April 1999

American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 10, No. 4 April 1999

 

CONTENTS

A Land of Their Own
America up for Grabs
The Religion of Anti-racism
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

A Land of Their Own

Blacks have a long history of separatist movements.

The founding fathers, like many other great men in American history, recognized the problems of multi-racialism and wanted to avoid them. Some of this country’s most prominent 19th-century leaders supported the efforts of the American Colonization Society to help blacks return to Africa. Throughout American history whites have distanced themselves from blacks, sometimes by custom, sometimes by law.

It is less well known that blacks also have a long history of separatist and “back-to-Africa” movements. Some of these were attempts to escape slavery or second-class citizenship, but others were expressions of black pride and racial nationalism. What they all had in common was the understanding that multi-racialism does not work, and that the best hope for blacks was that they be free to shape their own destiny.

Although Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) was the best known and most influential of the black separatists, several lesser-known men were actually more successful — sometimes remarkably so — in helping American blacks move to Africa or establish black communities in the United States. Today, most blacks see the advantages of remaining within the larger white society — from which, unlike whites, they can withdraw into self-consciously racial groups and organizations whenever they like — but there are still many who would prefer complete separation.

Early Efforts

Paul Cuffee (1759–1817), a free, half-black, half-American Indian Quaker from Massachusetts, started the first black separatist movement in 1816. He concluded it was best for American blacks to leave the country rather than try to change it, and managed to get the financial backing from the British government to transport 38 free blacks to Sierra Leone. This West African nation had been established by the British as a haven for free and escaped slaves. Originally a private preserve of abolitionists and philanthropists, the government took it over in 1807 after banning slavery throughout the empire.

These movements recognized that multi-racialism does not work, and that the best hope for blacks was that they be free to shape their own destiny.

Cuffee died a year after this first voyage, unable to carry out his plans to resettle more blacks. It would be almost 40 years before another serious movement arose to continue his work, but two specific events revived separatist sentiment among the leading blacks of the mid-19th century: Liberian independence and the Fugitive Slave Act.

In 1847 Liberia declared independence. The country’s leaders were free American blacks who had been transported to Africa by the American Colonization Society. Thanks to the help and financial support of the ACS, the colony had been a success. Blacks were able to go to Africa without fear of starving or being killed by hostile natives and, what is more, Liberia was governed by blacks. “Back to Africa” was no longer just a dream.

Republic of Liberia

Just three years later, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which allowed owners of runaway slaves to reclaim them even if they escaped to free states. This was a great setback even for northern blacks, since there were cases of free blacks being taken into slavery either mistakenly or deliberately for the reward money offered for escaped slaves. The act symbolized the precarious status of blacks, and had the effect of increasing black emigration to Canada.

Spurred by this legislation, a national black emigration convention in Cleveland in 1854 drew the leading separatists of the period. Describing their situation as one of “disappointment, discouragement, and degradation,” because of the continuation of slavery, they discussed emigration — though they decided against leaving the Western Hemisphere. Other black emigration conventions were held in 1856 and 1858 though no relocations ever resulted from them.

One person at the initial convention was a physician named Martin R. Delany (1812–1885). He had originally proposed a “Caribbean Negro Empire,” but by 1859 was the chief commissioner of a party exploring the Niger Valley in West Africa. Delany came up with a plan to transport blacks to Africa and grow cotton. The profits would not only sustain the African economy but would cut into the profits of slaveholders in America. He succeeded in signing land treaties with African chiefs but his project was stalled by the start of the Civil War and was later abandoned. Many blacks expected the war to bring about a radical change in the status of blacks, and this dampened colonization and separatist sentiment.

With the end of Reconstruction, blacks realized that although they were free, most whites did not want them. Abraham Lincoln himself had called blacks “a troublesome presence,” and urged them to resettle in Latin America. By that time the ACS had lost its momentum but several black leaders were still calling for colonization in Africa. Richard H. Cain, an influential black minister and newspaper editor from South Carolina, claimed in 1876 that “thousands” of blacks in the state would leave for Liberia if transportation were furnished them. Martin Delany, by that time a judge in Charleston, lent his support, and the result was the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company. It acquired a ship named the Azor and set sail for Liberia with 206 blacks on board. Twenty-three died of disease during the “middle passage,” and this disastrous first voyage sent the poorly-managed company into bankruptcy. The deaths reminded blacks of the dangers of relocating to Africa and cooled the ardor of would-be emigrants.

Old Map of Africa

Not all separatist movements involved returning to Africa. Benjamin “Pap” Singleton (1809–1892), an illiterate former slave, settled 7,500 blacks in Kansas during the 1870s. According to Singleton, blacks needed land of their own. He argued that once the war was over, “the whites had the lands and the sense an’ the blacks had nothin’ but their freedom.” Known as “the father of the Black Exodus,” Singleton was a kind of black Horace Greeley, urging his people to go west and grow up with the country. Singleton found an audience in the huge camps for newly-freed slaves that the Union army set up after the war. Here he worked as a coffin- and cabinetmaker, and urged destitute ex-slaves to leave the South. In 1872 he started a homestead association, and in 1875 he established the Tennessee Emigration Society, which left no doubt as to why blacks should leave: “To the white people of Tennessee, and them alone, are due the ills borne by the colored people of this State.” The society sent delegates to Morris County, Kansas, to establish a “colony” for blacks, which was named Dunlap. A few years later, Singleton plastered posters around Nashville announcing, “Leave for Kansas on April 15, 1878,” and over 2,000 blacks joined the initial exodus. Reaction from whites was mainly ridicule: “A foolish project,” remarked the Nashville Union and American. Even the famous black abolitionist Frederick Douglass criticized the move, saying that blacks should stay in the South and fight for equality.

Kansas was not the Canaan Singleton was hoping for. Whites did not want thousands of blacks pouring into the state and were hostile to the settlers from Tennessee. Singleton eventually gave up on his plans for black autonomy in America and formed the United Transatlantic Society in 1885 to help blacks return to Africa. His society passed resolutions favoring “Negro national existence,” and called a separate nation necessary for black survival. Although Singleton died in 1892 without having led any blacks to Africa, for a man who could not read or write, and who spent 59 of his 83 years as a slave, his life was one of extraordinary vision and achievement.

Black separatism produced its share of colorful characters. One of the most colorful was a self-styled African chief named Alfred Charles Sam, who was active around the time of the First World War. Though he called himself Chief Sam, he was not from Africa but from one of the all-black communities of Oklahoma. The cotton depression of 1913 increased interest among blacks in Sam’s back-to-Africa schemes. He traveled extensively, selling stock in his Akin Trading Company and forming clubs to generate support for his plans. He filled the minds of gullible blacks with stories of bread-bearing trees and diamonds littering the ground after rain storms. The NAACP, which opposed the emigration movement, called Chief Sam a charlatan.

Sam, who compared himself to Moses, did manage to accompany one shipload of blacks to the promised land. In 1914, his ship, the Liberia, set sail from Galveston, Texas, with sixty passengers. In the Gold Coast (now Ghana), they encountered tropical diseases rather than bread-bearing tress, and most of the settlers returned to the United States. Sam, however, stayed in Africa until his death several years later.

Marcus Garvey

The largest black separatist movement in American history was led by Marcus Garvey, who founded what may have been the first such movement that was not just an escape from whites but a real expression of black pride. Born in Jamaica in 1887, Garvey moved to England in his early twenties, where he worked for a magazine called African Times and Orient Review that advocated home rule for Egypt. Returning to Jamaica in 1914, he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), with considerable support from whites. Its original goal was not separation but unity and “to raise them [blacks] to the standards of civilized approval.” It’s motto was “One God! One Aim! One Destiny!”

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey

Garvey moved to the United States in 1916 in the hope of raising money from black leaders to start a school in Jamaica modeled on the Tuskegee Institute. His thinking changed as he got to know America. Disillusioned by anti-black race riots and what he saw as obstacles to black progress, he gave up on integration and by 1919 was calling for separation. Garvey believed that racial equality was impossible unless the races were on the same economic level, but thought blacks could not compete because they did not control institutions. Accordingly, he believed blacks must have their own institutions in a separate homeland, which was to be in Africa.

Garvey advocated the theory of “race first,” meaning that black people worldwide should put racial interests before all others. The official UNIA newspaper Negro World was the most widely read black paper in America, and had as its motto “Up, you mighty race!” Directing his appeal to darker-skinned blacks, Garvey exalted everything African and even disparaged lighter-skinned blacks. Much like modern-day black radicals, he condemned Western civilization but claimed that blacks had actually created it. He formed his own “African Orthodox Church,” and portrayed God, Christ, and Mary as black saying, “only the Negro’s devil would be white.” He was the first well-known proponent of “black is beautiful,” and may have originated the phrase.

He called for separate schools that taught black pride and history. Though he would later work with the Ku Klux Klan to promote separation, he wanted to avoid any alliances with other races. The UNIA supported racial purity and forbade intermarriage. Garvey wrote, “I am conscious of the fact that slavery brought upon us the curse of many colors within the Negro race, but that is no reason . . . [to] perpetuate the evil. . . .” Blacks could not even have pictures of whites in their homes.

Garvey’s main rival was the light-skinned, integrationist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963), whom he criticized for “advocat[ing] racial amalgamation or general miscegenation with the hope of creating a new type of colored race by wiping out both black and white.” Du Bois, in turn, claimed that “Marcus Garvey is, without doubt, the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and the world,” and was “either a lunatic or a traitor.” Indeed, when Garvey went to New Orleans to meet with leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, he told them, “This is a white man’s country. He found it, he conquered it, and we can’t blame him if he wants to keep it. I am not vexed with the white man of the south for Jim Crowing me because I am black. I never built any street cars or railroads. The white man built them for his convenience. And if I don’t want to ride where he’s willing to let me ride, then I’d better walk.” Though he claimed he was just trying to get blacks to build their own infrastructure, such statements infuriated black integrationists.

In 1921 Garvey announced his plan for an “Empire of Africa” with himself as Provisional President. He would model his “empire” on Europe, complete with Dukes of the Niger, Knights of the Nile, and Knights of the Distinguished Service Order of Ethiopia. He designed a red black and green flag for his empire and it’s national anthem was, “Ethiopia, Thou Land of Our Fathers:”

Ethiopia, Thou land of our fathers, Thou land where the gods loved to be, As storm cloud at night suddenly gathers Our armies come rushing to thee. We must in the fight be victorious When swords are thrust outward to gleam; For us will the vict’ry be glorious When led by the red, black and green.

Advance, advance to victory,

Let Africa be free.

Advance to meet the foe

With the might

Of the red, the black, and the green.

Red was the color of blood, black the color of the race, and green was the color of leafy Africa. These are still the colors of the pan-African movement.

Garvey supported Senator Joseph France who wanted the United States to forgive all World War I debts in return for the defeated nations’ African colonies, which would become an independent African-American nation. Garvey planned to build it up into an industrial power and conquer all of Africa, thus freeing it from European colonizers: “we mean to retake every square inch of the twelve million square miles of African territory belonging to us by right divine.”

In the early twenties, Garvey claimed that six million blacks world- wide were UNIA members and that it had 700 chapters in 38 states. The association owned a chain of restaurants and grocery stores, laundries, a hotel, and a printing press. Perhaps the height of his power was a 1920 international UNIA convention with delegates from 25 countries, which climaxed with a parade of 50,000 through the streets of Harlem.

To show that blacks could own and operate businesses (and ultimately to transport blacks to Africa), Garvey established the Black Star Steamship Line (BSL). Though whites helped to get the line started, it had only black stockholders and officers. The company sold five-dollar stock certificates exclusively to blacks. The BSL raised over $600,000 this way and acquired three ships. This was an important achievement for black Americans and thousands showed up in New York to see the ceremonial launch of the first ship, the Yarmuth. Garvey told his followers, “Remember, the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation is not a private company. The ships that are owned by this corporation are the property of the Negro race.” Garvey operated the ships commercially in the Caribbean — complete with all-black crews — as a symbol of black success.

The Yarmuth, with black captain Joshua Cockburn at the helm, made three trips to the Caribbean, carrying passengers and cargo. Blacks came out in crowds to greet the ship wherever it docked. One officer wrote, “I was amazed that the Yarmuth had become such a symbol for colored people of every land.” A collision in 1920, just one year after the ship was acquired, put the Yarmuth out of service.

A second ship, the Shadyside, ferried passengers along the Hudson River for one summer, but during the winter of 1920 it split a seam during an ice storm and sank. A third ship, the Kanawha, was plagued by mechanical problems and chronic incompetence by its crew. Several trips were scuttled because of problems with the boilers and engines. Garvey accused the captain and chief engineer of drunkenness. The officers often gambled on board, and the captain even interrupted a voyage to make an unscheduled stop in Norfolk, Virginia, to see his wife. After an intake of sea water ruined the boilers the crew left the Kanawha for junk in a Cuban port.

What was to be a shining symbol of black efficiency became a symbol of mismanagement. The line lost $47 million, and by 1922 was in bankruptcy. Garvey complained that “graft, thievery and sabotage” ruined the BSL, and accused the captains of hiring and overpaying their friends and family. He accused officers of deliberately damaging ships so they could get kickbacks on repairs. Captain Cockburn of the Yarmuth admitted to getting an $8,000 kickback on a $16,000 engine repair. “That man Cockburn!” said Garvey, “May God damn him in eternal oblivion. That man had in his hands the commercial destiny on the seas of the black man. He sold it, every bit of it, for a mess of pottage.”

In 1922, Garvey’s critics, including his old nemesis Du Bois, called for a complete investigation of the BSL, and Garvey was charged with mail fraud for selling stock in the already bankrupt shipping line. Du Bois called for him to be “locked up or sent home.” At his 1925 trial he acted as his own lawyer, and was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. While he was still in prison, the UNIA sued him for spending association money on himself. In 1927, responding to a campaign by Garvey supporters, President Coolidge pardoned him and deported him to Jamaica. Garvey eventually made his way to London where he expressed profound admiration for Benito Mussolini. Garvey claimed authorship of Mussolini’s philosophy, saying “we were the first fascists.” However, in Britain the father of black nationalism and the most popular black separatist could not draw crowds, and was eventually reduced to soap-box appearances at Hyde Park Corner, where he became a regular attraction. He died in 1940 in virtual obscurity.

Separatism Today?

After the collapse of the Garvey movement, black separatism lost ground to integration and the civil rights movement. In the early 1960s, however, black muslim Malcolm X (1925–1965) revived the idea. He even met with the Ku Klux Klan to ask its help in starting a homeland. Though he is generally said to have embraced integration after his pilgrimage to Mecca, he would accept whites only if they converted to Islam.

Malcolm X

Malcolm X (Credit Image: © MediaDrum via ZUMA Press)

Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975), the founder of the Nation of Islam, was also a firm believer in racial separation. In 1962, he invited American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell to address the nation’s annual convention. Muhammad praised the racial separatism advocated by Rockwell, and sharply criticized black integrationists.

Today it is Louis Farrakhan, who took over the Nation of Islam after Muhammad’s death, who is the leading black separatist. In every issue of The Final Call, the nation’s official newspaper, there is a page that lists the organization’s beliefs. The most important are written in bold-face type and include point number four:

We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents were descendants of slaves, to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own — either on this continent or elsewhere. We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to maintain and supply our needs in this separate territory for the next 20 to 25 years — until we are able to produce and supply our own needs.

However, only blacks can choose separation:

We want every Black man and woman to have the freedom to accept or reject being separated from the slave master’s children and establish a land of their own.

We know that the above plan for the solution of the Black and white conflict is the best and only answer to the problem between two people.

The Nation of Islam also states, “We believe that the offer of integration is hypocritical and it is made by those who are trying to deceive the Black peoples into believing that their 400-year-old open enemies of freedom, justice and equality are, all of a sudden, their “friends.’ Furthermore, we believe that such deception is intended to prevent Black people from realizing that the time in history has arrived for the separation from the whites of this nation.”

Although this sounds unequivocal, there are good reasons to doubt Mr. Farrakhan’s sincerity. Years ago, he offered to take the blacks from America’s jails and lead them to a new home in Africa, but he no longer talks about separation. His 1995 “Million Man March” drew between 400,000 and 1,000,000 blacks to Washington, D.C., and the world media covered his speech to this enormous crowd. Though he spoke for several hours, not once did he mention separation.

Given the subservience of today’s whites and their compulsion to promote the interests of every race but their own, blacks have little reason to leave. Because whites are so easily intimidated, Mr. Farrakhan has great leverage so long as his movement remains within the United States. The merest hint of separation is a powerful weapon against anyone too weak to call his bluff. Many blacks must also know that a black-run nation would be plagued with the same problems as black-run schools and cities. Perhaps it is better to live in an efficient, industrialized country run by terrified whites than to be masters of Haiti or Liberia.

 

SIDEBAR

The Rise of All-Black Towns

Though black separatist movements failed to relocate many blacks to Africa, some were able to establish communities in the United States, particularly in the Midwest. Approximately 60 black towns sprang up across America between 1865 and 1915. These towns were not accidents of demography but planned, segregated communities where blacks could determine their own destinies.

Little has been written about such places as Nicodemus, Kansas; Mound Bayou, Mississippi; Langston City and Clearview, Oklahoma or Allens-worth, California but all were founded by blacks so they could live away from whites. Almost all were farming towns, and most did not make it through the Depression because they failed to develop more than one-crop economies.

Perhaps the most successful black town was Boley, Oklahoma. In 1904, after railroad tracks had been laid down in Oklahoma, President Theodore Roosevelt authorized sale of much of the land. A group of whites led by speculator W.H. Boley bought a parcel of land to create a township and make a profit selling lots to new settlers. Faced with competition for white settlers in already-established railway towns, and with no black town nearby, the speculators decided that making Boley a black town would be more profitable. By 1905, over 400 blacks had settled in Boley, with most coming from the South. By 1908 the population exceeded 1,000, and by 1914 it had grown to 5,000, making it the largest all-black town in the Midwest. Interestingly, the area had an original black population of “freedmen” who were former slaves of Creek Indians. The black settlers initially encountered hostility from the freedmen, which sometimes broke out into violence. After the settlers outnumbered the freedmen, the hostility took the milder form of complete social separation.

Influenced by Booker T. Washington’s (1856-1915) ideals of racial pride, the town’s motto was “All Men Up — Not Some Men Down.” The town newspaper, the Boley Progress, and the social elite stressed black pride and self-sufficiency.

The decline of Boley began after World War I as cotton — the town’s main crop — failed as a cash crop. Peanuts were tried as a substitute but did not provide the same income. Merchants lost money and soon Boley began to lose citizens. In 1939, the town declared bankruptcy and lost its bank and railroad station. By 1960, the population was down to a little over 500. By 1990, however, the population was up to 915, though 40 percent of families were living in poverty and the median house value was $18,500. Also, by 1990, Boley was 37 percent white, and hardly anyone worked as a farmer.

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ARTICLE

America up for Grabs

The SPLC view of the world.

SPLC Southern Poverty Law Center logo

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a Montgomery, Alabama, organization that monitors “hate.” Founded by Morris Dees, it has accumulated tens of millions of dollars through sensational direct mail campaigns seeking money to combat the rising tide of “bigotry.” The SPLC has been prominent in trying to publicize the hidden “white supremacy” of the Council of Conservative Citizens, and its director of publications, Mark Potok, has been widely quoted as an expert on the true nature of the C of CC.

On March 2, James Lubinskas and I attended a lecture Mr. Potok gave on the “hate movement,” at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The lecture was free and Washington is about two-thirds black, but there were perhaps only a dozen blacks among the audience of well over 300.

Mr. Potok stuck to the usual theme of the relentlessly growing threat of “hate.” He reported that the number of “hate” groups was up 20 percent in 1996 and six percent in 1997. He said this was particularly worrying because “hatred” normally subsides when the economy is strong. As causes of this increase, he first mentioned the disappearance of good, union jobs and the resulting disaffection of blue-collar whites. He then spoke at length of the power of the Internet to promote “hate” and “white supremacy.” According to his count, the number of “hate sites” increased 60 percent in 1998, and many are “beautifully done.” He is concerned that they seem to be appealing to college-bound teenagers and that the Internet gives what he called “lone haters” a network and community. “They don’t feel isolated and crushed anymore,” he explained. Mr. Potok also mentioned “white power rock and roll” as another ominous new recruiting tool.

Perhaps most disturbing, however, was the “very good organizing work” the leaders of the movement have been doing for “over 30 years.” According to Mr. Potok, by a stroke of near-genius, “white supremacists” have managed to channel discontent about other issues straight into their own campaigns. They have drawn on anger over gun control and “simple resentment of the federal government” to start the militia movement which, in his view, is largely a cover for “white supremacy.” Abortion is another issue that has been “picked up by the movement.”

Mr. Potok spoke at some length about other things he seems to think are associated more or less closely with a larger “white supremacy” movement: the Republic of Texas, the common law movement, the League of the South, and a number of recently-foiled plots to bomb government buildings. He is particularly outraged by the League of the South — which advocates secession and independence for the former Confederacy — because it is “just filled up with PhDs and university professors.” Although they may not be militant hate mongers themselves, their reactionary views on race and the South “give academic, cultural, and historical legitimacy to those with white supremacist views.”

Mr. Potok finds that AR plays a similar but more sinister role. Its articles and conferences are a “safe haven” for “racial science,” for misguided academics who can boast that they are “not afraid of the PC dictatorship.” Prof. Glayde Whitney of Florida State University, who has written for AR and spoken at a conference, is an example of “a tenured professor” lending the “sheen of legitimacy” to white supremacy. Mr. Potok summarized the work of Philippe Rushton, another conference speaker, in the usual single sentence: “There is an inverse relationship between brain size and penis size.” People like Prof. Whitney and Prof. Rushton are important because their work is “sucked up wholesale by the real white supremacists.” Mr. Potok claims to believe that the question of race and IQ “cannot be sorted out and never will be sorted out,” but if the truth is unknowable it is odd that we must act as if we are certain race has nothing to do with IQ.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Potok spent some time denouncing the C of CC, which he called “an out-and-out white supremacist group” that is “far more dangerous than any Klan or Neo-Nazi group.” Although the council does not advocate violence, it creates the atmosphere in which violence flourishes.

Mr. Potok also mentioned “wide-spread fear of the loss of a white majority” as a reason for increased “hatred.” He said people are saying, “This isn’t the country I grew up in; something’s wrong out there,” but he assured the audience that diversity is “something to be celebrated.” Nevertheless, Mr. Potok obliquely recognized the revolutionary character of what is happening. He said that globalization and multi-national enterprises mean that “the whole notion of the nation state is really in trouble.” As a consequence, “the whole concept of America is up for grabs in a way it hasn’t been for years.” He believes that this state of psychological flux means that the country could conceivably be “grabbed” by racial nationalism.

Two of Mr. Potok’s most detested enemies are the Christian Identity movement and William Pierce’s National Alliance. He described and decried the beliefs of Identity Christianity and then made the surprising claim that increasingly “Christian Identity is the glue that holds the radical right together.”

He reported that Mr. Pierce has had the “very clever idea” of drawing whites into his organization through Euro-American cultural festivals that attract Irish dancers, bag-pipers and the like. As Mr. Potok put it, “what are really ethnic societies are being pulled into a fascist movement.” He also believes that through his contacts with European miscreants, Mr. Pierce is “organizing an international fascist revolution.”

Much as he abhors what the “haters” say, Mr. Potok does not advocate censorship. However, he does not exactly see an exalted role for the SPLC in talking back. “Let them say what they want on the Internet,” he explained. “We’ll tell people what they really are.” “A few of the leaders of this movement have criminal histories,” he added; “They’re petty crooks.” The SPLC therefore does not counter free speech with corrective speech; instead it makes ad hominem charges.

There was a very limited question period after the talk, but both Jim Lubinskas and I were able to speak. Mr. Lubinskas wanted to know why Hispanics are a victim category for hate crimes but not a perpetrator category, and whether it is fair for hate crimes committed by Hispanics to be attributed to “whites.” Mr. Potok did not appear to hear the question properly, and after a rambling answer about the imprecision of ethnic labeling conceded, “I know I’m not really answering your question.”

I asked why the United States should seek diversity and dispossession while non-white countries may maintain their majority populations. He bravely took the position that non-white countries should seek diversity and dilution too!

It is useful to know what frightens the organized opponents of the traditional American republic and why. However, the SPLC’s main tactic of simply “un-masking” people as “white supremacists” is not likely to work for much longer. Increasingly, only fanatics are likely to be convinced by such intellectually empty tactics. Moreover, the group is openly hypocritical. It repeatedly claims that even the mildest racial message creates an atmosphere of “hatred” that can lead to violence, yet its very purpose is to stir up the worst sort of hostility against people who express certain ideas. If the leaders of the C of CC or the staff of AR are ever attacked, would the SPLC ever concede that it contributed to an “atmosphere of violence?”

Finally, although it preens itself on respect for free speech, its legal strategies are a clear attempt to stifle speech. It brings civil suits for “conspiracy” when there are insufficient grounds for criminal charges — in effect, bullying ideological opponents into silence.

It is dawning on more and more people that “watch-dog groups” that call people names and try to shut them up may simply be unable to counter the ideas they oppose with anything like real arguments.

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BOOK REVIEW

The Religion of Anti-Racism

A field manual for subversion.

Beyond Heroes and Holidays: A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development, Enid Lee, Deborah Menkart and Margo Okazawa-Rey (Eds.), Network of Educators on the Americas, 1998, $27.00, 464 pp. (soft cover), ordering information: (202) 429-0137.

Most people know that teachers and professors are well to the left of most Americans — their loonier antics sometimes make it into the press — but few outsiders any idea of the real designs “anti-racists” have on American children. Beyond Heroes and Holidays is a collection of 80-odd essays by “progressive” school teachers and education professors about how to use the classroom to fight “racism.” It is supposed to be a guide for training teachers and instructing students — but is nothing less than a field manual for the subversion of American society.

Beyond Heroes and Holidays- A Practical Guide to K-12 Anti-Racist, Multicultural Education and Staff Development

This is a characterization many of the authors would not dispute. Anyone who can drag himself through the more than 450 large-format pages of this book soon learns that everything in America — including the economic system — will have to be revamped in order to eradicate “racism.” The authors, who include education professors at well-regarded universities, have a mentality exactly like that of doctrinaire Marxists. Although they never mention Marx or Communism, and they write about “transformation” rather than “revolution,” they have the same totalitarian compulsion to control and reform every detail of our lives. They even have the equivalent of dialectical materialism. Just as Marxists used the dialectic to interpret reality, they use “critical thinking” to interpret everything — and I mean everything — in terms of “racism,” “sexism,” and a batch of other “isms.” What the “crits” have established is a militant, secular religion, with schools as churches and children as compulsory congregations.

The central message of this religion is that every group difference is proof of exploitation, and every form of exploitation has been perfected by whites. The history of whites is an unending chronicle of rapine and despoliation, and only when these sins have been atoned for and all group differences eradicated will there be justice.

The “crits” do not yet control society but they control what they teach: “All aspects of the curriculum [must] integrate multicultural, critical thinking and justice concepts and practice.” “Diversity and equity issues are integrated into all aspects of the teacher-training curriculum.” This is necessary because, as one of the editors of the book puts it with breath-taking finality, “The purpose of education in an unjust society is to bring about equality and justice.” Thus, “schools should be the place where students can analyze the forces which maintain injustice and develop the knowledge, hope and strategies needed to create a more just society for us all.”

In short, education is indoctrination and its purpose is political: “Every student whom we help to read and write is being provided with tools to defend herself or himself. We are helping prepare them for the onslaught of antihuman practices that this nation and other nations are facing today: racism, sexism, and the greed for money and human labor that disguises itself as “globalization.’”

Success is measured by how many students can be turned into anti-racist fanatics, and properly managed students can be made to unbosom grateful testimonials like: “I also learned that all the institutions in this country are inherently racist and exist for the purpose of maintaining the power and wealth of the dominant group.” (Emphasis added)

Curing Whites

Because whites are the world’s biggest problem, the fight against “racism” begins with them. This book emphasizes over and over that “racism” is not just a matter of thoughts and acts. It is an entire way of being that permeates society, institutions, and whites as a group. We know most whites are openly, hopelessly “racist,” but what about the ones who think they are not? They must be made to understand that “racism” is not something practiced by other whites but is in the very marrow of their bones. As one anti-racist expert explains, his job is to take well-meaning white naïfs and give them “a new recognition of themselves as race-privileged, capable of racist thoughts and behaviors.” All whites are “racist” whatever their intentions, whereas no non-whites are “racist.”

This goes without saying for most of the authors, but one or two try to explain it. As Peggy McIntosh of Wellesley, a celebrated proponent of this goofiness explains, inherent “racism” is all about something called “unearned privilege:”

‘I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.’ ‘I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.’ ‘I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.’ ‘I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.’ ‘I can choose blemish cover or bandages in ‘flesh’ color and have them more or less match my skin.’

As Miss McIntosh explains, for non-whites these privileges are experienced as oppression. “Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit in turn upon people of color,” she explains. Not recognizing and renouncing “privilege” is the same as oppressing non-whites.

Of course, nearly all the “privileges” Miss McIntosh describes are found just about everywhere. Japanese and Nigerians see people of their own race on television, too. A Frenchman living in Japan presumably suffers just like a black in America. There is the further implication that American whites gain some kind of stupendous advantage simply because non-whites live here. Having millions of poor, crime-prone, violent people among us gives us a great advantage over Norwegians, for example, who presumably don’t experience “white skin privilege” ten times a day the way we do. It beggars the imagination how anyone could have thought of anything so stupid but, as Miss McIntosh explains, it is vital to open whites’ eyes to how awful their country really is: “To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions.”

This doctrine of inherent racism is so weird and implausible it takes a lifetime to master it: “Because the ideology of White racial superiority is so deeply embedded in our culture, the process of “unlearning racism’ is a journey we [whites] need to continue throughout our lives.” “Keep in mind that learning about racial identity and racism is a lifelong process.” “Racism is learned, and it can be unlearned, but it takes a commitment to stay aware, to keep working and to accept the unlearning as a lifelong journey.”

Start Early

The authors all agree that anti-racist education has to start just as soon as teachers get their hands on children. Even for pre-schoolers, we are to “integrate anti-bias issues into every theme,” and put toddlers through “activism activities” that will teach them that “injustice is not overcome by magic or by wishes, but that people make it happen and that each one of them can make it happen.”

Teachers must be ready to pounce whenever a child utters an act of oppression, and the book offers such improbable examples as: “People in wheelchairs can’t be mommies and daddies,” or (to a child with lesbian parents) “you can’t have two mommies,” or “she dresses like a Puerto Rican.”

One recommended exercise is to get a box of bandages, put them on black children, and jeer at any company that would claim they are “flesh colored.” Advanced subjects can be made to scratch out letters of protest to the company. Other lessons can be learned by getting children to designate parking spaces for handicapped people and having the children issue “tickets” to violators. Classroom walls should be covered with pictures that refute stereotypes: black doctors, white janitors, people in wheelchairs at the beach, etc.

Day care staff should rewrite children’s books. The story of the three pigs, for example, implies that European-style brick buildings are superior to Third-World straw and stick houses. The wolf should be changed into an elephant that blasts water from its trunk. The Third-World house of sticks survives because it is on stilts while the brick house floods.

Another “teaching tool” is to get parents of toddlers to come to class and “share” experiences of “racism.” But it is best to get children themselves on the march. Trot them down to greeting card stores to yell because there aren’t “cards or decorations for non dominant holidays.” Or, says one author, pre-schoolers can be made to protest non-union fruit [!]. Better still, children can be put to work for the staff’s own selfish interests. The book actually recommends that little ones be taught “why better wages are necessary for child care center staff,” and be recruited to help teachers “working in their union to get smaller classroom sizes.”

Once children are older, there are countless techniques for attacking “the dominant culture,” and the book suggests particularly lively ways to take the stuffing out of whites. Children can pretend to be Congressmen debating the Indian Removal Act of 1830, or can try to think of all the evil motives for the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the 19th century. They should put on a mock trial of “the profit system” as the cause of the drug trade, as they consider “drugs as a weapon against the Black community.” Students can draw cartoons about the “racism” they experience, or can collect tourist brochures about Hawaii and note that they fail to mention that whites seized the islands and raped the culture. They can discuss why Thanksgiving Day can be thought of as a day of mourning, or take turns answering the question: “What is your earliest recollection of being excluded because of your race or culture?” Whites can keep diaries of the unearned privileges they enjoy each day. Children can pretend to be Congressmen at the 1870s hearings on KKK violence. To learn about today’s Klan, they should get anti-Klan activists — not Klan members — to speak to the class. Students should be trained in “critical literacy,” which is the ability to detect oppressive messages in books, newspapers, and advertising. A very common theme is to get students to devise “action plans” for combating “racism” in their schools.

Clearly, the object is to rear up fanatical little busy-bodies who will be a kind of anti-racist Red Guard. It is important constantly to remind children of oppression, and never to let the favored groups forget they are victims. One workshop “to explore and celebrate what it is like to be a girl,” was a success because participants later said things like, “I learned that too many young women are being disrespected by young men.”

In one school, “activist” teachers got students to start a Let’s-Stop-Racism-in-Our School campaign. (One complaint had been that a girl said a teacher told her to “prove others wrong and not get pregnant by the age of sixteen like all the other Puerto Rican girls.”) At their first session, how did they prepare for the campaign? “Students reenacted the forced migration of over fifty million Africans brought to the Americas and sold into slavery, and the slaughtering of native Americans for land and gold.”

Heroes and Holidays

The title of this book makes the point that tacking a few non-white heroes onto the curriculum or eating tacos on Cinco de Mayo is not good enough. Every lesson in every subject must be propaganda. Besides, whooping up the occasional distinguished Negro may give the false impression that talented non-whites can get ahead in America. Nevertheless, to supplement the usual study of King and Harriet Tubman, the authors recommend that students look into 150 or so lesser-known “activists for social change.” On the list are Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Morris Dees, Marcus Garvey, and the two slave insurrectionists Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey. Chief Crazy Horse is identified as a “Native American rights activist.” Still, the book warns that we should be careful with the idea of heroes because it gives the impression that individuals actually count for something, whereas we all know that it is groups that “empower.”

“Heritage celebrations” also must be handled carefully. Making much of national costumes and unfamiliar food is wrong because it suggests foreigners are exotic and Americans are normal. Also, when food and pageantry are taken by themselves “they mask the obstacles that people of color have faced, [and] how they have confronted those obstacles . . .” Lots of oppression must therefore be worked into all exercises of this kind, and they cannot be called “international” because that suggests things can be foreign to America.

Language is an important part of the multi-culti cult: “In our racist, sexist, classist and hetereosexist society, our decisions about word usage are political decisions.” For example, Irish peasants live in “cottages” but we have been trained to say Africans live in mere “huts.” Likewise, to speak of “slaves” and “masters” implies that status is inherent. It is better to speak of “enslaved Africans,” and really “transformative” people say “African people stolen from their families and societies.”

Inspirational anti-racist cartoon.

One author notes that whites are only ten percent of the world population. In an American context, “use of the word “minority,’ therefore, obscures this global reality and reinforces racist assumptions.” We are always to say “people of color,” a term which “was borne out of an explicitly political statement that signaled a solidarity among progressive African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders.”

Anti-racists agonize over black English. They would never say it is bad English, and instead complain about “the arbitrariness of designating one variety [of English] over another as “standard.’” “On the other hand, it is equally important to understand that students who do not have access to the politically popular dialect form in this country . . . are less likely to succeed economically . . . How can both realities be embraced?” The trick is to call black English a dialect and try to help blacks become “bi-dialectical.” When a student asks “Who do dat?” you do not “correct” him; you encourage him to translate into the politically popular dialect.

We must have bilingual education for immigrants, because expecting them to learn English is “racist.” One author writes that “in a moment of generosity” one could imagine that English-only advocates just want newcomers to assimilate and get ahead, but that would be wrong. As he points out, white women speak English as well as white men, but don’t earn as much money. Therefore, since speaking English doesn’t lead to equality, the English-only people can be shown to be the racist frauds they really are. Thus, “language policy in the United States continues to be used as an effective tool to control access to social, economic and political resources.”

Math classes must be indoctrination, too. Inequities in income, the number of blacks in jail, unemployment rates by race — studying these makes math “a tool to interpret and challenge inequities in our society.” In the right hands, math can “uncover stereotypes, understand history, and examine issues of inequality.” Pure science is harder to turn into propaganda but instruction can be “transformed to consider how science itself is conceptualized, valued and practiced by those who have traditionally been outside the scientific mainstream” — whatever that may mean.

The anti-racists hate free markets and world trade. The profit motive is a gruesome thing that “values property over people,” but is beaten into all Americans: “Where do people learn the values of this system? Just think back to elementary school. Columbus, who killed hundreds of Native Americans in his search for gold, is touted as a hero.” Here are some basic economic concepts:

Wealthy countries became wealthy by exploiting the resources of the Southern countries.

The colonial and capitalist systems, which grew up together, were also inherently and inescapably racist.

The world financial system is a greater cause of hunger in Africa than is bad weather.

If teachers do their jobs they will be rewarded with student comments like:

I had not previously understood that capitalism requires keeping a large group of people in extreme poverty, and is deliberately and purposefully racist, promoting divisions among people in order for the dominant group to maintain political, economic, and social power and control . . .

Oddly, none of this leads to outright advocacy of Communism, and neither Marx nor Mao is on the list of sainted “social activists.” It is unclear what will replace capitalism in the anti-racist paradise.

Hating White People

Ultimately this brand of “anti-racism” shows its true colors as a religion — the religion of hating white people. It has a few other doctrines but they all derive from racism: “we must ask how sexism, classism, and linguicism [?] are part of this oppression called racism.” (emphasis in the original) It is a religion that calls for total devotion. As one author explains, “We must grapple with both [individual and institutional “racism”] at every moment of our lives.”

Like all fanatics, these people cannot see obvious contradictions. Over and over we hear that all children must have positive self-images and yet even science lessons must be stuffed with anti-white propaganda. There is incessant talk of fighting stereotypes — except for one: the wicked white man. America is a cesspool of “racism,” but non-white immigrants are quite right to want to come. This book purports to promote multiculturalism, but its myriad “celebrations” leave no room for Western Civilization. In fact, Western Civilization is just another name for evil “isms.” As the authors say repeatedly, their goal is to transform every institution in the country. This is nothing less than an open declaration of war on Western Civilization — and a veiled declaration of war on the people who built it.

There are a few worthy whites — John Brown, Morris Dees, Andrew Goodman, Fidel Castro, Gloria Steinem — but every one is a radical critic of his own society and people. In the minds of these authors the only role left to whites as a group is that of demons to be routed by heroic non-whites. This book is full of photographs, but of the hundreds of faces in them, perhaps three percent are white.

It would be a mistake to think that this hostile, warped cult is of interest only because its practitioners are poisoning the minds of your children. White-hatred is the inevitable consequence of the doctrine of racial egalitarianism. So long as the “mainstream” denies racial differences, and agrees that “racism” is the blackest of all sins, there will always be anti-racist fanatics who will stop at nothing to eradicate this evil. The anti-racists do not have to transform all our institutions. They already have.

SIDEBAR

How’s it selling?

The publisher of this manual of subversion initially printed 15,000 copies — a very respectable first print run — and reports having sold 6,500. No fewer than 80 colleges and universities use the text in their education programs. Philadelphia and Long Beach, California, use it for teacher training, and Washington, DC, is seriously considering it. Readers might check to see if children in day care centers in their area have started marching to protest non-union fruit.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Joys of Diversity

The Los Angeles public school district is the second largest in the country after New York City’s. Sixty-nine percent of its 697,000 students are now Hispanic, and a re swamping schools that were majority-black or -white just a few years ago. Generally, the district has tried to match the races of students and teachers, but the sudden influx has thrown off the balance. Of the district’s 549 schools, 76 have a majority of Hispanic students but faculties that are at least half white. At 26 schools a majority of students are Hispanic but more than half the teachers are black.

There is always tension in the district, with different groups constantly jockeying for power. The superintendent, a Hispanic named Ruben Zacarias, makes almost all appointments with an eye to race, and even maintains a squad of mediators who can be sent to trouble spots at a moment’s notice. “We’re probably doing more in terms of conflict resolution — public or private — than anyone else in the city,” says Mr. Zacarias.

South Gate Middle School near Watts was 63 percent black in 1978 but is now 98 percent Hispanic. It has attracted unusual attention only because its troubles have made it to the courtroom. Three black teachers and a 13-year-old black former student are suing the district for failing to stop anti-black discrimination. The 13-year-old says “As soon as my mother and I walked through the gate someone yelled “What’s this nigger doing on our campus?’” and that the kicking and taunting never let up.

Hollywood High School is also majority-Hispanic. It recently got its first Armenian assistant principal after Armenian parents campaigned for some way to keep Hispanics away from their daughters. Three times during the past year, Armenian parents blocked the school’s main entrance, demanding that officials turn over students who they say have mistreated Armenians.

Inglewood High School, just outside the city, was overwhelmingly black in the 1980s but is now nearly 60 percent Hispanic. It has had so much racial tension it decided not to celebrate Black History Month or Cinco de Mayo this year. Last May, dozens of police had to be called in to stop race riots, and a “task force” later learned that Hispanic students were angry that blacks got a whole month to celebrate while all they got was one day in May. Principal Lowell Winston now says that the curriculum will take a multi-cultural approach all year long.

John Fernandez, who teaches at Roosevelt High School and is a spokesman for the Coalition for Chicano and Chicana Studies, says the multi-cultural approach is a fraud. “Educating for diversity is a crock,” he says; “Under the guise of diversity comes disempowerment of the Latino community.”

As usual, if anyone is losing power it is whites. As a middle school teacher explains: “Whites feel uncomfortable talking about it, but we wouldn’t encourage our kids to become teachers in this district, because they wouldn’t be given a fair shot. You’re not really welcome. You’re not wanted here.” (Amanda Covarrubias, Race Tensions Flare in L.A. Schools, LA Times, Feb. 22, 1999. Louis Sahagun, Diversity Challenges Schools to Preserve Racial Harmony, LA Times, Feb. 14, 1999, p. 1.)

Last month AR reported that at Burton Street Elementary School in Los Angeles, Hispanics beat up a white principal, saying they wanted a Hispanic. As a recent letter to the editor of a local paper shows, a few people are beginning to understand what is going on:

For years now it has been apparent that the first order of business [in the schools] is to placate the minorities . . . I have three school-age children, am a taxpayer and have lived in the San Fernando Valley all my life. I have known for a long time that the public schools are no place for my children because they are not members of an appropriate minority.

I have long felt that they would be in danger both physically and psychologically on any campus in our area.

(Vicki Van Camp, Public School Violence (Letters), Los Angeles Daily News, February 9, 1999.)

Reverse Assimilation

Hispanics are an increasingly powerful force in California politics. In the past four years four million have registered to vote, and in last November’s general election they made up 13 percent of the electorate. There are now 24 Hispanics in the state house. However, many of them have a problem: They do not speak very good Spanish. Many were reared by parents who wanted them to learn English so they could get ahead in life.

Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute in Claremont, says many newly-prominent Hispanics speak what he calls “house Spanish.” “We spoke Spanish at home,” he explains; “But it’s the Spanish of “Pass the salad’ or “Mom, I don’t want to go to bed.’” When legislators talk public policy in Spanish they sound like children. Many have therefore plunged into Spanish-immersion classes, force themselves to read Spanish newspapers, and have hired bilingual assistants who can speak Spanish to them.

“Anglos” also understand that Spanish goes over well with voters. Peter Frusetta, a Republican assemblyman from Hollister, serves an area where half the voters are Hispanic. He learned Spanish as a child and says “it has served me well. I probably wouldn’t be in this office today if not for that.” Many politicians envy Texas Governor George W. Bush’s fluency in Spanish, which could be an asset in a national election. Luis Arteaga, associate director of the Latino Issues Forum in San Francisco, certainly thinks so. “Al Gore is probably practicing on his Spanish right now, too,” he says. (Hallye Jordan, Latino Lawmakers Study Their Spanish, San Jose Mercury News, Feb. 17, 1999, p. 1.)

Meanwhile Spanish accents are moving into the English “mainstream.” KTTV news in Los Angeles broadcasts in English but fully a third of the people on camera are Hispanic. Some speak English with Spanish accents, now considered an advantage in the Southern California market. (Kevin Baxter, Latino Presence Boosts KTTV News, LA Times, Feb. 19, 1999.)

Racists Plot to Take Over

The public schools of majority-black Detroit are in miserable condition and doing a miserable job. Only 30 percent of the students manage to graduate from high school in four years, and of those who do, an estimated two thirds cannot read at an 8th-grade level. John Engler, the governor of Michigan, has decided that the elected school board is the problem. He has proposed legislation that would give Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer the power to fire the school board and appoint a new one. It would operate, presumably without political distractions, for five years, at which point there would be a referendum on the new arrangement.

Gov. Engler and the majority of the state legislators are white, so much of Detroit is now in an uproar over this “racist” plan to take power from the people. “How dare you take away our rights as black people to vote?” Helen Moore, a Detroit parent and school activist, asked a state Senate committee; “We can solve our own problems.” Other blacks think the governor just wants to get his hands on the school system’s 20,000 jobs and billion-dollar budget. “We all know racism is alive and well, and it is definitely alive in that state legislature,” says Marie Thornton, a parent. “This has nothing to do with the education of little black kids. This is about revenue. They’re just using our kids for excuses.”

It does not seem to matter that the mayor, who would appoint the new board, is himself black, and that voters could ditch the new system after five years. Many blacks accuse Mayor Archer of being “too white,” because he is willing to cooperate with whites. The mayor is a former school teacher and opposes the plan, but would have no choice if it is voted in by the legislature. Gov. Engler says he is tired of waiting for schools to improve and claims to be determined to ignore the opposition. “Time and again,” he says, “I was told: “Butt out, send more money.’” (Justin Hyde, Detroit School Plan Criticized, AP, Feb. 19, 1999.)

The Tie That Binds

According to the Lesbian and Gay Immigration Rights Task Force, U.S. immigration law is unfair to homosexuals. Heterosexual immigrants can sponsor their spouses but homosexuals cannot bring “partners” into the country. Suzanne Goldberg, a lawyer for the task force, says 10,000 American homosexual couples must either live apart or smuggle their “partners” into the country illegally. She says ten countries, including CanadaBritain, and Australia, recognize same-sex relationships for immigration purposes, so we should too. (Verena Dobnik, Gays and Lesbians Protest Government Immigration Policies, AP, Feb. 11, 1999.)

Science on the March

In Los Angeles there is something called the Black Inventions Museum. It recently took out a full-page ad in the black newspaper, Pasadena/San Gabriel Valley Journal, to publicize the achievements of black creativity. The ad listed no fewer than 120 products along with their black inventors. It is a surprising list, running from baby buggy to urinalysis machine. Here are a few of the highlights: Internal Combustion Engine  — Frederick M. Jones; Helicopter  — Paul E. Williams; Refrigerator  — J. Standard; Shoe  — W.A. Deitz; Bottle Caps  — Jones & Long; Wrench  — John A. Johnson; Door Stop  — O. Dorsey (who also invented the Door Knob); Traffic Signal  — Garrett Morgan; Air Ship (Blimp)  — J.F. Pickering; Rocket Catapult  — Hugh MacDonald; Ice Cream — Augustus Jackson; Horseshoe  — Oscar Brown; Automatic Gear Shift  — R.B. Spikes; Roller Coaster  — Granville T. Woods; Guided Missile  — Otis Boykin; Mop  — T.W. Stewart; Kitchen Table  — H.A. Jackson; Guitar  — Robert Fleming, Jr.; Ironing Board  — Sarah Boone. And the list goes on.

Lest there be any mistake about the matter, the first five items on the list are: Paper  — Africans; Chess  — Africans; Alphabet  — Africans; Medicine  — Africans, Civilization  — Africans. The museum can be reached at (310) 859-4602. (Pasadena/San Gabriel Valley Journal, Feb. 18, 1999, back page.)

Uniquely San Francisco

San Francisco’s black mayor, Willie Brown, is happy that his fire department has quotas to ensure that it will “reflect the diversity that is uniquely San Francisco.” It is, to be sure, unique. Our sources in the department tell us that last fall an engine company arrived at a small fire in a residential neighborhood with the following crew:

The acting officer has had a sex-change.

The driver is a 4’11” woman who had trouble reaching the pedals.

One of the crew is a known pedophile, an Hispanic who had recently been caught openly masturbating while watching a school yard filled with children.

The final crew member has a doctor’s note excusing her from entering ‘smoky environments.’ She is one of two known asthmatics in the department who must not be exposed to smoke.

When it was time to go back to the station, this crew couldn’t remember where they had parked the fire engine.

Typically Chicago

Chicago has been tinkering with its fire department, too, and there has been some resentment against a black captain, Curtis Powell, who has had his test scores adjusted no fewer than three times so that he could be promoted. Whites don’t like working for someone they think is incompetent and who was once even accused of cowardice for standing outside a burning building while his crew worked inside. Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley now thinks he can eliminate racial problems by shortening the working shift. It is a long tradition among firemen that they work 24-hour shifts, eating and sleeping together in the fire house. Mayor Daley says that this forced intimacy causes problems, and is pushing for eight-hour shifts. (Fran Spielman, Daley: Long Fire Shift Behind Racial Tension, Chicago Sun Times, Jan. 23, 1999, p. 12.)

Meanwhile, Chicago schools are trying to persuade firemen and policemen to work as substitute teachers during their days off. So much of the work is in such terrifying parts of town that ordinary substitute teachers refuse to go. (Rosalind Rossi, Schools Scramble to Find Sub Teachers, Chicago Sun Times, Jan. 19, 1999. p. 1.)

In other developments, black Chicago alderman Virgil Jones was convicted in federal court of taking $7,000 in bribes. In February, he said he was innocent and that his only mistake was to have taken cash rather than a check. He says he has no fear of prison: “As an African American, I feel like I’ve always been in prison . . .” (Jones Denies Daley Chance to Select Successor, Chicago Sun Times, Feb. 2, 1999, p. 10.)

But the front-page racial news in Chicago has been the struggle over who will get “Baby T,” a three-year-old black boy. The boy’s mother, Tina Olison, has allegedly recovered from a 17-year cocaine habit, but has had all three of her children taken away over the years. Baby T, the youngest, was born in 1996 with Cocaine in his system and was immediately turned over to white foster parents. They want to keep him but a county judge has decided to give him back to his 37-year-old mother. Chicago child custody authorities said Baby T was better off with his white parents, and took a race-neutral position on child-rearing, arguing that race would matter less in the new millennium. Judge Judith Brawka, who is white, retorted that this was tantamount to saying “there is no such thing as African-American culture,” and said the boy should be with his black mother. Miss Olison must pass courses in child-rearing and anger management, but appears set to become a mother again. (Daniel Lehmann, Judge Returns Baby T to Mom, Chicago Sun Times, March 9, 1999, p. 1. Bonnie Miller Rubin and Robert Becker, Baby T, Mom to Reunite, Chicago Tribune, March 9, 1999. p. 1.)

Ethiopians are Coming

In some parts of Ethiopia it is easy to become an orphan. There is reportedly such a stigma against rearing someone else’s children that when a man’s wife dies and he remarries, the new wife may throw any children by the previous wife out of the house. Adoption has the same stigma. Jane Gallagher of Springfield, Vermont, has decided that the solution is for Americans to adopt Ethiopian children. She has been in contact with a 50-child orphanage in the northwestern part of the country, and has single-handedly arranged for homes for all the children. She has personally persuaded 42 couples to adopt Ethiopians, and since ten couples want more than one, she now has more homes than children. “I thought, why just one child?” says Mrs. Gallagher; “Why not adopt a lot of them?”

At a recent meeting for the prospective parents at her house, a spokesman for an international adoption agency explained that the children could be suffering from malnutrition, intestinal parasites or skin lesions. She also pointed out that they will have had little or no schooling and may never have seen a doctor. The enthusiasm to adopt was reportedly undiminished, and the actual transfer of the children is expected to take place this summer. (Ethiopian Orphans Could Find Homes in Vermont and New Hampshire, AP, Feb. 17, 1999.)

Back to Africa?

The West African nation of Ghana has offered dual citizenship to American blacks, and President William Clinton thinks this is “a clever idea.” At a state dinner at the White House for Ghanaian president Jerry Rawlings, the President said the plan would “get more Americans interested in Ghana, going to Ghana and contributing to Ghana’s future.” (Kalpana Srinivasan, Clinton Toasts Ghanaian President, Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 25, 1999, p. 24.)

‘Racially False’

B.D. Wong is an Asian-American actor who nine years ago lead protests against casting whites in non-white roles. Specifically, he said whites could not play the role of a Eurasian pimp in the Broadway production of Miss Saigon, saying it was “racially false.” Since his protest, that part has always been played by an Asian.

Mr. Wong was recently cast for the role of Linus in the revival of “Charlie Brown” on Broadway. Asked if this is “racially false,” Mr. Wong replied, “I don’t think so. With “Miss Saigon’ we wanted to make the point that Asians were underrepresented on Broadway. But I don’t think I’m taking a job away from a white actor. Besides, I think I’m more like Linus than most white people. I really fit the part.” (Michael Riedel, Charlie Brown & the Great Nonwhite Way, New York Post, Feb. 4, 1999.)

Truth May be a Defense

Carl Williams, the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, was recently fired for explaining to the Newark Star-Ledger that most drugs are sold by non-whites. Speaking of marijuana, he said “it is most likely a minority group that’s involved with that.” He also pointed out that “the President of the United States went to Mexico to talk to the President of Mexico about drugs. He didn’t go to Ireland. He didn’t go to England.” New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman immediately fired the 37-year veteran saying, “His comments today are inconsistent with our efforts to enhance public confidence in the State Police.”

Nothing unusual so far. What is unusual is the number of Mr. Williams’ defenders. Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory writes that Mr. Williams was fired for telling the truth. “Minorities are overrepresented within the enemy camp in the never-ending war on drugs,” he wrote. Syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts also defended the police chief: “If Mr. Williams had told the newspaper that the drug trade was operated by the CIA in order to keep blacks down, he would have become a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize instead of an unemployed cop.” Samuel Francis pointed out in his syndicated column how self-destructive it is for whites to sit idly by while other whites are fired for speaking the truth. Scott McConnell, in his new column for the New York Press, pointed out that a joint drug-fighting committee of representatives from the CIA, FBI, INS, Coast Guard had pointed out precisely the same ethnic distribution of crime as Mr. Williams — and that Gov. Whitman had better call for the resignations of the heads of these agencies because they promote “racial stereotypes.”

(Joe Donahue, Boss Warns Troopers: Don’t Target Minorities, The Star-Ledger, February 28, 1999. Brian McGrory, Face it: In U.S., Drugs Ensnare Minorities, Boston Globe, March 7, 1999. Paul Craig Roberts, Patterns of Racism in Reverse, Washington Times, March 9, 1999. Scott McConnell, — — The Ethnic Crimewave, Taki’s Top Drawer (New York Press), March 10-16, 1999.)

INS Surrenders

Finding and deporting the over five million illegal aliens in the United States will no longer be a priority for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). A new strategy this year calls for the agency to concentrate on finding and deporting aliens who commit crimes. Rep. Lamar Smith who chairs the House subcommittee on immigration criticized the new strategy saying, “The INS, by their actions, is telling would-be illegal aliens that if you don’t get caught entering the U.S., we’ll look the other way, so you can stay.” Jack Shaw, a recently retired INS investigator says, “It is amnesty in another name.” A current INS agent adds: “This says if you can get in, get a job and stay out of trouble, your chances of being deported are zero. You have to wonder about the message it is sending to people thinking about coming here as illegal immigrants.” (Michael Hedges, Illegal Aliens Get Softer INS Approach, Washington Times, March 6, 1999, p. A1.)

Quaint Caribbean Customs

In Puerto Rico, a jury has convicted the mayor of the town of Toa Alta of demanding kickbacks in connection with the work to clean up Hurricane Georges. Mayor Angel Rodriguez and a local contractor, Jose Orlando, will be sentenced in June for demanding $2.5 million from the Mississippi-based JESCO company in exchange for a contract to collect debris after the September 21 hurricane. The two also padded damage reports to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in order to get more American tax-payer money for Toa Alta. (Jury Convicts Puerto Rico Mayor, AP, Feb. 25, 1999.)

The island is also in an uproar over the trial of officials of the San Juan AIDS Institute who appear to have managed to steal $2.2 million that was supposed to be spent treating AIDS patients. Several officials have already confessed, including Angel Corcino, the comptroller. Mr. Corcino dropped a bomb when he testified that much of the AIDS money went for political payoffs. He said Pedro Rosello, the governor of Puerto Rico, had demanded $250,000 for his 1992 campaign, and that two former mayors of the capital, San Juan, demanded similar payments. One of the former mayors, Baltasar Corrada del Rio, is now on the Puerto Rico Supreme Court. All the politicians have denied receiving any money. (Puerto Rico AIDS Fraud Trial Opens, AP, March 12, 1999.)

Ethnic Weapons

The British Medical Association (BMA) is so worried about ethnicity-specific biological weapons that it has commissioned a group to look into whether it is possible to make them. The weapons would be the reverse of gene therapy, which targets treatment to specific genes in the human body. People with cystic fibrosis, for example, or certain kinds of breast cancer have easily identified genes that can be targeted for treatment. In the same way, a biological weapon could conceivably act only on people with genes common to certain groups of people but absent in others. Vivienne Nathanson of the BMA explains the attraction: “If you were a dictator somewhere in the world and you wanted to get rid of a group of people in your population who were opposing you — whether you are talking about Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, Bosnian Serbs or 1930s Germany — you could use this.” The weapons would be made of specially engineered DNA and could be delivered as a gas or spray, or put into the water supply. They might kill, make people infertile, or cause the birth of deformed children. (Fight Genetic Weapons, British Doctors Urge, Reuters, Feb. 20, 1999.)

Changing Times

A reader has sent us a few pages from a 1926 book called Federal Textbook on Citizenship Training. It was published by the U.S. Department of Labor and written by Lillian P. Clark, who is described as a consulting specialist in adult immigration education. The subtitle of the book is Lessons on the History and Government of Our Nation for use in the Public Schools by Candidates for Citizenship. Just as noteworthy as the book’s assumptions about race is the depth of knowledge expected of “candidates for citizenship.” This is the conclusion of the chapter on Reconstruction:

For some time they, too, had formed secret societies to keep the dishonest negroes from stealing, to scare them away from the polls on election day, and to drive the carpetbaggers out of their States . . . The secret societies of the Southern people were successful in bringing order and peace to the States, when houses and barns were being burned and property was being stolen. Gradually the people who had made the trouble between the white and black people of the South left and people everywhere began to settle down to a more peaceful life. From time to time Congress repealed some of its reconstruction laws and the white people of the South were again able to rule the South. They made it impossible for the negroes ever to control their community or State governments in the future, by passing laws which kept them from voting unless they had property, or could read, or had never been guilty of a crime.

A few other States besides those of the South now require voters to prove that they can read before they are permitted to vote.” (page 194.)

Sweet Wedding Bells

Police have recently uncovered a north Georgia fake-marriage business that netted green cards for more than 50 illegal immigrants from Mexico. Once Teresia Dale, a 41-year-old woman from Dalton, Georgia, learned how easy and profitable it is to fake a marriage she persuaded her sisters, friends, and even her mother to try it. One of her friends married four different illegals before she was caught. The Mexicans usually paid $2,000 to $4,000 for a bogus marriage, and Miss Dale got $600 to $1,200 as a commission.

In many cases, when an immigrant marries a citizen the Immigration and Naturalization Service interviews the couple later to try to see if the marriage is real. Miss Dale prepped her couples so they could answer questions about the kind of underwear the spouse wears, what side of the bed he sleeps on, the color of his toothbrush, etc. Not one of her protégés ever failed the test.

Most of the marriages took place in Ringgold, Georgia, which bills itself as the “Las Vegas of the South.” A couple can get a blood test, a license, and tie the knot in under an hour. Even so, some of Miss Dale’s projects were a little dicey. As one 29-year-old woman explains, “I was sure we were going to get caught. Here’s a man I don’t know, who’s married, has a kid, and barely speaks English. It was also very apparent I’m a lesbian . . . And I’m supposed to convince a judge I’m in love.” She sailed right through like the rest.

Sam Dills, probate judge of Catoosa County, is theoretically responsible for checking into the bona fides of people who get married in Ringgold. He bridles at the idea that he should have stopped the marriages. “There’s no law that says a spouse has to be a U.S. citizen,” he points out. “If I denied a couple because the husband only spoke Spanish or was Mexican, I’d have a federal lawsuit against me.”

The sham marriages might have gone on forever except that one of Miss Dale’s sons got into a fight with his real wife, who told authorities about his marriage to a Mexican. The dominoes then began to fall, and nearly a dozen people now face charges of bigamy or of committing fraud against the Immigration and Naturalization Service. (Jim Dyer, Marriage Scam: Immigrant Need Weds American Greed, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Feb. 22, 1999, p. 1.)

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Letters from readers
LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I am in full agreement with the article by Prof. Robert Weissberg that appeared in last month’s issue. We must plug along as we have for almost fifty years with ever more tax money going to Negroes, some to Mexicans, but little to Asians. Most of our money has gone down the drain, but it seems we will do anything to keep the peace. I was somewhat encouraged by Jared Taylor’s response but by the time any changes can be implemented, states like Texas and California will be primarily Mexican and Spanish-speaking. Since I am 85, I will probably not be around to see any of these changes anyway.

Travis Osborne, Athens, Ga.

Sir — Professor Weissberg had me leaning but Jared Taylor propped me back up.

Name Withheld, Louisville, Ky.

Sir — I enjoyed Stanley Hornbeck’s review of The Culture of Critique. It would seem that Prof. MacDonald has found a unified theory of why Western Civilization is participating in its own demise. I hope you continue to publish articles and reviews that offer new ideas and new ways of making sense of the world we live in.

Richard Simpson, Enumclaw, Wa.

Sir — I was pleased to see the review of Prof. Kevin MacDonald’s incisive and courageous work concerning the Jewish role in the decline of the Caucasian will to remain the dominant culture in their respective homelands. People often wonder how the black and Hispanic races, not known for their organization or intellect, could win victory after victory against the descendants of the nation’s founders. Prof. MacDonald has the answer.

It was therefore disappointing to read Mr. Hornbeck’s concluding disclaimer which begins by asking “what difference it makes if he is right,” pointing to individual Jewish intellectuals who oppose multiculturalism. This is equivalent to the integrationist’s assertion that a racially-mixed school or workplace has no deleterious effect on whites because there are a few black individuals with high IQs or low levels of aggression. AR, of all publications, should recall that there is relevance to group conduct in deciding our allegiances and associations. I acknowledge anyone whose truths can save our civilization (Arthur Koestler must be included), while remembering that the allegiance of Jews has historically been to their own people, at the expense of the host nation of the moment.

P. Stephen Keith, Blairs, Va.

Sir — In his review of Kevin MacDonald’s The Culture of Critique, Stanley Hornbeck provides an excellent summary of Dr. MacDonald’s devastating indictment of the Jewish role in the destruction of the white race and white civilization. Unfortunately, Mr. Hornbeck ends his article with a form of apologia; noting that some Jews seem to agree with the philosophy of AR, he suggests that we would be “foolish” and “ungrateful” to reject Jewish assistance in saving our civilization. But is it “ungrateful” to reject the vision of Michael Hart, who proposes a “white separatist state,” which, according to Prof. Hart, “may include Asians and others?” Is it “ungrateful” to question why Robert Weissberg advocates a policy that Jared Taylor terms “defeatist in the short term and suicidal in the long term?”

Indeed, we may ask whether it is “foolish” to suspect that the recent interest some Jews have shown toward pro-white activism is merely an attempt to promote their own group interests within the racialist movement. Are they attempting to twist the ideology and direction of this movement in a direction more conducive to long-term Jewish interests? We ignore the lessons given by Dr. MacDonald at our peril.

E. Delahanty, Chicago, Il.

Sir — While Kevin MacDonald is probably on to something in his explanation for the Jewish role in the decline of white people and their culture, I am surprised AR did not take a more critical look at his thesis. A glance at your O Tempora section for the month of March will show a cowardly university president named Garland, a pandering chief executive named Adamson, and a Governor named Davis who is giving away our tax money to illegal Mexicans. These men are all WASPs in positions of power and they are doing a fine job of maligning our race and culture.

As Mr. Hornbeck briefly points out, the pages and conferences of AR are filled with names like Levin, Braun, Auster, Gottfried and Schiller. Even Robert Weissberg, while he may disagree with some aspects of AR, fights multiculturalism and political correctness at the University of Illinois. These are men who put their careers on the line to fight the anti-white forces that are ascendant throughout the Western world. Indeed, if we ever do regain our nerve and racial identity, Jewish intellectuals will probably deserve a lot of credit.

Name Withheld, Cheshire, Ct.

Sir — The role of Jews in pushing for the destruction of America is obvious to anyone able to identify Jews. My hope is that innocent Jews will not suffer for the crimes of the guilty. Also, I think it would be a grave mistake to cite the role of Jews as the only factor in the dissolution of white America. The victory of the Modernists in the Protestant denominations and Catholic hierarchy was central to the process of browbeating and brainwashing their flocks. Also, many major actors who were not Jewish have played important parts. H.L. Mencken, for example, wielded his savage pen against Anglo-Saxon America, making goy-bashing chic. Pragmatist philosopher and “educator” John Dewey also played an important role in attacking the white identity. All such people must be exposed. Finally, the fact that young people throughout the world — including Japan, Brazil, Spain, Egypt, etc. — have all sought to abandon their religions and their own particularity in favor of “hip-hop” hedonism and nihilism is a sign that a greater spirit is at work.

Andrew Roesell, Springfield, Va.

Sir — I wonder if Kevin MacDonald (and his reviewer Stanley Hornbeck) haven’t erred by not questioning more deeply whether a multicultural America without any numerically dominant ethnic group is really in the interest of American Jews. It is a well-established fact that blacks express anti-Semitic attitudes more readily than white Christians — this despite (or perhaps because of) the extensive Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement. And clearly the multi-ethnic America brought about by high rates of non-European immigration raises the ethnic consciousness of all groups in society, while rendering traditional melting pot notions of American nationality dated and nearly irrelevant. A more ethnically conscious America is more likely to become aware of the great social influence of Jews, despite their small numbers and perhaps also to become sensitive to the ways in which Jewish interests might clash with those of other ethnic groups. To mention one obvious example, we are now importing by immigration an Arab and Muslim lobby, likely to push as vigorously for the United States to favor Arab interests in the Middle East as Jews have pushed for Israeli interests. Can such a result — brought about solely by the open borders immigration laws which Jews have done so much to bring about — really serve Jewish interests?

Name Withheld, New York, N.Y.

Sir — I write in anticipation that you will be printing a number of letters from readers saying that Stanley Hornbeck’s review is too soft, and that Jews are the only real problem we have and should be dealt with accordingly. But to take this position is to conclude that Jews are not white, that they are no more a part of Western Civilization than are Bantus or Malays. Who can seriously argue this? They are genetically part of our race, and have contributed ever since the Middle Ages — for good and for ill — to our civilization.

No one is more conscious than I of the effect of Jews as a group on the societies in which they have lived, but liberal foolishness is not unique to Jews nor inherent to Jews. I see them as, indeed, a problem child in the family of Western man, but of our family nonetheless. They are wayward brethren, over whose shortcomings we should not pass in silence, but we are bound to them by ties of history, culture, and blood. Jews can and do join our struggle; let us welcome them as comrades.

François Boyer, Quebec City, Canada

Sir — A book like Kevin MacDonald’s The Culture of Critique has been a long time coming, since Jews have been basically exempt from critical analysis ever since the Holocaust. Even though there is some merit in Prof. MacDonald’s argument as summarized by Mr. Hornbeck, we do not believe Jews support left-wing causes because of their desire to strengthen the Jewish community. If his argument were true, those who hold the most left-wing views would be those who were the most pious Jews. That is not the case. Generally, the Jews who have had the views Prof. MacDonald describes are those who have abandoned the practice of Judaism and have assimilated into the mainstream of secular society. In many cases, these Jews actually have contempt for their religious and cultural brethren. Moreover, Prof. MacDonald picks and chooses Jews who nicely fit his theory and excludes those, like the co-author of The Bell Curve, Richard Herrnstein, who do not.

Wouldn’t people who support universalist values such as Socialism, egalitarianism and Communism welcome a society in which all religious differences were eliminated? Jews would certainly disappear as a people in such a society. And in fact secular Jews have been intermarrying with gentiles for the last generation at rates exceeding 50 percent. To quote Friedrich Nietzsche, “Jews want and wish, even with some importunity, to be absorbed and assimilated by Europe; they long to be fixed, permitted, respected, somewhere at long last, putting an end to the nomad’s life.”

Needless to say, assimilation has had a very troubled history. Jews felt alien to all they encountered — Church, culture, European backwardness — living, as they did, among people who were bound up with the soil and the idea of a fatherland. At the same time, Europeans felt that Jews were perpetual aliens, an unwelcome presence. A deadly hatred thus grew up. The state and church kept out Jews, who created a state within a state and despised the host people. Jews also had their own morality — the morality of the oppressed — which gave them the authority of the righteous. Increasingly the religious component of that morality faded, but the morality itself remained. It justified the Jews’ miserable situation as noble and superior, and fostered resentment of the host people.

As Nietzsche writes in Genealogy of Morals, in their impotent hatred for their European masters, Jews took “spiritual revenge” by inverting the traditional value structure according to which the upper classes considered themselves superior and virtuous. According to Nietzsche, the Jew says to the aristocrat:

[T]he wretched alone are the good; the poor, impotent, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, depraved, sick, ugly alone are pious, alone are blessed by God; blessedness is for them alone — and you, the powerful and noble, are, on the contrary, the evil, the cruel, the lustful, the insatiable, the godless to all eternity . . .

Contrary to Prof. MacDonald’s beliefs, this is why Jews support any movement they think will uplift the poor and oppressed — even at their own expense. A simple example: South African Jews supported the elimination of apartheid and the institution of “one man one vote” even though this means they have been forced to leave as the country becomes untenable for all whites. Jews have a blind left eye. At the very least, they are reduced to total inaction in the face of left-wing arguments about pity and compassion for the poor. In effect, Prof. MacDonald is making Jews seem healthier than they really are by attributing a selfish, ego-driven, normal impulse to their own actions when, in fact, they are really afflicted with suicidal nihilism.

In modern, Godless terms, this morality encourages “low” people to feel enormous hatred and resentment because their position in the world is caused by the behavior of the “high” (Western man). Therefore the forces that have actually created this high civilization are under attack and this has fostered the bad conscience of Western man. Jews were the first to arrive at this morality. Although its secular version was not adopted by Christians en masse until after the Second World War, Jews were setting the foundation for this fundamental change a century earlier. It was this morality that dictated the inversion of values: “power to the people” and destruction of the aristocratic classes.

We need all Europeans, including Jews with their genius and spirit, to correct this massive error. As Nietzsche says: “One owes (to the Jews) the noblest man (Christ), the purest sage (Spinoza), the most powerful book, and the most effective moral law of the world. Moreover, in the darkest times of the Middle Ages, it was Jewish freethinkers, scholars, and physicians who clung to the banner of enlightenment and spiritual independence. We owe it to their exertions, not least of all, that the bond of culture which now links us with the enlightenment of Greco-Roman antiquity remained unbroken.”

Jeremy and David Goldman, Summit, N.J.

Sir — In “Foreign Adoptions” (O Tempora, O Mores!” March 1999), you wrote: “China is also popular [among Americans who want to adopt] because it offers healthy babies.” This may not always be true. Some Chinese infants suffer from cytomegalovirus — a disease common in Third World countries. According to the publication, “A Few Facts About Cytomegalovirus,” by the International Adoption Clinic in Minneapolis, Minnesota, some consequences of this disease, such as hearing loss or mental retardation, may not become apparent until later in childhood. A pregnant woman who comes in contact with a baby infected with cytomegalovirus may not become ill herself but can pass on the virus to her unborn baby. About one-quarter of such infected fetuses develop defects.

Joseph Fallon, Rye, N.Y.

Sir — I am a white Cuban American of 100 percent Spanish descent. I hope everyone at AR knows that Spain is in Europe and that the Spaniards are white. I am very proud of my white race and Spanish/Cuban culture. You should also know that there are many white people of pure Spanish or other European descent in Latin America. We are usually found among the upper class and hold influential positions in society.

The fact is that white Cuban Americans are a very tough people and very proud of our European roots. We are not ignorant, peasant maestros like many of the Mexican immigrants. That is why the white Cuban Americans are so successful.

I advise you to leave the white Cuban Americans alone. We are one of the few quality post 1965 immigrant groups that this country has taken in.

Larry Pino, Miami Beach, Fl.

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