley, Beaten-up Farmer Pleads to Stay Here, Telegraph, Aug. 30, 2001. David Blair, The Last Gamble of Zimbabwe’s White Tribe, Telegraph, Aug. 18, 2001. Glenn McKenzie, Zimbabwe to Stop Occupying White Farms, AP, Sept. 7, 2001.]

Durban Debacle

Meanwhile, the nine days of bile and blather known as the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance staggered to a close in Durban, South Africa. After a day of overtime, the South African foreign minister abruptly declared the conference over, since the interpreters had gone home. Many of the 9,000 participants were upset that the conference was dominated by arguments over Israel and reparations for slavery, which overshadowed their claims to victimhood. Kurds, Indian untouchables, homosexuals, and “refugees” said they didn’t get the attention they deserved. Arturo Sanchez came all the way from Mexico to alert the world to the troubles of “multiple minorities” — who may be young, black, poor and homosexual — but says no one noticed. “The governments aren’t seeing us as a priority because we aren’t Palestinian,” he says. There was a huge fight before the conference to make sure everyone talked about “indigenous peoples” (with an “s”) rather than “indigenous people,” and Eskimos and Indians were distressed that the “s” didn’t always appear in the final documents. Needless to say, no one had much to say about anti-white atrocities in Southern Africa.

There was unhappy compromise on the big issues of the day. Israel was not officially declared a “racist” state, but concern was expressed “about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupation,” and there was a call to let refugees — understood to be Palestinians — return to their homes. The trans-Atlantic slave trade was dubbed an “appalling tragedy” and current slavery was called “a crime against humanity,” but no one offered reparations. A half-dozen members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus left early when prospects dimmed for a shakedown, but Jesse Jackson stayed to the bitter end, hoping for handouts.

Nigeria was the only African country officially to oppose reparations, but there have been other dissidents. Abdoulaye Wade, president of Senegal and descendant of slave-holders, says he is insulted by demands for reparations. “If one can claim reparations for slavery, the slaves of my ancestors or their descendants can also claim money from me, because slavery has been practiced by all people in the world,” he says.

Although the conference never mentioned it officially, some people were graceless enough to point out that although the Atlantic slave trade went on for a couple of hundred years, Arabs and East Africans trafficked humans for 1,000 years. One of the best-known slavers was nick-named Tippu Tip from the sound his guns made. Based in Zanzibar, this son of an Arab slaver and black mother led expeditions of up to 4,000 men into the interior to bring out slaves and ivory. His great-great-granddaughter, Ummi Hammid, says she is neither proud nor ashamed of her ancestor’s slaving but notes “He was a very good businessman.”

Jesse Jackson sees no subtleties or complexities. He says the United States only pretended to walk out of the conference because of Israel-bashing, and that what Americans feared most was talk of reparations. He says he will make reparations the number-one American civil rights issue for the fall. [Steve Miller, Jackson to Make Reparations for Blacks in U.S. a Priority, Washington Times, Sept. 7, 2001, p. A1. Betsy Pisik, Racism Parley Irks Overlooked Groups, Washington Times, Sept. 8, 2001, p. A5. Betsy Pisik, Bid to Censure Israel at Racism Summit Foiled, Washington Times, Sept. 9, 2001, p. A1. George Mwangi, Slaver Descendant Not Proud or Ashamed, AP, Sept. 6, 2001. Senegal’s Leader ‘Insulted’ by Slavery Demand, AP, Aug. 30, 2001.]

Escalation in France

At about 11:30 p.m. on September 1st-Saturday-police in Béziers in southern France got a call about a fight in a tough neighborhood between Gypsies and North Africans. When four officers pulled up, a round from a rocket launcher blew off the back of their patrol car. Miraculously, no one was hurt. The assailant disappeared, but telephoned Béziers police to say he was laying siege to police headquarters and was going to “kill cops.” The officer in charge called the mayor’s chief of staff for security matters at home, and Jean Faret got out of bed to drive to headquarters. By chance, two assailants saw him stop for gas. They killed him with a machine gun and escaped into the night to make more taunting calls to the police.

At 11:00 in the morning, officers persuaded the caller to meet them at the parking lot of the town’s convention center for “a real duel.” Safir Bghiouia, a 25-year-old North African showed up in a stolen BMW, stepped out of the car and pointed a machine gun at police who promptly killed him. Inside the BMW were the rocket launcher, an assault rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, explosives and detonators. Police knew Mr. Bghiouia as a small-time car thief but do not know how he managed to acquire an arsenal. His accomplice has disappeared.

“This is war,” says Raymond Couderc, mayor of Béziers. “They have attacked police headquarters and killed my chief of staff in cold blood. Events of this kind strike at the very foundations of the republic.” [Catherine Bernard, A Béziers, Coup de Sang au Lance-roquettes (Bloodshed by Rocket Launcher), Libération, Sept. 3, 2001.]

Tunneling to England

Each night, hundreds of Third Worlders try to sneak into the railway tunnel under the English Channel, which links France and Britain. They try to hop freight or passenger trains, or even hike the 31-miles to England. If they hop wrong they can be killed or lose a leg. The ones who are caught aren’t repatriated — they go home to the Red Cross refugee camp at nearby Sangatte, France, where they rest up for the next attempt to get across. Although they have already managed to make it to France — where they could apply for political asylum — the word is out that the British are an easier touch, and that Britain is a good jumping-off point for the United States. During the first six months of this year, police caught 18,500 illegals trying to get to England through the tunnel. During that period, 3,200 made it, and promptly applied for asylum. The British government wants to fine the Eurotunnel company $2,905 for each illegal alien who gets through, and a bill to that effect was to go before Parliament on September 18. [Keith B. Richburg, Perilous Passage: Refugees Try to Flee Via Eurotunnel, Washington Post, September 3, 2001, p. A14.]

Judicial Restraint

Judge Charles R. Jones of the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was upset because he thought the court didn’t hire enough blacks. On January 31, 56-year-old Judge Jones arrived at work to help interview lawyers who wanted a staff job at the court. Instead of interviewing, Judge Jones, who is black, started swearing at the two fellow judges on the hiring committee, Miriam Waltzer and Steven Plotkin, both white.

“He called me a bitch, he called me a liar, he called me a conniver, that I pretended to be as innocent as the driven snow, and I was in on the conspiracy and on and on,” Judge Waltzer told the Louisiana Judiciary Committee, which investigated the incident. Every one of his sentences, she said, started with an expletive. When Judge Jones turned toward her, Judge Waltzer thought, “Is he going to hit me? What is he going to do?”

Judge Plotkin, 64, tried to intervene on behalf of his lady colleague. He says he called Judge Jones a bully and told him he resented his foul language. Judge Jones replied with another string of expletives. “He was just rageful, loud, screaming, yelling, angry. I mean, it was a demonstration on his part . . . of rage, as best as I can describe it.” A court deputy who witnessed the encounter said Judge Jones was “cussing and hollering and going on. The words were coming out of his mouth so fast. He was saying ‘You all are sons of bitches, you are all f***ing sons of bitches. You all are after my job, you all have always been after my job.”

Judge Jones then told Judge Plotkin, “Get out of my face,” and pushed him. Judge Plotkin pushed back. The six-foot, 200-pound Judge Jones then took a swing at the 5-foot four-inch, 155-pound Judge Plotkin, picked him up, and, according to Judge Waltzer, threw him either on or against a table. “And all the time he was cursing. I mean, he never stopped cursing,” Judge Waltzer told the judiciary committee. Judge Plotkin ended up on the floor in a daze, bleeding from a gash on his head.

Despite the testimony of witnesses, Judge Jones maintained that Judge Plotkin was the aggressor and threw the first punch. He denied arriving at the meeting angry, and further denied that he cursed at Judge Waltzer or was “spewing obscenities.” He did admit, however, that he did use “the F word.” “And I know I used it more than once,” he told the judiciary committee. Judge Jones also admitted he had problems with his temper. “I’ve been trying to use restraint,” he said. “And [in] that incident with Judge Plotkin, I thought I was using restraint.”

On August 8, the Louisiana Judiciary Committee ruled that Judge Jones disgraced the judiciary, and has recommended to the Louisiana Supreme Court that he be suspended for three months without pay and ordered to pay the $4,772 costs of the investigation. Judge Jones was unavailable for comment after the committee ruling, but his lawyer says the court’s record of minority hiring deserved more public attention than the fight. “Hopefully,” she adds, “now that the recommendation and entire record of the matter are public, this topic can be afforded the focus it deserves.” [Gwen Filosa, Suspension Endorsed for Judge, Times-Picayune (New Orleans), August 9, 2001, p. A-1.]

Another Hoax

32-year-old Camille Fulton made headlines in August after she showed up at a Texas hospital with bumps, bruises, and the letters “KKK” carved on her chest. She claimed she was abducted by two hooded white men in a pickup truck, who held her for 17 hours, sexually assaulted her, and scratched the letters into her skin. Miss Fulton made fewer headlines in September when she admitted to Cass County police that she made up the story and defaced herself with a pair of scissors. Police got suspicious when they noticed the letters were backwards. Miss Fulton, who says she doesn’t know why she faked the attack, was charged on September 6 with felonies for filing false information and fabricating evidence. A warrant was issued for her arrest, but she has disappeared.

Meanwhile, the Texas NAACP is suspicious of Miss Fuller’s recantation, and is conducting its own investigation in light of the area’s “history of racial incidents.” Miss Fuller’s family says authorities made her change her story. [Woman Says Men Carved KKK on Her Chest, AP, September 4, 2001. Woman Recants KKK Attack Story, AP, September 4, 2001. Kidnapping “Victim” Admits to Making the Whole Thing Up, KTLV.com, September 4, 2001. Woman Charged With Filing False Claim That She Was Abducted, Beaten and Sexually Assaulted, AP, September 6, 2001.]

Burn Down the Fire House

Firemen in the overwhelmingly black town of East St. Louis, Illinois, often put out fires deliberately set in abandoned buildings. Recently, they got three calls between midnight and 1:00 a.m. at a time when only three men were on duty. As they were busily putting out a blaze at an abandoned building, they got another call — their own firehouse was burning. By the time they got back, it was almost completely destroyed. The building appears to have been burgled and then set ablaze. [Arsonists Hit Firehouse, International Fire Fighter, March-April, 2001.]

Strictly Local News

On May 8, 2000, Leo Cavallaro, Jr. and his son, Leo III, were driving to West Memphis, Arkansas, to pick up some auto parts. The elder Mr. Cavallaro noticed that a friend had been pulled over by an Edmonson police officer, who was issuing a ticket. Officer David Turner, who is black, was out of his jurisdiction, and Mr. Cavallaro stopped to explain to his friend that he could therefore get the ticket revoked.

As Mr. Cavallaro approached, Officer Turner told him he was interfering with a traffic stop and to return to his truck. Officer Turner and Mr. Cavallaro, who was white, began arguing. Mr. Cavallaro pointed his finger at Officer Turner, whereupon the policeman grabbed his finger, bending it all the way back. He then struck Mr. Cavallaro several times in the head with his fist. Mr. Cavallaro suffered a fractured skull from the beating. He went into a coma and died on November 10, 2000, never having regained consciousness. When the younger Mr. Cavallaro tried to help his father, he says Officer Turner told him “to get back to the f***ing truck or I’d be in the same situation.”

In August, Officer Turner was tried for second-degree murder but got a hung jury. Crittenden County prosecutors say they will try him again. [Kenneth Heard, Son Testifies on Blows Fatal to Dad, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock), August 8, 2001, p. B1.]

‘He Loved His Children’

George McHeard, III was a Pratt City, Alabama, black who left behind at least 16 children when he was murdered on April 3, 2000, at age 21. According to his mother, Audrey Williams, Mr. McHeard had children by at least nine different women. She says her son was a good father: “He loved his children and took care of them. He bought them whatever they needed.”

Mr. McHeard also loved fast cars and motorcycles, and had some kind of business buying and selling them, though the business had neither a name nor an office. One of his children is named Mercedes and another is named Infiniti. The program for his funeral devoted a full page to pictures of fancy cars he had owned. The service was marred by a brawl involving at least three of the mothers of Mr. McHeard’s children. Police restored order.

At the time of his funeral, police still had no leads on killer or motive, but Mr. McHeard’s mother could tell something had been wrong. During the week before his death she said her son was unusually quiet. “He just wasn’t saying anything,” she said. “It was like he knew his time was up.” [Toraine Norris, Slain Father Left 16 Kids at Age 21, Birmingham News, April 12, 2000.]

Rat Attack

On July 11, Kevin Jordan, a black cocaine dealer, hit Elizabeth Garcia in the back of the head with a fistful of keys as she pushed her 17-month old daughter’s stroller down the sidewalk on Manhattan’s First Avenue. Mr. Jordan then kicked over the stroller, which tumbled into traffic. Several cars managed to swerve out of the way, and the baby was unhurt, but Mrs. Garcia was hospitalized. Mr. Jordan, on the run from police for three weeks after skipping out on a pre-sentencing examination, says he attacked her because she is white. “White people treat me like a rat!” he told police. Mr. Jordan will undergo a psychiatric examination to determine his fitness to stand trial. [Larry Celona and Laura Italiano, Racism Behind Stroller Attack: DA, New York Post, July 13, 2001, p. 2.]

Rodney Gets High

On August 28, a motel clerk in Claremont, California, called police to report a guest acting strangely. When police arrived, they discovered the guest was Rodney King, the black criminal who won $3.8 million in a civil rights lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles after police beat him in 1991. According to Lieutenant Gary Jenkins of the Claremont police, “The officers determined that King was possibly under the influence of PCP and [he] was subsequently arrested without incident.” Mr. King was booked for PCP use, a misdemeanor. This is only the latest arrest for Mr. King, who has been convicted of drunk driving and hit-and-run-driving, and plead guilty to misdemeanor spousal abuse. [LAPD Beating Victim Rodney King Arrested, AP, August 28, 2001.]

The policemen who stopped Mr. King in 1991 thought he was on PCP, which would have explained why he was so difficult to subdue.

Border Casualty

The following letter appeared in American Legion:

As a property owner in southern Arizona, I am familiar with the problems facing our country on the U.S.-Mexico border. The problem is escalating and has hit my home radically.

On Feb. 12, my husband was murdered in our home by drug smugglers who were upset that he patrolled our property with a million-candle-power light. They lost a sizable drug load and assumed he was responsible for the bust. He was not responsible, but was killed nonetheless . . .

On the border in the Douglas/Naco sector, where my home is located, local ranchers are threatened with litigation by the Mexican government if they defend their own property. Yet my husband can be murdered in cold blood in his own bed and we can do nothing?

If the U.S. government doesn’t send the military in, they are negligent in protecting citizens, especially those living close to the border. My husband’s life was taken from him at 47, leaving behind six children, four stepchildren and a wife. How many more families must suffer before the government takes control of our borders? [Deborah Divver, Letters, American Legion, May, 2001.]

Blacks Leaving

Large numbers of blacks are leaving San Francisco. Since 1990, more than 18,500 have left, a decline of 23 percent. In 1970, 96,000 blacks lived in San Francisco, but today there are only 60,515 — eight percent of a total population of 776,773. Whites are just under 50 percent and Asians 30 percent. At more than 150,000, there are two-and-a-half times as many Chinese in San Francisco as blacks.

Population experts say blacks are leaving because of high housing costs, and a desire to be with people like themselves. According to William Banks, a black studies professor at the University of California at Berkeley, many want to be closer to family or want their children to grow up with other blacks. “People will move where they can feel at home,” says Prof. Banks. “There you have the institutions intact.” Prof. Banks lives in Hayward, a suburb across San Francisco Bay, whose black population has risen 40 percent since 1990. San Francisco’s one black neighborhood — Bayview-Hunters Point — is becoming less black all the time, as more Asians and Hispanics move in. [Olga R. Rodriguez, Blacks Leaving San Francisco in Droves, Census Shows, AP, September 7, 2001.]

Cultural Misunderstanding

Last year the State Department decided to resettle 3,800 Sudanese men in their late teens and early 20s — the so-called “Lost Boys of Sudan” — in various places around the United States. Before coming here, the Lost Boys had spent a decade in refugee camps, and were unfamiliar with electricity, motor vehicles, and cold weather. Two dozen settled in Arlington, Massachusetts, with the help of the nearly all-white congregation of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church.

On August 24, 19-year-old Lost Boy Daniel Majok Kachuol was lounging outside his apartment when a 20-year-old woman walked by. According to her, Mr. Kachuol introduced himself, then grabbed her by the arm and pinned her against the side of the building. “You’re beautiful, I love you,” he said, and burned her finger with a cigarette. The woman says Mr. Kachuol then threw her to the ground and began raping her with his finger. Another resident of the building heard her yelling, and pushed Mr. Kachuol off of her. Mr. Kachuol plead not guilty to charges of rape and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. The Lutherans vowed to stand by him, and posted $50,000 bail. As Pastor Susan Henry explains, “He’s a member of the congregation. He’s part of the family.” Susan Bailey, 28, who lives across the street from the apartment building, has a theory about what happened. “We feel it was probably a cultural misunderstanding,” she says. [Ellen Barry, One of Sudan’s ‘Lost Boys’ is Charged With Rape, Boston Globe, Aug. 28, 2001. Farah Stockman and Ellen Barry, Charges, Racist Flyers Test Church, Boston Globe, Sept. 3, 2001.]

Raping Australian Whites

Last month we reported a spate of gang-rapes of white Australian teenage girls in Sydney by men described as “Middle-Easterners.” The culprits who, in some cases, told their victims they deserved to be raped because they were Australian, are now known to have been Lebanese. In one case, a teenage girl was raped over a period of six hours by at least 15 men, some of whom used cell phones to ring up friends and invite them to the party. The first two gang-rapists to plead guilty got sentences of six years and 18 months respectively. Robert Carr, premier of New South Wales has led opposition against the lenient sentences. He also says current rules for identifying crime suspects — “aborigine,” “white,” or “Asian” — are too narrow, and should include “Middle Eastern.”

Talk show callers are promising revenge, and have hardly been mollified by the explanation of one criminal — who came from Lebanon in 1993 — that he didn’t realize rape and forcible fellatio were crimes. Pauline Hanson, the leader of the anti-immigration One Nation party, called for Australia to introduce “Singapore-style” justice, with flogging of rapists. “A lot of these people are Muslims,” she says, “and they have no respect for the Christian way of life that this country’s based on.” [Patrick Barkham, Crime Pays for Australian Right, Guardian (England), Aug. 27, 2001. Melissa Fyfe, Ethnic Crime Debate Rages Out of Control on Sydney Airwaves, The Age (Australia), Aug. 25, 2001.]

Kill the ‘Racists’

Simon Sue, a 19-year-old mixed Chinese/Indian whose parents immigrated from Guyana, lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He organized a paramilitary-style organization called OARA, inspired by insurgency groups in Guyana, and had several white high school students as members. He reportedly made them pass inspections, file monthly reports, and turn over part of their earnings from after-school jobs. The group was opposed to drugs, “racism,” alcohol, and homosexuality.

One day, when a white member, Isaac Grimes, was visiting a classmate, Tony Dutcher, he heard Tony’s grandfather refer to Mr. Sue as a “chink.” He reported this to Mr. Sue, who decided the Dutchers would have to be killed. He allegedly told Isaac to draw up a plan to kill the “racists,” but was not satisfied with it, and had another white member, Jonathan Matheny, draw up a better one.

Reportedly acting on this plan, Isaac and Jonathan visited the Dutchers on New Year’s Eve and had dinner with the family. Late that night, Isaac slit Tony Dutcher’s throat while he lay in a sleeping bag. Authorities think it was his friend Jonathan who then shot the grandparents, first killing Mr. Dutcher. Mrs. Dutcher ran into the bathroom but was shot six times through the door and left with her head in the toilet.

Isaac Grimes, Jonathan Matheny, and Simon Sue are all charged with murder, but Mr. Sue’s lawyers say the slightly-built young man could not possibly have forced the boys to kill the Dutchers. They say he cannot be guilty because he was vacationing in Canada with his parents at the time of the killings. Prosecutors point out he was in telephone contact with Isaac and Jonathan just before and after the murders, and that he told the boys he would kill their parents if they did not obey him. [Erin Emery, Motive in Slayings: Getting Rid of ‘Racist,’ Denver Post, July 24, 2001. Steve Lipsher, Witness: Racial Slur Led to Triple Killing, Denver Post, Sept. 6, 2001. Steve Lipsher, Hearing Delayed in Triple-Slaying, Denver Post, Sept. 7, 2001.]

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — Referring to Stephen Webster’s “Writing on the Wall,” how do children of mixed race fit into his analysis? How are they counted and what is their effect? I would like to read more on this subject and hope AR will look into it.

Ben Quatrano, Clearwater, Fla.

Editor’s note: The 2000 Census was the first to include a multi-racial category. 6,826,228 people, 2.4 percent of the population, listed themselves as being of “two or more races.” The census bureau recognizes 63 racial categories — white alone, black alone, American Indian and Alaska Native alone, Asian alone, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander alone, some other race alone, and 57 possible combinations of the above six categories.

The number of mixed-race children has doubled in each of the last three censuses. There were 460,000 mixed children in 1970, 996,070 in 1980, and almost 2 million in 1990. In 1990, children in mixed-race households accounted for 4 percent of all children in households. The 2000 numbers have not yet been released.

Sir — The simple answer to Tomislav Sunic’s question, “Can Europe Learn the Lesson of Yugoslavia?”, is “probably not.” Judging by the reaction of political decision-makers in Europe, the omens of future disaster seem likely to go unheeded.

In Britain, where I live, we are currently playing host to some 150,000 new asylum seekers every year, drawn from across the globe. At the time of writing, one Lebanese refugee is being accommodated in a “100-a-night hotel in Central London. Prof. Richard Lynn has described most of our inner cities as in a “state of low-level civil war,” and this summer the civil war heated up considerably in northern towns like, Oldham, Burnley and Bradford. The response of our elected representatives has veered from the abysmal to the comical. The Home Office has proposed increased funding for immigrants to learn English, on the assumption that if we have a lingua franca our problems will be solved. Our rulers forget that every citizen of what used to be Yugoslavia could understand Serbo-Croatian.

John Atkinson, Whitehaven, England

Sir — Greetings from Mexico City North, Texico (formerly known as Dallas, Texas). I left Texas for a few years in 1991 to do some postdoctoral work. When I returned in 1996 I was astonished at the changes I saw. Mexicans were literally everywhere. In just a few years there had been a major demographic shift. I simply don’t understand this insatiable need the ruling class in this country has to commit cultural suicide.

I appreciated your appearance on the Mark Davis show. It is great to hear common sense on the radio.

Joe Capehart, Dallas, Texas

Sir — I read with great interest Scott Trask’s September review of the classic Prescott accounts of the conquests of Mexico and Peru, and I appreciate his pointing out how different the spirit of the conquistadors is from that of today’s whites. Although I do not wish to detract from the extraordinary achievements of Cortes and Pizarro, surely their success was due as much to the tenor of the times as to their own toughness and daring. One does not have to go back that many years to find whole generations of whites who were, by today’s standards, incredibly tough and daring.

The waves of whites who settled the West led lives of great exertion and danger. The men who fought the War Between the States were also, by today’s standards, incredibly tough and daring. Even the generation that fought the Japanese in the Pacific seems like a different species from today’s pampered whites. In fact, there is a certain continuity of spirit that stretches from ancient Greece up until perhaps 50 or 60 years ago, when we entered an age in which whites suddenly begin to act denatured.

Perhaps, with a little more historical perspective, we will better understand the causes of this collapse, but I am certain wealth has something to do with it. For the huge majority of whites, physical labor — the exhausting struggle for survival — ended with their parents’ or grandparents’ generation. By historical standards whites live lives of unimaginable pleasure and leisure and this, surely, drains them of some of the toughness and daring of their ancestors. Today, there might be a single man as extraordinary as Cortes, but could he find 600 others willing to risk everything to follow him? Nothing weakens and distracts men more than an easy life.

Alex Herbert, Newport News, Va.

Sir — I was interested to note your September O Tempora item about a federal appeals court ruling that under certain circumstances prison authorities have a duty to segregate prisoners to prevent racial conflict and violence. It is only good sense to do this, just as it is only good sense for the races to remain separate generally. I feel great pity for white prisoners forced into close quarters with often predatory blacks, but perhaps we can hope their suffering may lead to insights about human nature and the realization that we should build a society that does not always try to defy it.

Mary Cartenour, Philadelphia, Pa.

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