October 2009
| American Renaissance magazine | |
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| Vol. 20, No. 10 | October 2009 |
| CONTENTS |
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Why Have Asians Not Dominated?
Asian Consciousness (Part II)
A Celebration of the BNP
Remembering Harry Patch
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters
| COVER STORY |
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Why Have Asians Not Dominated?
High intelligence may not be enough.
It is now generally accepted among serious students of intelligence that Asians have the highest average IQs of any racial group. As Richard Lynn has reported in his comprehensive study, IQ and Global Inequality, East Asian countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, have average IQs in the range of 105 to 108. This clearly exceeds the averages Prof. Lynn has found for the 29 European countries, which range from 92 to 102 (for a review of IQ and Global Inequality see “Survival of the Fittest,” AR, June 2007). The question therefore arises, why have Asians not dominated — economically, culturally, and politically?
Before addressing this question directly, it is necessary to debunk a number of Western myths about China in order correctly to assess Asian achievement. There is, of course, more to Asia than China, but its population represents the great majority of East Asians, and throughout most historical periods, it has been the center of East Asian cultural achievement.
To the extent that Westerners think about China’s place in history they see it as having been a unified state with a single culture and language and a continuous history that stretches back thousands of years. They also think of it as having always been culturally and technologically ahead of the West until relatively recently. Joseph Needham, for example, propagates this myth in his monumental Science and Civilization in China.
In fact, the history of China has been as politically messy and fractured as that of Europe. The country was not even nominally unified until the third century BC — under the short-lived Chin dynasty (221-207 BC) — and has spent more than half the time since then split between competing dynasties or under foreign rule. Examples are the period of warlords in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the Northern and Southern Sung dynasties from 960-1126, and rule by Mongols (1279-1368) and Manchus (1644-1912). Even during times of supposed unification, the control the emperor could exercise was very little compared to that possible in a modern, industrial state.
As for China’s presumed cultural unity, there is not a single language understood throughout China. The division between Cantonese and Mandarin is reasonably well known in the West, but there are other fault lines. The former leader Deng Xiaoping spoke with such a heavy accent and dialect that his daughter interpreted for him when he spoke in public. There is not even a single, standard written language.
China is far from being a unified racial/ethnic entity. It contains within its borders approximately 100 million people who are members of minority groups. It makes no more sense to speak of China as a continuous state or single civilisation than it does to speak of Europe as a continuous state or single civilization.
Nor is there a special antiquity to Chinese achievements. In the use of metals, the Chinese were no earlier than the peoples of the Middle East and Mediterranean, and were certainly later when it came to agriculture and writing.
Even in antiquity, China was not always more culturally advanced than Europe. The Cretans and Mycenaeans had sophisticated cultures that predated classical Greece, and the achievements of the Greeks and Romans were immense. China cannot be said to have been ahead of these civilizations.
To take an example from a later period, today there exist few Chinese buildings predating the Ming era (1368-1644). Before that time, most Chinese buildings were made of wood. China has nothing to compare with the great stone buildings of the European and Mediterranean ancient world, the magnificent castles, abbeys, cathedrals, and churches of the European mediaeval period, and the amazing architectural diversity of modern Europe. Construction of Notre Dame began in Paris in 1163 and the cathedral was largely completed by 1250. There is nothing from China of this period that demonstrates anything like the same level of both intricacy and magnificence.
It is true that before the modern period (say 1500 AD), the Chinese made a number of discoveries before Europe but the opposite is also true. The Chinese made paper, mixed gunpowder, and had the compass first, but Europe was first with the Archimedean screw.
Even when China invented something earlier, Europeans sometimes produced it later independently. The classic example is moveable type. China and Korea had moveable type many centuries before Gutenberg, but there is no evidence Gutenberg was influenced by Asian examples. Movable type quickly became widespread in Europe but was never popular in China. This is probably because written European languages are based on an alphabet with few characters while Chinese is written with thousands of ideograms, each of which requires its own block of type. In any case, since 1700 at the latest, European technology has completely outpaced that of China.
There is far more to civilization than technology, of course, but China falls well short of Europe in social science, philosophy, art, and political organization as well. Throughout their history the Chinese have been very inventive when it comes to practical solutions to particular problems but did not develop theories from practical solutions that offered general explanations of the world. In this sense, China never developed anything that could be called science.
It is also noteworthy that although the Chinese produced many important inventions, they often failed to develop them substantially. When Europeans began to make regular contact with China in the seventeenth century, their guns were far superior to those of the Chinese, even though it was Chinese who had invented gunpowder many centuries previously. The Chinese record of innovation sometimes gives the impression that an invention was made to amuse or to serve the interests of a powerful person rather than to establish an industry or change society.
Lord George Macartney, who headed the first official British diplomatic mission to China in 1793-4, noted that the Chinese seemed to have invented things and then “applied them solely to the purpose wanted, and to never have thought of improving or extending them further.”
Adam Smith wrote about China in The Wealth of Nations:
China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have long been stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times.
Perhaps this stationary quality reflected a deep-seated arrogance among Chinese rulers, who viewed any kind of innovation with suspicion. Traditionally, the Chinese elites were contemptuous of other peoples, routinely treating them as subordinates. Lord Macartney’s presents to the Emperor in 1794 were counted as tribute rather than gifts, and the British envoy constantly noticed what we would now call a monstrous superiority complex. When he offered the Chinese products of the early Industrial Revolution, the equivalent of which were unknown in China, they often refused to show any interest in them. This is not an attitude conducive to progress.
Philosophy as we would understand it in the West, that is, analytical thought examining the nature of reality with, in theory at least, an absence of ideological baggage, is virtually absent from Chinese history. Traditional Chinese philosophy never divorced itself entirely from religion and was mainly concerned with how society should be ordered. Its primary purpose was social control, and it is more a series of maxims than an exercise in philosophical enquiry. The let-everything-be-challenged method found intermittently in Western philosophy from at least the sixth century BC appears foreign to the Chinese. Interestingly, the Chinese were great compilers of what we would call encyclopaedias. They delighted in recording what was already known or thought, but had little interest in investigating what was not known or might be thought.
Chinese art and fashion show a similar resistance to change. Look at contemporary depictions of Chinese from 1000 AD. They look hardly any different from the Chinese of 1800. Chinese art shows a similar stability over the same period, being for the most part heavily constrained by convention. Where there is deviation from academic artistic discipline it is mainly found in periods where foreign invaders gained power, most noticeably under the Mongol emperors who imported foreign craftsmen and artists. Chinese fashions and art are like those of ancient Egypt, which show a remarkable stability over several thousand years. This is the opposite of the European cultural experience.
Politically, the Chinese never really moved beyond the state of warlordism or of believing in an absolute ruler who was a god or a man directly in touch with gods. There were attempts to introduce more rational and less absolute forms of government, but these were short lived. Confucianism tried to lay down moral rules for rulers, but that was about the limit of any real attempt to restrain emperors by anything short of violence. Ideas about constitutions restricting what government may do, representative government, or direct democracy never arose in Chinese society. In the West, the ideal of individual political participation dates back to the Greeks, and is present in Europe in the Middle Ages. It is completely absent in China.
The Mandarin system and appointment by examination, which started as early as the 7th century AD, are often proposed as evidence of superior Chinese political organization, but were they really superior to that of the Roman Empire, which predated it by centuries? Was Chinese bureaucracy more impressive than that of the Catholic Church at the height of its power? It is possible to describe the Mandarin system more as a way to control and categorize than as a system designed to meet a particular need, such as political rule or the management of assets.
In Chinese history it is also hard to find organizations that perform civic social functions but that are not part of the formal political structure. Examples in the West would be charities, clubs, the co-operative movement, and trade unions. Chinese life has traditionally revolved around the family, while the government provides all forms of larger social organization.
Before the Maoist revolution, China never attempted to go beyond a society of a small elite with immense wealth that left the vast majority in abject penury. There is no Chinese tradition of doubting the justice or legitimacy of such a society. When Europeans began to gain first-hand experience of China from the 17th century onwards, it was common to remark on the tremendous disparities of wealth. As Macartney noted, “[E]very year vast numbers [of Chinese] perish of hunger and cold. The summers are so warm that the common sort go almost naked, and the winter is so rigorous that the mortality is very great from the want of clothing and shelter.”
There was nothing that resembled the corporate charitable concern for the poor found within the Catholic Church, let alone a formal legal obligation to the needy, such as the English Poor Law of 1601. And even after what was supposed to be an egalitarian revolution, for many years the Communist party did nothing more than appropriate to itself the advantages of the Mandarinate but under a different name.
What is Missing?
Why did China never make the jump from trial-and-error technology to true science? Why did it show so little interest in analytical philosophy? Why did it never develop a political system more sophisticated than that of the god-Emperor? Why was the idea of political participation, so widespread in Europe in both the ancient and the late mediaeval world, absent in China? Why was there no civil society?
Could it be that sufficiently propitious circumstances never arose to drive Asians beyond a certain point, that Europe surged ahead by luck rather than any innate difference? This is improbable because China has been a sophisticated society for several thousand years.
The above critique of the myth of Chinese cultural superiority may carry within it suggestions of why Asians have not achieved cultural supremacy. IQ may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for that advance. First, however, it is important to note that IQ is not of a piece. Although the average Asian IQ is higher than the white IQ overall, it is not higher in all respects. Asians score substantially higher than whites on non-verbal tests but lower than whites on verbal tests. They score particularly well on spatial tests.
This IQ profile may be associated with the Asian adherence to an ideographic form of writing. If one set a genius and a dullard the task of developing a writing system, the genius would come up with an alphabet and the dullard some form of pictorial representation. The genius would see that an alphabet was a more economical and powerful means of representation because it required only a small number of symbols. The dullard would merely keep adding to the number of pictures. Of course the Chinese went far beyond crude pictograms, but by retaining a pictorial system they ended up with a form of writing that requires several thousand characters.
In the 15th century, the Koreans invented an alphabet called Hangul, but this was in imitation of alphabets invented by others. It may be that East Asians failed to develop an alphabet on their own because of their leaning towards the visual and the spatial.
The greater Asian aptitude on non-verbal tests and lower ability on verbal tests can also be interpreted as meaning that Asians are adapted to solving what I would call bounded problems. These are problems that have clear boundaries, such as how to build a canal or how to care for silkworms, rather than problems without boundaries, such as inquiring about the nature of the good, the purpose of life, or what constitutes art.
At the same time, IQ is hardly the only measure by which the races differ, and both J. Philippe Rushton and Richard Lynn have written about racial differences in personality. Although intelligence is the best studied and most accurately measured mental trait, there are also reasonably well developed measures of many other traits. Compared to whites, Asians are more cautious, less impulsive, less aggressive, less sociable, less psychopathic, and have lower self-regard (the same can be said about whites compared to blacks). Though they have not been studied as extensively as intelligence, racial differences on these scales are so consistent that it makes almost as much sense to speak of a race or group’s “average personality” as it does to speak of its average IQ.
Asians also have lower levels of testosterone compared to whites (who have less testosterone than blacks), and testosterone is closely associated with aggressiveness, risk-taking, and criminality.
These differences support the conclusion that the Asian personality is less enquiring or adventurous than that of the Caucasian, less verbal or sociable, and more conformist and submissive. This is not the type of personality that — despite an advantage in average IQ — pushes a society towards the achievements that characterize the West: developing an industrial revolution from scratch, creating modern science, giving birth to analytical philosophy, and evolving many varied forms of political life that value the contribution of the individual.
When they are a minority in high-IQ, Western societies, Asians tend to fill technical posts that favor higher IQs, or engage in business, much of which is conducted within their own group. They make relatively little headway in areas that require the highest level of “people skills,” such as politics or advocacy groups. They are excellent accountants, computer technicians, and engineers — these are professions in which their natural abilities blossom — but they do not distinguish themselves in professions that require verbal gifts and gregariousness: politician, comedian, lawyer.
Asians also tend to show very little antisocial behavior. Their crime rates are low, and they rarely portray themselves as victims of racism or demand race-based privileges (though see last month’s cover story, “Asian Race Consciousness”). This tendency to follow the rules and not to call attention to themselves either as a group or as individuals seems to fit the Asian personality.
What has been the Asian record since industrialization? Asians have had the invaluable example of European industry, science, and general cultural heritage, and have made much better use of it than any other non-Western racial group. However, their record is patchy. Japan has been able to duplicate the technology of the West but has not been able to surpass it. In the 1970s, many Americans feared Japan would dominate it economically and financially, but just as it seemed to pull abreast of the West, it began to stagnate and has shown little growth since the 1980s.
China has not been able to bridge the oceanic gulf in wealth and sophistication between its coastal cities and the vast Chinese interior. No Asian society has achieved much success in fundamental scientific discovery or technological innovation that goes beyond the adaptation of what has been invented or discovered elsewhere. Nor, despite the large populations of Asians living in advanced European societies, can we find front-rank scientists in proportion to their numbers. In the social sciences their contributions are practically invisible. This lack of top-level achievement is particularly striking given that Asians have higher incomes than whites, go farther in school, and start more businesses.
Asians have adopted Western culture as well as Western technology. The Japanese, in particular, are famous for imitating both high and low white culture, from Beethoven to the Beatles. Asian Harry Potter fans are among the most frenzied in the world. The sites on Prince Edward Island associated with the children’s book series about Anne of Green Gables attract as many Japanese as they do Americans or Canadians. Asians have enthusiastically copied the architecture of the West and have even been willing to tear down many fine examples of indigenous architecture.
There is no equivalent of Asian mass culture entering white societies. The most that can be found are periodic outbreaks of the use of oriental art and motifs by European designers.
This willingness to imitate might seem odd in view of the traditionally static nature of Asian societies. Perhaps it could be ascribed to the feelings of inferiority that arose when Asians faced the power of the industrialized West. In China’s case it might arise from a sense of humiliation because of European quasi-colonialism in the 19th century. Many Chinese would say they are modernizing only now because they were held back by white control and manipulation, but this does not fit with the facts. China had centuries during which it could have pulled ahead of the West, and European meddling effectively ended in 1949.
In any case, to copy culture as well as technology shows a strange lack of ambition. Why not do something whites have never done?
One could argue that imitation comes more naturally in conformist, less individualistic societies. Or rather, it may be natural to imitate certain aspects of life but not others. Asians do not show an appetite for imitating social structures. The Japanese and South Koreans may have formally adopted systems of elective government from European examples, but traditional social relations remain strong. Those countries accept practices that in the West would be considered straightforward bribery, and voters are greatly influenced by collective loyalties. As for China, the Communist elite have managed to retain control while allowing some economic freedom. They have certainly avoided democratization, and the government continues openly to manipulate the law.
Japan’s imitation of the West is especially striking, given its earlier suspicions. After some 16th and 17th century experience with European merchants and priests, in the 1630s it took the dramatic step of sealing the country off from all but the most limited European contact. This self-imposed isolation lasted more than two centuries until Commodore Matthew Perry forced trade on the Japanese in 1853.
A new elite ideology then emerged that saw imitation of certain aspects of Western countries as the best way to compete with them. This new ideology was accepted by the people with astonishing readiness despite the earlier policy of isolation. Why did this transition take place so easily? Most probably because of an average personality that is unusually susceptible to authority.
One of the most striking examples of both the remarkable ability and remarkable limitedness of Asians is the history of the Chinese admiral Zheng He. From 1405 to 1433 he commanded a series of seven extraordinary voyages throughout South East Asia and to such places as India, Ceylon, the Arabian peninsula, and even East Africa. The admiral’s largest ships were enormous, six-masted junks estimated to have been 100 yards or more long, and he travelled with tens of thousands of men and hundreds of vessels. His ships were many times larger than anything afloat in the West, and if the Chinese had devoted themselves to sea power, they would certainly have dominated trade and could have discovered and colonized the Americas.
However, there was a change of emperor, and the new regime had no interest in exploration. Zheng He died on the last voyage, and the emperor ordered the fleet burned. That was the end of China as a maritime power.
In the hands of the West, sea power dramatically changed history. In the hands of the Chinese, it was a means to satisfy a fleeting curiosity about foreigners. China had unsurpassed technology, but did not have the spirit to turn that technology into world or even regional dominance.
Despite their higher average IQ, Asians have failed to become the culturally dominant race probably because innate personality traits work against them. Compared to Europeans, they are passive, unquestioning, and lacking in initiative. The next 50 years will probably see a continuing rise in the economic and military power of China, but if history is any guide, this rise in power will not be matched by innovation, and China’s cultural contributions will remain insignificant.
Mr. Henderson is a history and politics graduate whose career was divided between the public and private sectors. He is now retired and lives in Britain.
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Asian Consciousness (Part II)
Part I described how Asians are increasingly likely to establish a ”pan-Asian” identity rather than assimilate to the Anglo-American mainstream the way previous generations of Asians did. Part II examines the vexed question of divided loyalty and finds that at least some Asians do not hesitate to put racial-national interests above those of their adopted homeland.
The Case of Wen Ho Lee
For many Asian Americans, especially Chinese Americans, the Wen Ho Lee spying case pushed them decisively in the direction of racial consciousness. Mr. Lee is a Taiwan-born scientist who became a naturalized US citizen and worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1999, he was accused of spying for China and was held for nine months in solitary confinement during an investigation.
The case never came to a conclusion, partly because the New York Times leaked his identity and the resulting coverage derailed the investigation. Espionage charges were withdrawn as part of a plea bargain, in which Mr. Lee confessed to one felony count of improperly downloading classified information to unsecured computers. He never gave a plausible explanation for why he needed this information. It also came to light that Chinese authorities had asked him to spy for them, and he had violated regulations by not reporting this.
The federal judge who handled the case pointed out to Mr. Lee that he had plead guilty to a serious crime but he also apologized for prosecutorial misconduct. Mr. Lee eventually won a judgment of $1.6 million from the US government and five different media companies because his identity as a suspect had been leaked.
It is a murky case, and certainly appears to have been mishandled by the government, but many Asian organizations were convinced it was a case of pure racial profiling. Asian Week wrote about Mr. Lee’s “martyrdom,” and charged that Asians had been “singled out and looked upon with suspicion.” Albert Wang, a California doctor who championed Mr. Lee, called his prosecution “the major Chinese-American civil rights case in the last 30 years.’’ Karen Narasaki, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium called Mr. Lee’s case a “watershed.” “This community [Asians] bought into the notion that if you work hard, pay attention to your family, you will be accepted,” she said. “This case says it’s not true.”
Supporters created the Wen Ho Lee Defense Fund and raised $100,000 for his legal bills. The Association for Asian American Studies and a group called Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education called on all Asian Americans to refuse to work for federal nuclear laboratories. They argued that because Asians and Asian Americans account for a quarter of all doctorates awarded in the US in science and technology, a boycott would seriously hurt the labs.
In 2004, four years after the plea bargain, the Asian legislative caucus in the California state house announced it would publicly honor Mr. Lee with a “profiles in courage” award. It backed down after a furious reaction from what Mr. Lee’s supporters called “racist, right-wing zealots.”
Nearly 10 years after charges were initially filed, Chinese-Americans were still angry about the Lee case, and fought President-elect Barack Obama’s choice of former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson as commerce secretary. Mr. Richardson was energy secretary at the time of the Lee accusations and had cabinet-level responsibility for Los Alamos. Asian Week was convinced Mr. Richardson had encouraged the prosecution exclusively for racial reasons: “It was a de facto APA [Asian Pacific Islander] witch-hunt set off by Richardson’s green light: the xenophobic targeting of Lee as a spy . . . Richardson found a way to use fear of Asians to whip up hysteria against Asian Americans not seen since World War II.”
Mr. Richardson withdrew his nomination because of an investigation into business dealings as governor of New Mexico. Had he not done so, Asian groups would have tried to stop his appointment, even if it meant angering Hispanics, who strongly favored Mr. Richardson.
The case certainly raised sensitive questions. Is it possible Mr. Lee could have been tempted to spy for China because of a feeling of kinship? It is well known that, loyalties, whether national, ethnic, or racial are deeply emotional.
On some occasions, Chinese living in North America have not been shy about expressing their deepest loyalties. In 1999, the American women’s soccer team met the Chinese team in Los Angeles for the finals of the Women’s World Cup. Los Angeles has long had large Chinese communities from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland that felt little love for each other, but they set aside their differences to root with one voice for the Chinese team. “There are political differences, but because the team is Chinese, that’s all we think about,” explained Louis Wong, a Chinatown news vendor who came from Hong Kong.
Two groups that did not ordinarily get along — the Chinese consulate and conservative Chinese business organizations — joined forces to buy seats in the same section so thousands of Chinese-American fans could sit together and make a tremendous din for the Beijing team. The idea that Chinese might have come together to root for their new homeland would have been laughable. “I’m a US citizen, but I’m Chinese,” explained businessman Edward Chang.
When China hosted the Olympic Games in 2008 the sentiment of Canadian-Chinese was much the same. Andrea Chun, a Toronto lawyer and television host, explained that “when it comes to the games, most Chinese-Canadians are rooting for China, to be honest,” adding, “They won’t admit it if you ask them, but for sure they are.” Rich Chan, a personal trainer who had lived his entire life in Canada was happy to admit it. “I’m going with China. China all the way,” he said.
Athletic teams represent nations in contests that have decisive, win-or-lose outcomes. International athletics therefore feed many of the emotions aroused by war. In Los Angeles, Chinese-Americans did their best to give the Beijing team a home-field advantage when it played the American team. Would it be so surprising if some of the thousands who cheered the Chinese team expressed their loyalty in other ways? Is it wrong to wonder if they might?
China is hungry for American technology, and devotes a major part of its huge espionage effort to the United States. The Chinese method of spying is different from that of the classic, Soviet technique of sending trained professionals to burrow deep into enemy infrastructure. Beijing gets intelligence from thousands of part-time and amateur spies: students, businessmen, and Chinese citizens of target countries. According to the US government Intelligence Threat Handbook, 98 percent of the Americans the Chinese approach for information are Chinese-Americans: “Ethnic targeting to arouse feelings of obligation is the single most distinctive feature of PRC intelligence operations.”
According to a joint FBI/CIA report, “When approaching an individual of Chinese origin, the Chinese intelligence services attempt to secure his or her cooperation by playing on this shared ancestry.” David Szady, chief of FBI counterintelligence operations explained that Chinese spies “don’t consider anyone to be American-Chinese. They’re all considered overseas Chinese.” He noted that the politically correct pretense that American citizens never fall for this appeal interferes with the FBI’s counterespionage work.
Actual arrests, which, according to government sources, “are just the tip of the iceberg of an already-large and increasingly capable PRC [Peoples Republic of China] intelligence effort,” show that some Chinese-Americans are, indeed, susceptible to racial-nationalist appeals. In 2004, seven officers and employees of two New Jersey companies were arrested for transferring sensitive information on radar, smart weapons, and electronic warfare to Chinese government research institutes. The presidents of Universal Technologies and Manten Electronics were among the seven. Five were naturalized Chinese-Americans and the other two were permanent-resident Chinese.
Likewise in 2004, Ting-Ih Hsu, a naturalized US citizen and president of Azure Systems, pleaded guilty in Orlando, Florida, to exporting to China low-noise amplifier chips used in Hellfire missile systems. Also pleading guilty was Hai Lin Nee, a Chinese citizen and an employee of Azure Systems.
In 2005, Chi Mak, a naturalized Chinese American who held a “secret” level security clearance, was arrested for stealing classified details of submarine propulsion systems from his employer, Power Paragon, of Anaheim, California. His wife and a number of other family members helped him copy the information and deliver it to China. Mr. Mak was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to 24½ years in prison in 2008. Also in 2005, Zhao Xin Zhu was sentenced in Boston to two years in prison and three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to trying to send night vision equipment and satellite technology to China. That same year, Jinghua and Xiuwen Liang, both naturalized citizens living in Thousand Oaks, California, were sentenced to 2½ years imprisonment for exporting parts of F-14 fighters and various missile systems to China.
Likewise in 2005, naturalized citizens Ning Wen and his wife, Hailin Lin, were arrested in Wisconsin for smuggling electronics for use in missiles and radar systems. In 2006, Mr. Wen was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.
In 2006, Xiangdong Sheldon Meng, a naturalized US citizen living in Cupertino, California, was arrested for stealing night vision training software from a Silicon Valley defense contractor and trying to sell it to military buyers in Thailand, Malaysia, and China. That same year Fei Ye, a naturalized US citizen, and Ming Zhong, a permanent US resident, pleaded guilty to stealing civilian chip technology from Silicon Valley firms for delivery to China.
In February 2007, China-born, naturalized citizen Hanjuan Jin of Schaumburg, Illinois, was stopped at Chicago’s O’Hare airport with a one-way ticket to Peking, $30,000 in cash, and an estimated $600 million worth of trade secrets stolen from Motorola and another Chicago-area electronics firm, Lemko. In March 2008, she was charged with stealing trade secrets to take to China.
In 2008, the president of a Virginia-based high-tech company, Quan-Sheng Shu, pleaded guilty to selling rocket technology to China. A naturalized citizen, he was fined $400,000 and received a sentence of four years and three months. Likewise in 2008, naturalized citizen Tai Shen Kuo pleaded guilty in Alexandria, Virginia to selling data on Taiwan’s air defenses to China.
In February 2009, Yaming Nina Qi Hanson of Maryland was caught trying to take flight controls for miniature reconnaissance planes to China. She said she wanted to help China in its development efforts.
In July 2009, a federal judge found Dongfan “Greg” Chung guilty of delivering space shuttle secrets to China. Since 1973, when he started work at Rockwell International, he had stored more than 300,000 pages of secret documents in his home. “Mr. Chung has been an agent of the People’s Republic of China for over 30 years,” Judge Cormac Carney wrote, and noted that the naturalized US citizen “proudly proclaimed [China] as his “motherland’.”
Other Asian-Americans have been disloyal. Robert Kim, a naturalized citizen from South Korea who worked as an intelligence analyst for the Navy, was arrested in 1996 for turning over classified information to the South Korean Embassy. In an interview in 2004 after he was released from seven years in jail, he claimed to love America, his “adopted country,” but in an interview published in a South Korean paper he said he considered himself Korean first and foremost. Korean supporters called him a true patriot.
There is no official count of the number of Chinese-Americans who have been convicted of spying or helping the Chinese arms industry but there must be scores of them. Only Wen Ho Lee ever became a cause célèbre or prompted accusations of racial profiling. Was he really the victim of an anti-Asian witch hunt or was he a spy whose investigation was bungled? Whatever his supporters may say, racial and national ties are strong, and American counterespionage efforts must take them into consideration.
Clearly, only a small number of Asian-Americans are spies for China. However, there can be no doubt that Asians are more likely to spy for China than are non-Asians, and if they are going to be spies they are far more likely to spy for an Asian country than for Russia, for example. National bonds are strong.
This is not to place special blame on Asians. If Mexico were trying to develop sophisticated weapons and Mexican-Americans were in a position to help them, they would probably be just as active as Asians. Indeed, if roles were reversed, whites would probably be just as likely to be disloyal citizens of Asian nations. Questions of loyalty are always a problem in heterogeneous nations and security breaches will always be more common in such a nation than in one that is homogeneous.
At the same time, the very diversity of the United States and the openly parochial identities of so many non-whites have encouraged Asian Americans to reverse course on the road to assimilation. They are a group that at one time made great efforts to assimilate, but as blacks, Mexicans, and other Hispanics cultivate distinctive identities — and win political power, cultural recognition, and “affirmative action” benefits by doing so — why should Asians remain the “model minority” that does not try to thrust itself forward? It is no wonder that younger Asians now reject a label their elders worked to earn.
The Japanese-American poet Amy Uyematsu, who was born after the war, criticized her parents’ and grand-parents’ generations for trying to gain acceptance by “denying their yellowness” and complained that they were “white in every respect but color.”
Bill Seki, a Los Angeles lawyer born in the early 1960s, takes a similar view. He says his Japanese-American parents tried very hard to assimilate, to become “Americans first,” but the result was that “people take Japanese Americans for granted.” Mr. Seki does not want to be taken for granted. Instead, he says: “One comment you commonly get is, ‘You’re just like another white guy.’ No, that’s completely wrong.”
Presumably Mr. Seki’s parents would have considered it high praise to be thought no different — and treated no differently — from whites, but that view is passé. Race or ethnicity now comes before a larger American identity. The one racial group in addition to whites that at one time seemed committed to transcending race is moving away from that commitment.
Nguyen Ai Quoc is the pen name of a history instructor at a southern California community college.
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A Celebration of the BNP
A report on the Red, White, and Blue Festival.
After the conservative collapse in the US presidential election and the inauguration of the first non-Western American president, the June elections to the European Parliament were a real sign of hope. Not only did “conservatives” win in a landslide, but many countries sent strong slates of “extreme-right” deputies to parliament as well. Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party stunned the establishment and took the largest number of seats in Holland. In Hungary, Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary) came in third, with its slogan, “Hungary belongs to the Hungarians.” Austria, Denmark, and Italy also sent delegations of staunch nationalists to the Euro-parliament, but it was the victories of the British National Party’s Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons that meant the most to me as an American (see “A Breakthrough for the BNP?” AR June, 2009). In August, I decided to go to England to attend the BNP’s annual Red, White and Blue Festival.
Credit Image: © National News/ZUMApress.com
I arrived in London a few days in advance of the festival and did some sight-seeing. I knew there had been a great deal of Third-World immigration but I was still surprised to find places that in no way resembled an English city. Edgware Road, where I stayed for my first few days, felt more like Lebanon than Britain, with its Muslim faces, kebab shops, and hookah bars. Locals refer to it as “Little Beirut.”
From time to time I asked Londoners I met what they thought of the BNP, although I also mentioned the United Kingdom Independence Party, so as not to give the impression I was a BNP supporter. Young London hipsters invariably said the party was “racist” or “Nazi.” The reaction of one female bartender was typical. I was with a fellow American who was wearing a BNP shirt. The bartender noted his American accent and asked if he knew what the BNP was. Jokingly, he replied “no,” and she snapped back that he shouldn’t wear that shirt.
The elderly who lived through the Second World War also accept the media-manufactured idea that the BNP is “fascist.” With the atrocities of the war still in their memories, they are unable to see how misleading such labels are. Two Londoners who had lived in the city since the 1930s were exceptions. I would have pegged them as Labour supporters, but to my surprise they told me they always voted BNP. They called party chairman Nick Griffin a hero, and when I told them I had a signed picture of him, one offered me money for it, saying it would be “worth hundreds of pounds one day.”
The real core of BNP supporters is reported to be middle-aged, working- or middle-class whites with families, and there are few such people in London. Those rare Brits who expressed real enthusiasm for the BNP usually waited until I pressed them or said I was a supporter. Many started with the classic, self-flagellating “I’m not racist but . . .” One man felt he had to tell me several times how terrible the BNP was before finally admitting he voted for it! Still, my impression is that compared to Americans, the British are beginning to see through some of the artificiality of political correctness.
After several days in London, I arrived with a group of friends at the Red, White and Blue Festival. For 10 years, it has been held on a party member’s private farmland in a small town called Denby in Derbyshire. Most people who attend bring tents to sleep in and barbecue their own meals.
At the entrance, security checked our car, collected a £20 admission fee, and gave us wristbands to wear while we were at the festival. All this was necessary because potentially violent left-wing protestors were expected, and if they were going to spy they would at least have to pay admission. These precautions were justified. Over the weekend, several hundred “social-justice” crusaders, bused in from various parts of the country, blocked roads to Denby, trying to prevent people from attending the festival. They clashed with police, who arrested several dozen. They littered the countryside with flyers and even glued shut the card slots of ATM machines to prevent festival attendees from withdrawing money. BNP supporters caused no trouble at all.
I had assumed that because this was the 10th festival and because of the dramatic victories in the Euro-elections there would be a record-breaking crowd. However, in a clear attempt to harass the BNP, local police banned live music, the sale of alcohol, and parking for RVs. Attendance was therefore only an estimated 1,500 — down from the more than 2,000 who have attended previous festivals — but we still had a marvelous time.
We pitched our tents, set up our barbecue, and raised the Union Jack and the flag of Wales. Nearly every tent flew colors, and I was glad to see many Confederate flags. In the next field over there were booths selling everything from patriotic flags, BNP and Anglo-Saxon pride T-shirts, CDs of both British folk music and BNP-inspired pop, and even the once-beloved childhood toy known as the Golliwog. Great White Records sold official BNP music in a booth run by the nationalist pop singer, Joey Smith. All the different regional branches of the BNP had booths, each with its local newsletter and speaking its regional accent. It was heartening to see party supporters from every county in England — there was even a delegation from the overrun city of London. The BNP festival is mainly a family event, so there was also entertainment for children, with slides and moon bounces.
At the party’s meeting tent, there was a series of speakers, including party chairman Nick Griffin, Richard Barnbrook (member of the London Council), Andrew Brons (deputy to the Euro-Parliament), the nationalist activist and lecturer Jonathan Bowden, and several foreign politicians. Roberto Fiore of the Forza Nuova Party and Marc Abramson of the Swedish National Democrats offered a larger perspective on nationalism in Europe.
There was much to do when there were no speakers at the podium. One popular activity was throwing wet sponges at people wearing Tony Blaire, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, or Osama Bin Laden masks. One evening, Jonathan Bowden held a riveting reading of the legend of Beowulf. On another evening, a group reenacted an ancient pagan ritual that explained the history and beliefs of early Britons while spectators drank mead.
The most important political discussion was about the future membership of the party. The left has attacked the BNP’s whites-only policy, arguing that its elected officials cannot serve all constituents equally. Mr. Griffin and Mr. Barnbrook led a discussion about whether the BNP could maintain its current membership or whether it must go down the path of France’s National Front and become multi-racial, even while maintaining strict policies on multiculturalism and immigration.
Although the entire weekend was fascinating, the closing ceremony was certainly the grandest spectacle. Along with Andrew Brons’s explanation of the BNP’s mutually hostile relationship with the European Union, the highlight was Nick Griffin’s tremendous hour-and-a-half speech. He spoke of the great importance and difficulty of the BNP’s task, but inspired the audience with accounts of Britain’s past glories and victories over hardship. He called for help to save Britain, explaining how ordinary people can take part in that great task.
Mr. Griffin declared that whether Britain is saved by a BNP electoral victory, or whether it takes centuries of hardship and even enslavement, indigenous Brits must and will take back their lands. Mr. Griffin did not blame immigrants but pointed the finger at the self-serving, greedy British elite for propagating liberalism and exacerbating the country’s woes.
Mr. Griffin used the term “indigenous Brits” to expose how liberals preach freedom for “indigenous peoples” in places like Hawaii while welcoming the displacement of whites in their own countries. It was inspiring to see a nationalist go on the offensives against our worst enemies. At the end, Mr. Griffin led the audience in singing the great, patriotic hymn, Jerusalem, which invokes a feeling of deep unity with one’s people and a remembrance of Europe’s Christian heritage — though the party has members of all faiths.
The Red White, and Blue would have attracted more young people if it could have offered live music and alcohol, but it was still an inspiring opportunity to enjoy the company of like-minded people and meet fellow nationalists. I hope to be back in future years. Events like these benefit the BNP tremendously and are a fine model for other nationalists (see also “European Nationalism on the March,” AR, July 2008).
Ryan Lanier is the pen name of an undergraduate at a university in Tennessee.
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Remembering Harry Patch
The last survivor of our First Peloponnesian War.
It is appropriate for us to mark the death on July 25th of Harry Patch. Aged 111, Harry Patch was the last surviving British soldier from our race’s First Peloponnesian War of the last century, that is to say, the First World War. These two fratricidal wars — like the original ones among the Greeks of Antiquity — may have accomplished the complete and possibly fatal wreck of our race and civilization.
Harry Patch (Credit Image: Jim Ross / Wikipedia)
Patch survived horrific service in the trenches of Flanders as a machine gunner and suffered severe wounds. For most of his life he was reticent about the war and his service in it, but after his 100th birthday Patch began speaking out against the war and the hatreds it engendered.
He said he was a reluctant soldier, noting that when he first came face to face with a German soldier, he could not help thinking of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” He deliberately shot the German in the shoulder, making him drop his rifle, but the German kept running towards him. He then shot the man twice in the leg. “I had about five seconds to make the decision,” he said. “I brought him down, but I didn’t kill him.”
In July 2007, he was present at the 90th-anniversary commemoration of the beginning of the Battle of Passchendaele, in which he fought. He called the war a “calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings,” and said that “war isn’t worth one life.”
Patch’s funeral was held on August 6, 2009, and was attended by thousands of mourners led by the Duchess of Cornwall. His coffin, draped in a Union Jack, was carried into the 13th century Wells Cathedral 140 miles west of London by soldiers of The Rifles, the successor to Patch’s unit, the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. Honorary pallbearers included two soldiers each from France, Belgium, and Germany, all in full dress uniform. A German diplomat was one of the scripture readers at the Anglican service.
Patch would have heartily approved of the inclusion of Germans. On the 90th anniversary of the end of the war last November, he attended the remembrance service in London at which his message was, “Remember the Germans.”
It is unfortunate that the service included the ballad “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” by the one-time Communist, Pete Seeger. A much more appropriate pacifist song would have been Eric Bogle’s 1976 “No Man’s Land,” also known as “The Green Fields of France.” Not only was it written by a Scot rather than an American, it is about the First World War and has more thoughtful lyrics and a better tune.
The lyrics are worth reproducing in full (see below).
Given that Mr. Bogle’s ballad mocks Wilsonian and British liberal fantasies about “War to End War,” it is not surprising that “No Man’s Land” is generally unfamiliar to Americans and shunned by American leftists. Such lyrics are blasphemies against the liberal establishment’s Holy Trinity of Lincoln, Wilson, and Roosevelt, and American liberals are notoriously intolerant of those who mock their gods.
Our Weaknesses
Our race has many strengths and many weaknesses. One of those weaknesses is its love of family quarrels and fights. White Europeans love to fight each other. I suspect that it is a sublimated, subconscious form of racism, but whites seem to believe that only a victory over a kindred white nation is worthy of pride. All over Britain today there are monuments commemorating victories over other whites. Almost nowhere does one see a monument to a victory over Sikhs, Hindus, Zulus, etc.
While I am not a pacifist as Patch became, I have to confess that I read history in vain to find any significant war America or any other European nation has fought since the Mexican-American War of 1848 that did any good for our race. Ethnomasochists, however, such as Tom Brokaw with his book, The Greatest Generation, feel otherwise. For them, only wars against whites are good wars.
A similar example is the former President of the Republic of Ireland, Mary Robinson, who was awarded America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, by Barack Obama in August of this year. In September 1997, both Mary Robinson (in Dublin) and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo (in Mexico City) marked the 150th anniversary of the end of the Mexican-American War by honoring the San Patricio Brigade (”Saint Patrick’s Brigade”), a unit formed by Irish-American deserters who fought for the Mexicans against their former comrades.
President Robinson spoke of standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with Mexicans against a common enemy: the Anglo-Saxons of Great Britain and their Anglo relatives in the United States. Her remarks went almost completely unnoticed by the American media at the time, but many Americans would have agreed with her: treason against fellow whites was preferable to “aggression” against non-whites (please see “The War With Mexico,” AR, Sept. 1995, for an illuminating account of the conflict).
The death of the last British soldier from the First World War is a time for reflection and resolve. We must do our utmost to ensure that our racial family feuds are healed. We must refute and put to rest lies intended to accentuate and prolong such family feuds. We must foster a sense of our common heritage as European whites and remember as our forefathers did in medieval times that there is a shared, overarching race and culture of all Europeans that binds us to each other even as we remain separate and proud members of different white nations. There must never again be a brothers’ war between our kindred nations.
No Man’s Land
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| IN THE NEWS |
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O Tempora, O Mores!
365Black
McDonald’s, the fast food giant, recently launched a website called “365Black,” which it explains as follows:
At McDonald’s, we believe that African-American culture and achievement should be celebrated 365 days a year — not just during Black History Month. That’s the idea behind 365Black.com. It’s a place where you can learn more about education, employment, career advancement and entrepreneurship opportunities, and meet real people whose lives have been touched by McDonald’s.
The message continues: “Like the unique African Baobab tree, which nourishes its community with leaves and fruit, McDonald’s has branched out to the African-American community nourishing it with valuable programs and opportunities.” [What is McDonald’s 365Black? 365Black.com.]
So far, there is very little content at the site, which appears mainly to be designed to encourage blacks to apply for jobs at McDonald’s.
According to a 2006 report from the US Office of Personnel Management, blacks are heavily overrepresented in the workforces of all but one of the 17 federal executive departments. The departments with the highest percentages of blacks are Housing and Urban Development (37.5 percent), Education (36.9 percent), State (32.8), Veterans Affairs (24.5 percent), Treasury (24.1) and Labor (23.2). The only department in which blacks are underrepresented is the Department of the Interior, where they make up just 5.9 percent of the workforce. (Interior appears to be popular with American Indians, who, at 12.1 percent of the workforce, are overrepresented by 1,000 percent.)
Blacks are likewise overrepresented in all 23 federal independent agencies — sometimes dramatically so. For example, 81.7 percent of the people who work for the Court Services and Offender Supervision (CSOS) agency are black. The agency’s “affirmative action target” — the minimum percentage of its workforce expected to be black, based on agency-specific occupations — is just nine percent, which means blacks are overrepresented at CSOS by an astonishing 807.8 percent. The agencies with the next-highest percentage of black employees are the Government Printing Office (56 percent), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (43.1 percent), the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (41.2 percent), and the Smithsonian Institution (39.9 percent). The independent federal agency with the least black workforce is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), at 11.8 percent. Based on the number of blacks said to be qualified for NASA work, they should be only 7.9 percent of the agency, however, so they are still overrepresented by nearly 50 percent. [Blacks in the Federal Work Force, 2007 Edition: US Office of Personnel Management Report, posted at Adversity.net, July 23, 2007.]
It is not surprising to learn that more than 40 percent of the employees at EEOC are black, but who would have thought that nearly a third of the people at the State Department are black? It must because of their extensive knowledge of history, foreign policy, and exotic languages.
New York City police are on the lookout for at least four men responsible for a series of assaults in the Bronx neighborhood of Tremont. On August 30, the gang attacked and beat two Mexican men, as they shouted anti-Mexican slurs. Early the next morning, the gang ambushed and stabbed a 53-year-old Mexican man, and a day later they jumped another lone Mexican. Police say these are hate crimes, but who’s committing them? The suspects, like the victims, are Hispanics — Dominicans, who don’t like Mexicans on their turf. [John Lauinger, Series of Bias Crimes in Bronx, New York Daily News, Sept. 2, 2009.]
Like most state capitols, the statehouse in Raleigh, North Carolina, is full of statues, busts, and plaques honoring the people who contributed to the state’s history. There are 14 statues on the grounds, and as many in the building. Only one, the tribute to Vietnam War soldiers, includes non-whites: a black soldier and a Lumbee Indian. This doesn’t sit well with diversity boosters such as Eddie Davis, former head of the North Carolina teacher’s union. He calls the all-white statues “segregated history in the 21st century.” Mr. Davis, who is black, wants the state Historical Commission to put a “Hall of Inclusion” on the second floor of the Capitol, with plaques recognizing contributions by non-whites.
Unfortunately for Mr. Davis, North Carolina imposed a moratorium on new statues and monuments at the capitol in the 1980s, in order to preserve the aesthetics of the building and grounds. “To convert the state Capitol to a showcase for one cause, however worthy, would open it up as a showcase for other causes,” says John Sanders, a former professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Government and an expert on the capitol. “Its significance as a local historic landmark would be compromised.” Bill Ferris, also a UNC history professor, thinks the Historical Commission should rewrite the rules. “We’re changing as a society, and down the road there will be monuments to Hispanic leaders,” he says. [Mark Johnson, A Call for Diversity at the Capitol, News & Observer (Raleigh), Aug. 31, 2009.]
She Prefers White Guys
The following published exchange took place recently between a woman in Sacramento and nationally-syndicated advice columnist Carolyn Hax:
The query:
Some friends of mine had been talking up this guy they thought would be perfect for me, so I finally went on a blind date with him. It turns out he’s black, and while I am not racist and have no problem with interracial dating in general, it’s not for me. I just prefer to date white guys.
I told my friends why I wouldn’t be seeing him again, and they were, shockingly, horrified. Did I miss something here? I know interracial dating is more prevalent now than it used to be, but I didn’t realize it was so common that you get in trouble if you don’t want to do it. . . . I’m hoping you’ll tell me I’m right, that no one should have to date anyone they don’t want to.
The reply:
You’re right — no one should have to date anyone s/he doesn’t want to. And your friends are right, too — they shouldn’t have to pretend they’re not horrified by something they find morally repugnant. . . .
More people date interracially because more people realize that the only alternative to being racist is to judge each person as a person . . .
We’re having this conversation because you didn’t find his race attractive. That’s what racism is.
[Carolyn Hax, Racist? She Prefers Dating White Guys, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Aug. 30, 2009.]
Atlanta became the first major Southern city to elect a black mayor back in 1973, when it chose Maynard Jackson over white incumbent Sam Massell, and no white has come close to the mayor’s office ever since. But thanks to recent demographic changes — more blacks moving to the suburbs for better schools and more whites and Hispanics moving to the city to avoid long commutes — that might change. Unpopular incumbent Shirley Franklin cannot run for a third term, and has no obvious heir apparent, leaving the field open. The leading contenders among blacks are city council president Lisa Borders and state senator Kasim Reed, but the leader in the polls is city councilman Mary Norwood, who is white. This annoys some blacks.
In late August, the Black Leadership Forum circulated a memo urging blacks to unite behind Miss Borders, whom it believes has the best chance of winning support from white business leaders and defeating Miss Norwood. “For the last 25 years Atlanta has represented the breakthrough for black political empowerment in the South,” the memo reads. “In order to defeat a Norwood (white) mayoral candidacy we have to get out now and work in a manner to defeat her without a runoff, and the key is a significant Black turnout.”
All the leading candidates denounced the memo. Miss Borders said race should not be a factor in the election. Mr. Reed called the memo “racially charged and vitriolic.” Miss Norwood says her candidacy is about issues, adding, “Race does not play a role.”
Aaron Turpeau, a black businessman who worked for former mayors Jackson and Andrew Young, is a member of the Black Leadership Forum and defends the memo. “You shouldn’t vote solely on having a black candidate,” he says. “You have to deal with the credentials and skill set first. After that, it’s a feeling of pride that we’ve had for 35 years in this town.” [Valerie Bauerlein, Race Enters Atlanta Mayoral Vote, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 28, 2009.]
Detroit has no major national grocery chains, and efforts to start full-service local stores have gone bust after a year or two. A 2007 study found that 92 percent of food stores in Detroit are what are called fringe providers: liquor stores, gas stations, party stores, dollar stores, pharmacies, and convenience stores. Only eight percent sell traditional groceries.
Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm wants residents to get fresh fruits and vegetables, so she spent $75,000 of taxpayer money on a pilot program called MI (pronounced “my”) Neighborhood Food Movers. The idea is to deliver produce to open-air markets and sell it from the backs of trucks. If there is enough demand, there will be urban gardens, more delivery services, and cooking classes. Public subsidies will help keep prices cheap, and the trucks will accept food stamps and honor the Michigan welfare card. [Kimberly Hayes Taylor, State Seeds Fresh Food Delivery in Detroit, Detroit News, Aug. 22, 2009.]
Left unanswered — because no one ever seems to raise it — is the question of why there are no grocery stores in Detroit to begin with.
Fighting Internet Racism
John Ismael Henry of Soso, Mississippi, invented the vibrating toilet seat, which landed him a spot on the “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno. Not all people appreciate Mr. Henry’s contribution to science, and he has become the butt of jokes in Internet discussion groups. Because Mr. Henry is black, some of the jokes have been racial, and he is now suing America Online (AOL) and Google, accusing them of perpetuating Internet “racism,” by allowing posters to call him a “nigger.”
“Needless to say that my invention garnered a lot of attention,” he explains. “I was completely humiliated and horrified to discover that these two great bastions of business prowess would allow (these insulting) websites . . . to thrive on their search engines.” He says he has suffered “enormous mental harm, emotional suffering, and sleepless nights.” He claims to believe in freedom of speech but says search engines should “show some responsibility to what’s happening.” In July, both AOL and Google filed motions to dismiss, but a judge has yet to rule.
In case the lawsuit doesn’t work, Mr. Henry is writing a book that will help eliminate racism: Diversity and Racism: The Challenge of Mankind. “All Americans have been affected by racism and its horrible practices,” he says, and “many need counseling to some degree.” [Eloria Newell James, Local Inventor Files Lawsuit Against ‘Racist’ AOL, Google, Leader-Call (Laurel, Miss.), Aug. 20, 2009.]
Aging pop star Madonna took a break during a recent concert in Bucharest to lecture the audience about the allegedly poor treatment of gypsies in Eastern Europe. She said it made her “sad” and that no one should suffer discrimination. The audience booed her until she started singing again. Madonna has included gypsy musicians and dancers as part of her Eastern European tour. [Madonna Booed in Bucharest for Criticizing Discrimination Against Roma, or Gypsies, AP, Aug. 27, 2009.]
Giddy leftist commentators, surveying the raucous crowds gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park to welcome Barack Obama’s electoral victory last November, predicted they would go home and celebrate in a way that would produce a surge in births nine months later — what they called the Obama baby boom. Forty weeks later, a survey of Chicago-area maternity wards reveals no uptick. “Research evidence gives scant support for a one-day or one-month fertility ‘spike’ due to the election,” says Donald Bogue, a University of Chicago demographer and sociologist. “Births are now predominantly planned and not very responsive to good news.”
Although there was no baby boom, Mr. Obama will be leaving a permanent mark on some members of the next generation. The Social Security Administration says the name “Barack” has jumped more than 10,000 spots on the list of most popular baby names — a record — from No. 12,535 in 2007 to No. 2,409 in 2008. It predicts the name will do even better this year, breaking into the top 1,000. [Obama Baby Boom: Predicted Surge in Births Goes Bust, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 11, 2009.]
During the past three years, Oslo police have investigated 41 cases of aggravated sexual assault. All were committed by non-white immigrants to Norway, mostly Kurds and Africans. They say the rapes all have one thing in common — the use of “gross violence” — and are urging that more effort be put into promoting “preventative measures” among immigrant men. [Immigrants behind Most Cases of Aggravated Sexual Assault, Norway Post, Aug. 28, 2009.] Not letting them in would be effective.
Earlier this summer the British National Party (BNP) launched a campaign to keep a mosque out of Loughton, a town just north of London. The usual crowd accused the party of stirring up racial hatred, a charge given credence when a 36-year-old Muslim activist, Noor Ramjanally, claimed Muslim-haters kidnapped him.
Mr. Ramjanally told police two men abducted him, stuffed him into the trunk of a car, and drove him more than 20 miles to a wooded area of Essex. He said that when they said, “Let’s do it here,” he thought they were going to kill him. Instead, they warned him to keep his Islamic group out of their neighborhood, and dumped him in the woods. While he didn’t accuse the men of being BNP members, he pointed the finger at the party, saying, “It is only the BNP who want my Islamic group out of Loughton.” Mr. Ramjanally also claimed someone had firebombed his home several weeks earlier.
His story became a cause célèbre among Muslims, and was whooped up with much sympathy in the national press, but police were skeptical. On September 3, they arrested him and charged him with “perverting the course of justice” for making the whole thing up. [Muslim Community Leader Arrested for ‘Making Up BNP Story,’ Daily Mail (London), Sept. 3, 2009.]
Will There Be More?
Brandon Huntley, a 31-year-old white South African says blacks have attacked him on seven occasions, once stabbing him while calling him a “settler” and “white dog.” Mr. Huntley went to Canada, and in April 2008, he filed for asylum, claiming he faced persecution from blacks. In late August, immigration judge William Davis ruled that Mr. Huntley would indeed face persecution from “African South Africans,” and granted asylum. Astonishingly, the judge also found that South Africa’s racial preferences policies and so-called black economic empowerment were legitimate grounds for claiming discrimination. “These legislated policies, even though there is an explanation for them, are discriminatory,” he wrote.
Ronnie Mamoepa, a spokesman for South Africa’s Home Affairs department, says the government was “disgusted” by the ruling and called Mr. Huntley’s claims “preposterous and laughable.” The African National Congress pronounced the ruling “racist” and “alarmist.” Ordinary South Africans were split. A commenter on one newspaper website wrote, “I will never set my foot in Canada. It’s officially the most racist country in the world,” and another said, “What a load of BS. Are the Canadians truly this gullible?” Others predicted the ruling would “open the flood gates” for whites. Said one, “The racism has increased tremendously and whites are not wanted or tolerated here.”
The Canadian government has not commented officially on the ruling, noting that the Immigration Review Board is an independent agency. However, the federal government may appeal the decision to the Federal Court of Canada. [Lauren Cohen, White Flees ‘SA Oppression,’ Times (Johannesburg), Sept. 1, 2009. Geoffrey York, South African’s Refugee Case Causes Backlash Against ‘Racist’ Canada, Globe and Mail (Toronto), Sept. 2, 2009.]
For nearly 700 years, Indian families hoping for good health for their children have been gathering at the Baba Umer Durga Muslim shrine in western India, about 280 miles south of Bombay. They take toddlers onto the rooftop of the mosque, shake them, and then drop them over the side into bed sheets held by parents and other believers. The 50-foot fall is supposed to cleanse children of ill health. In rural India, where there are high rates of infant mortality, such rituals are common.
This year’s ceremony was covered by television stations that broadcast images of screaming infants being shaken and dropped. Local officials say there were no reports of injuries, but Indian city-dwellers are outraged. They say the practice is “a reflection of the lack of access to health services, that forces people to behave in this irrational manner.” [Indian Activists Blast Ritual of Dropping Babies Off Mosque Roof, AP, July 31, 2009.]
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Sir — I enjoyed Mr. Quoc’s September cover story. I have little first-hand experience with Asians, but since other non-whites draw so many advantages from racial solidarity, it would be remarkable if Asians did not develop a “pan-Asian” identity.
Whether they do or don’t, though, makes little difference to the real question: should they be here? They are clearly a capable, high-IQ race that can contribute more than blacks or Hispanics, but why should I welcome large numbers of immigrants who may be more capable than my own children? Every time a smart Asian goes to Stanford or Harvard, that is one more place closed to a white student. Eventually, as their numbers grow, and their sense of solidarity increases, Asians could become a kind of ruling class.
I want America to be for Americans, and I make no apology for that.
John Conrad, Arlington, Tex.
Sir — It’s all very well for Mr. Quoc to go on about the high incomes and low crime rates of Asians, but that doesn’t necessarily make them good neighbors. Here in Vancouver, which has so many Chinese that people sometimes call it Hongcouver or Vankong, my neighborhood of small bungalows on modest lots has been transformed. Chinese knock down the older houses, clear the trees, and build giant structures practically to the property line. Some of the swimming and country clubs have been more or less taken over to the point that long-time members no longer feel they are welcome.
Many Chinese make no secret of the fact that they have bought property or taken citizenship for strictly practical reasons: They want a bolt hole in case things go sour in Hong Kong. Loyal Canadians? In private I think they would laugh at the idea.
Paul Blanchard, Vancouver, Canada
Sir — Regarding Thomas Jackson’s review of the book about the Cincinnati riots, black behavior during the riots was outrageous, of course, but the handcuffing of police by the mayor and governor was almost worse. The cops should have come down hard on the rioters, for violence is the only language they seem to understand. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “With every barbarous people . . . force is the law.”
The press also has a lot to answer for; as Mr. Jackson points out, “Time and again, the press blamed police and excused rioters.” The Bible takes a dim view of this sort of cravenness: “Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent — the Lord detests them both.”
Walter Sieruk, Harrisburg, Pa.
Sir — Hats off to Stephen Webster for his thoughtful review of the Clint Eastwood movie, Gran Torino. I agree that the implied final message — that white people should bow out gracefully — is a repulsive one, but I give credit to Mr. Eastwood for not making that message too heavy-handed or even necessarily believable. The movie leaves no doubt that the Hmong are an alien, disruptive presence, and even if the Eastwood character eventually gets along with a few of them, that is obviously a Hollywood happy ending grafted onto a mess that could have been avoided.
I think most viewers will be left shaking their heads and saying to themselves, “Whose crazy idea was it to let those Hmong in here to begin with?”
Sarah Wentworth, Richmond, Va.
Sir — The question of what to call ourselves is a good one. Allow me to suggest a new term: “white dignitist.”
I am running for mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota as a candidate of the New Dignity Party (NewDignityParty.org). We want dignity for white people as well as people of other races. The invented word dignitist suggests support for human dignity.
The concept of dignity can be surprisingly controversial. Seven years ago when I ran for a different elective office, Minnesota’s largest newspaper refused a paid ad for my campaign because it contained the words “dignity for white males.” The Minneapolis Star Tribune said its legal department had advised against accepting it.
Surely, however, most reasonable people would not begrudge any person dignity. Let’s ask for this for ourselves and see what happens.
William McGaughey, Minneapolis, Minn.
Sir — John Ingram’s “What We Call Ourselves” could just as easily have been titled, “What We Are Labeled.” My dictionary defines “racist” as one who believes “that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”
When Europeans first explored Africa they found no technology, no written language, no schools, boats, or even the wheel. The disparity between black culture and white culture was stark, but surely no one would argue that “racism” was responsible for it. If there are racial differences in brain size, intelligence, and temperament, are they not a more logical explanation?
James Harrold, Springdale, Ark.
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