November 2003
American Renaissance magazine | |
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Vol. 14, No. 11 | November 2003 |
CONTENTS |
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Competitive Altruism (Part II)
Extreme Altruism
Miscegenation
Prospects for Southern Africa
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers
COVER STORY |
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Competitive Altruism (Part II)
Why Whites do not Promote their own Interests
The overwhelming success of New Class activism led to steep increases in welfare spending, public sector employment, taxation of the wealthy, environment and worker protection, and to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. Groups expressing New Class opinions, like the NAACP, the ACLU, the National Organization of Women, and Greenpeace, raised millions of dollars by appealing to the fashionable new forms of altruism. Moreover, liberal groups have garnered more, and more positive, publicity than business or conservative groups. Virtually all media references to liberal citizens’ groups have a positive or neutral spin, whereas references to corporations or conservatives generally have a negative spin.
This is because media operators are, almost without exception, members of the New Class, and promote its views of morality and altruism. They soft-peddle news about black or Hispanic crime, Mexican and other non-white chauvinism, and the depredations of immigrants, while trumpeting any detectable misbehavior by whites, heterosexuals, or corporate executives.
In this hostile environment, businesses had to find a way to regain credibility. They started backing New Class causes to show they were “socially responsible” and “good corporate citizens.” As one Wall Street investor put it: “Corporations are required to pay for the privilege of existing as corporations.” As always in competitive altruism, the key was to appear to be unselfish, and the result has been an increase in corporate philanthropy. Between 1966 and 1996, total corporate contributions to philanthropic causes increased from $790 million to $8.5 billion, which represented a more than two-fold increase in real terms. The amount of total pre-tax income contributed increased by 39 percent. There has also been a significant and increasing leftward bias to these contributions. The Capital Research Center has shown that in 1997 corporations gave more than four times as much money to liberal groups as to conservative ones. Minority activist groups are among the top beneficiaries of corporate largesse. In 1997, the National Urban League was the leading recipient of corporate charity, and the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, and the National Council of Negro Women were in the top 40.
Although corporate contributions reduce profits and shareholder value, studies that examine the link between corporate “social responsibility” and profit show a positive relationship. Millions of pious Americans are willing to buy the products of companies that support minority causes. One survey found that if price and quality were the same, 76 percent of Americans would switch to a brand or retail store associated with a liberal cause. In short, altruism pays.
Consequently, many well-known companies trumpet their “commitment to diversity,” hire diversity consultants, require “sensitivity training,” practice open racial preferences for non-whites, and spend lavishly at minority job fairs. They are delighted to be chosen by minority magazines as one of the “ten best companies for Hispanics” — or blacks or Asians or women or homosexuals. It apparently occurs to no one that such companies might be inhospitable to whites or men. Nor do white consumers punish companies that boast about preferential treatment for non-whites.
Corporate philanthropy, racial or otherwise, buys status for the boss. Executives of smaller businesses gain important contacts with top industry leaders by cooperating with them on philanthropic initiatives. Lobbyists representing philanthropic corporations have an easy time getting the ear of government. A 1994 article in The Chronicle of Philanthropy noted that in many communities “involvement with charity is practically a prerequisite to becoming a powerful figure in the business life of the city.”
As the competitive altruism theory would predict, highly charitable corporations like Bell Atlantic are decidedly sniffy about less charitable competitors, and eager to expose their philanthropic inferiority. “Corporate America should be giving 2.5 percent of income,” the president of the Bell Atlantic Foundation has said. “I think the nonprofit community should do a major public relations campaign exposing how little corporations are giving as a percent of pretax income.”
This kind of pressure makes a difference. For years, Microsoft chairman William Gates refused to give away his billions — and was roundly criticized for tight-fistedness. As well-known philanthropist Alberto Vilar complains, he did not give “away one damn penny until he was worth $80 billion.” He eventually established the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which now has $24 billion in assets. Predictably, the richest man in the world has poured money into the most futile and therefore the most admired causes: eliminating the racial gap in academic achievement and eradicating AIDS in Africa. Just as predictably, now that Mrs. Gates is in charge of giving away about $1 billion a year, she has made a great many new friends. The happy, non-whites faces that dominate the Gates Foundation.org web page no doubt add to her prestige.
The egoistic aspect of philanthropy and altruism helps explain why the small organizations that promote white interests receive little support. There is no public approval for supporters of white causes; in fact there is active disapproval as contributors to David Duke’s political campaigns have discovered. Contributor lists are, by law, public documents, and newspapers have published the names and addresses of Duke supporters. Some were harassed or suffered professionally. Needless to say, newspapers do not publish the names of people who give money to Al Sharpton or Cruz Bustamante. Donations to pro-white organizations do not raise social status; they lower it. They are therefore a sincere expression of support rather than a tool for status-seeking or social climbing.
A combination of Christian moralizing, competitive altruism, and what appears to be a uniquely white impulse to abandon healthy group loyalties can result in acts of racial altruism that are simply astounding. Reginald Denny became famous for cozying up to the thugs who nearly beat him to death at the start of the Los Angeles riots in 1992. The parents of Amy Biehl, who was murdered by black South Africans because she was white, publicly embraced her killers and gave them jobs at the foundation they set up to honor their daughter (see next article). These acts won great admiration among liberals.
It is, of course, very hard to think of examples of non-whites ever behaving this way, in any period of history. Any ordinary non-white who openly forgave and embraced a racial antagonist would be treated as a fool or a traitor by his co-racialists.
The charity of American blacks, for example, is almost always directed to black causes. As Emmett D. Carson, who has written extensively on black charity, notes, “Our [black] giving was always centered around African-American interests.” Wealthy blacks like William Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Willie E. Gary, and the singer Brandy, donate to historically black colleges and scholarships for black students. The spirit of black philanthropy is summed up in the name of a panel at the 2003 Black North Carolina Conference: “Black Philanthropy: Are African-Americans Doing Enough to Support Each Other?” The question of non-black causes does not even arise.
The Culture of Altruism
The competitive struggle within the American elite to appear virtuous now means displays of racial altruism are an obligatory part of social climbing. David Brooks describes the culture of contemporary affluence in Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How it Got There. The bookstores in the chic locales where the New Class rich gather are all the same: “you can’t get the New Republic or anything to its right,” but you are guaranteed to find a large and prominently displayed “ethnic studies” section, which you can sample while listening to “World Music.”
The folk art of “colonial victims” is the preferred décor of the homes of social strivers:
In fact, if you tour a super-sophisticated home, you will see an odd mélange of artifacts that have nothing in common except for the shared victimization of their creators. An African mask will sit next to an Incan statue atop a tablecloth fashioned from Samoan, Brazilian, Moroccan, or Tibetan cloth.
Mr. Brooks argues that ‘60s radicalism has become an integral part of the business world. “Business is chic” among wealthy bobos, but only because every business now portrays itself as “a social movement.” “Cause capitalism” and “liberation marketing” are ubiquitous: in the bobo supermarket, you can “save the rainforest, ease global warming, nurture Native American values, support family farms, spread world peace, and reduce income inequality” just by buying food. Successful businessmen wear “Days of Rage” T-shirts while they exercise, thereby celebrating a 1969 spree of violence by student radicals who sympathized with the Black Panthers. Nike uses the Beatles song “Revolution” in its marketing. “Business leaders . . . scream revolution at the top of their lungs, like billionaire Abbie Hoffmans.” CEOs introduce corporate reports with quotations from Toni Morrison. Capitalism now routinely sugarcoats the profit motive with layers of moralistic affectation.
Mr. Brooks recognizes that romanticizing colonial victims is an integral part of a kind of “one-downmanship” status game. Celebrating the downtrodden is a way of showing that one is “compassionate” and less materialistic than one’s fellows.
For Mr. Brooks, the prototypical bobo paradise is Burlington, Vermont, which he describes in detail. There you will find plenty of pro-minority sentimentality but few minorities. In fact, Burlington is 95 percent white, with blacks and Hispanics each at less than one percent of the population. Burlington confirms one of the great laws of American race relations: the amount of sympathy whites feel for minorities is in inverse proportion to their experience with them.
And this, of course, is why the pro-minority component of competitive altruism is so attractive: It is easy to reap the benefits while others pay the costs. Hillary Clinton oozes love for blacks and Mexicans because she does not live among them. Neither her daughter nor anyone she knows ever had to go to school with them. When Edward Kennedy goes to the beach at Hyannisport his afternoon will not be spoiled by a boatload of scruffy Haitians. Astonishingly, what has become the cornerstone of elite morality — on-tap enthusiasm for diversity and integration — need be nothing more than pure lip service. The hypocrisies run so deep that, as Joseph Sobran has pointed out, in their mating and migratory habits, liberals are indistinguishable from members of the Klan.
Pro-minority altruism is like that equally vital ingredient of superior morality, “compassion.” Conveniently for liberals, “compassion” requires no personal sacrifice, but consists in braying about all the generous things government should be doing — with other people’s money — for the downtrodden.
At the same time, part of the competition to appear superior involves the search for foils and inferiors. Hence the exuberant media campaigns against anyone like Patrick Buchanan, Trent Lott, John Rocker, David Duke, or Jesse Helms. Hence the attempts to withdraw tenure from academics like Philippe Rushton, Michael Levin, and Linda Gottfredson who study racial differences. Hence the sanctions against students who violate campus “speech codes.” Once again, demonstrations of superiority have no cost. The louder one yells about John Rocker or Trent Lott, the more virtuous one appears, and the people who yell the loudest are under no more pressure to live in black neighborhoods than the ones who do not yell at all.
The Costs of Altruism
Of course, there is a cost to racial altruism, though it is almost never borne directly by the people who practice it most publicly. The Supreme Court justices who ordered racial integration of schools in 1954 never suffered from their ruling, nor is it likely their families did either. It was working- and middle-class whites, who shared little of the altruistic zeal of the justices, whose schools were wrecked. The same is true of every aspect of the “civil rights” revolution. The elites who insist on altruism have enough money to buy at least temporary reprieve from the need actually to practice it. The current fad of fawning over non-white immigrants works the same way. Rich boosters get cheap labor and docile nannies. The rest of us get crime, bad schools, and neighborhoods where we are a despised minority.
In the long term, of course, the costs of racial altruism will catch up even with the elites, one way or another. White politicians who pander to Hispanics will be badly disappointed, as Congressman Robert Dornan of California discovered. He represented part of Orange County for 18 years, as it gradually became more and more Hispanic. In 1995 he claimed to an interviewer that he was not at all bothered by this change: “I want to say America stays a nation of immigrants. And if we lose our Northern European stock — your coloring and mine, blue eyes and fair hair — tough!”
The very next year, Hispanics voted in Loretta Sanchez, the 36-year-old daughter of immigrants, who kept telling voters how Mexican she was. This is precisely what Mr. Dornan’s cheerful view of immigration should have prepared him for, but did he concede defeat gracefully? No. He accused Miss Sanchez’s supporters of vote fraud, demanded recounts, and was a thoroughly bad sport about it all. Suddenly, racial altruism had a cost, and he screamed like a stuck pig.
For most white elites, justice will not be quite so swift or poetic. As the tide of color rises, they will have to spend more money to stay beyond its reach. Some will catch themselves wondering if racial preferences didn’t keep little Johnny out of Harvard. Others will have a moment of pique when the classical music station switches to salsa. A few will even be mugged or murdered when they take the wrong freeway exit, and actually meet some of the people they claim to love. Our rulers and opinion-makers will have occasional brushes with the corruption, squalor, and incompetence of Third-World America, but will use their money to carve little oases of Western Civilization out of the wreckage — at least for a while.
Eventually, though, even they will see the obvious: that the non-whites racial altruists bring to power in America will not fritter away their gains in displays of moral superiority the way we do. An America run by non-whites will be a very different place; competitive racial altruism is not a game non-whites play. Ordinary Americans discovered this long ago, and must force their rulers to abandon habits and vanities that will eventually destroy us all.
Ian Jobling holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and is the webmaster of the American Renaissance website and a writer for American Renaissance magazine.
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Extreme Altruism
In May 1992, Los Angeles was the scene of the worst rioting in the United States since the New York draft riots of 1863. Blacks, furious that the white policemen who had beaten Rodney King were acquitted of criminal violence, went on a rampage that left 58 people dead and 5,300 buildings in ashes. One of the first victims was Reginald Denny, a white truck driver who was in his rig in the black part of town just when the verdict was announced. Two blacks pulled him from his truck, beat him senseless, and smashed his face with a fire extinguisher. Another ran up to stomp the barely breathing man, and dance a little jig of glee. Doctors said Mr. Denny’s injuries were like those of someone in a 60-mile-per-hour car crash without seat belts. A fourth black slipped up afterwards and stole the unconscious man’s wallet. Mr. Denny survived, but ten other whites — nine men and one woman — did not. The Denny attack became well known only because it was caught on video by a helicopter journalist.
Identified from the news footage, Mr. Denny’s four assailants went on trial later that year. To many blacks, they were the heroic “L.A. Four,” and supporters bought T-shirts demanding their release. A group called Communities United to Free the L.A. Four managed to field 50 demonstrators a day to protest outside the courthouse. Los Angeles gangs threatened more riots if the men were convicted.
A jury of four blacks, four Hispanics, two Asians and two whites voted to convict, but accepted the defense theory that the attackers were caught up in mob fever. As one of the black witnesses explained, “[the defendants] seemed just like anyone. Just like you and I . . . They just got caught up in the riot. I guess maybe they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” In other words, if a black man sees other black men hauling white people from their cars and thrashing them, it would be too much to ask him to refrain from doing the same thing. He is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and cannot help himself. Mr. Denny’s assailants got ten-year sentences and were free in four.
Mr. Denny was in court for the trial, making excuses as eagerly as anyone. He said his attackers must have “gone through an awful lot” to do what they had done to him, and approved the light sentences. He forgave the men, and demonstrated his altruistic zeal by hugging the mothers of two of the men who nearly killed him.
Five years later, Mr. Denny was back in the news arguing that racism was to blame for his beating. Had he finally woken up? No. He and three other whites who were attacked during the riots had filed a $40 million suit against the city of Los Angeles, claiming that police did not quell the riots because they did not care what happened in the non-white parts of town. Police “racism” therefore left them at the mercy of angry blacks. Mr. Denny’s convictions appear to be unshakable.
Amy Biehl was a much more systematic racial altruist and paid a higher price. She went to high school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where her father ran an art gallery of modern American Indian art. “I attended a large public high school,” she later wrote, “where as an ‘Anglo’ I represented a small minority. My attempts to do well in school and to win the acceptance of my Hispanic classmates often met with resentment.”
She felt none in return, however, and as a student at Stanford became passionately committed to ending white rule in South Africa. She went to Cape Town on a Fulbright scholarship, and spent much of her time in black slums, studying the sins of apartheid and sex discrimination.
On August 25, 1993, just a few days before she was to return to the United States, she drove three black friends back to their homes. Young blacks stopped the car, pulled her out, and hit her in the face with a brick. She broke away but they caught her and beat her to death as they shouted the anti-white slogan “one settler, one bullet.” The 26-year-old died on the sidewalk pleading for mercy.
Seven blacks were charged in the killing, but one disappeared and three others were released because the main witness against them refused to testify for fear he would be killed. Exultant supporters left the courthouse carrying the three men on their shoulders. At a hearing for the remaining defendants, blacks in the audience taunted whites, and giggled when Miss Biehl’s wounds were described.
None of this mattered to Miss Biehl’s parents, who attended court hearings. They publicly forgave the killers and expressed sympathy for their families. They went on to raise money for what they named the Amy Biehl Foundation, which works “to prevent youth-perpetrated violence in South Africa and the United States.” When their daughter’s killers got out of jail in just a few years, they offered them jobs at the foundation.
Most of the foundation’s work is in South Africa — school programs, a driving range for poor blacks, a string of bakeries that make “Amy’s bread” — but it has also established something called the Prize for Humanity, “given to those who have risked their lives to protect others of a different race or religion.” The first presentation was in 1999 at a Minnesota synagogue, in a ceremony that included “Native American Welcome and Prayer,” an invocation by US Army chaplain Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad, and a Tibetan blessing by Gendun Kalsang and Lobsang Junje.
The foundation is devoted to the life and memory of Amy Biehl, but its publicity materials are vague about the circumstances of her death. One account of her life says only this: “[O]n August 25, 1993, Amy made her transition from her eventful life on earth to an even larger life of committed service to the under-served and to the hopeful.” In other words, her spirit of racial altruism lives on.
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Miscegenation
White opposition to intermarriage.
Elise Lemire, “Miscegenation:” Making Race in America, University of Pennsylvania Press 2002, 204 pp., $35.00.
When “antiracist” authors write about the past, their purpose is generally to reveal the shameful bigotries of our ancestors. Southerners are their favorite targets, but Miscegenation focuses on the Northeast, and Elise Lemire, who teaches literature at Purchase College, New York, certainly succeeds in demonstrating the hostility of Northerners to race mixing in the period before the Civil War. Her larger purpose, no doubt, is to point out the wickedness of all whites — not just the already sufficiently-reviled Southern slave-owners — but her research into a little-known corner of race relations is very illuminating.
Her perspective, however, is not. Prof. Lemire, who is married to a black, is one of those silly moderns who think race is an invention: “Even though I don’t always use scare quotes in this book in my references to ‘blacks,’ ‘whites,’ and ‘inter-racial’ sex to indicate their socially constructed nature, they should always be assumed.” (Could she could bring herself to tell the police a mugger was black?) Her book jumps awkwardly from one subject to the next, but it successfully underscores the intensity and persistence of the view that interracial sex and marriage are, if not so loathsome as to as to require prescription by law, certainly a sign of depravity.
Whites have, indeed, been repelled by what they called “amalgamation.” At some point in their histories, 44 of the 50 states had laws prohibiting interracial marriage and sometimes fornication, with the first such law being passed in 1661. Prof. Lemire suggests that anti-miscegenationist feeling was stronger in the North than in the South, and she writes of the shock with which Yankees learned of close personal relations between Southern blacks and whites, and of couplings between masters and slaves.
It was Northern revulsion for such couplings that gave such a raw edge to attacks on Thomas Jefferson for allegedly siring children with his black slave Sally Hemings. This is Prof. Lemire’s first subject, and she argues that the controversy over these accusations, which reached its height during the fall of 1802 and spring of 1803, was the first widespread public discussion in America about miscegenation.
Even before these accusations, Jefferson’s political enemies were attacking him for the race-mixing potential of the all-men-are-created-equal passage from the Declaration. In July 1802, a Federalist weekly called the Port Folio, which would later have a field day with the Hemings story, published a poem put into the mouth of a fictional Jefferson slave named Quashee. It clearly suggests the subversive potential of “equality:”
Our massa Jeffeson he say,
Dat all mans free alike are born:
Den tell me, why should Quashee stay,
To tend de cow and hoe de corn?
Huzza for massa Jeffeson
And why should one hab de white wife,
And me hab only Quangeroo?
Me no see reason for me life!
No. Quashee hab de white wife too.
Huzza for massa Jeffeson.
In September of that year, a discontented office-seeker, James Callender, set off the Hemings scandal when he wrote in the Richmond Recorder: “By the wench Sally our president has had several children” (he later claimed the total was five). That same month, he described the national implications of rutting in the slave quarters:
[I]f eighty thousand white men in Virginia followed Jefferson’s example, you would have FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND MULATTOES in addition to the present swarm. The country would no longer be habitable, till after a civil war, and a series of massacres. (Emphasis in the original.)
Back at the Port Folio, poetasters made merry with the story. The weekly published no fewer than ten verse attacks on Jefferson, some of them viciously clever. Jefferson himself had written about the odor of blacks — ” [they] secrete less by the kidnies [sic], and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a strong and disagreeable odor” — and several of the poems worked this into the attack. One purports to be the president’s own words:
When press’d by loads of state affairs
I seek to sport and dally,
The sweetest solace of my cares
Is in the lap of Sally . . .
She’s black you tell me — grant she be —
Must colour always tally?
Black is love’s proper hue for me –
And white’s the hue for Sally . . .
What though she by the glands secretes;
Must I stand shil-I shall-I?
Tuck’d up between a pair of sheets
There’s no perfume like Sally . . .
You call her slave — and pray were slaves
Made only for the galley?
Try for yourselves, ye witless knaves —
Take each to bed your Sally . . .
In another poem, Jefferson turns into a black man, the better to romp with Sally:
. . . And straight, by transformation strange,
From white to black his features change! . . .
His jaw protrudes, his lip expands,
Pah! He secretes by all the glands:
His legs inflect: his stature shrinks,
And from his skin all Congo stinks:
Behold him now, by Cupid sped,
In darkness sneak to Sally’s bed:
With philosophic nose inquire,
How rank the sable race perspire,
In foul pollution steep his life,
Insult the ashes of his wife:
All the paternal duties smother,
Give his white girls a yellow brother:
Mid loud hosannas of his knaves,
From his own loins raise a herd of slaves . . .
Another is entitled “A Philosophic Love Song to Sally,” and includes the following lines:
If down her neck no ringlets flow,
A fleece adorns her head —
If on her lips no rubies glow,
Their thickness serves instead.
Thick pouting lips! How sweet their grace!
When passion fired to kiss them!
Wide spreading over half the face,
Impossible to miss them.
The Port Folio even published a poem now thought to have been written by John Quincy Adams, which takes the form of advice to Jefferson from his friend Thomas Paine:
. . . Dear Thomas, deem it no disgrace
With slaves to mend thy breed,
Nor let the wench’s smutty face
Deter thee from the deed . . .
All the poems dwell on Hemmings’ blackness, and reflect Northern disgust at the idea of a white man embracing her. The outcry even prompted satirical prints of Jefferson as “a philosophic cock,” strutting the walk with a black hen in the background.
Prof. Lemire suddenly leaves Jefferson, however, for a rambling commentary on James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826. Her analysis consists of such things as counting the number of times the hero Hawk-eye says “I am a genuine white” or “a man without a cross [no cross-breeding]” — he reportedly does this 19 times — and arrives at the unsurprising conclusion that Cooper disapproved of interracial sex.
Considerably more interesting is Prof. Lemire’s account of anti-miscegenation activity in the North during the 1820s and 1830s. She reminds us that the easiest way to stir up opposition to abolitionists was to claim they promoted black-white marriage. Only a few avowed this publicly and many repeatedly expressed their disapproval of miscegenation, but to no avail. For many opponents, the mere fact that abolitionist meetings had mixed audiences of blacks and whites was sufficiently disgusting to make any charge believable. Only those abolitionists who firmly and publicly linked their proposals to colonization outside the United States were safe from the charge that what they really wanted was race-mixing, or amalgamation. Prof. Lemire reports that there were 165 anti-abolition riots in the North during the decade of the 1820s alone, most prompted by allegations that abolitionists were promoting inter-racial marriage.
The 1830s saw serious disturbances as well. Beginning on July 4, 1834, New York City suffered 11 days of anti-abolitionist rioting, and levels of violence not seen again until the anti-draft riots of 1863. Independence Day had traditionally been celebrated with speeches and fund raising by colonization societies, and there was some provocation in choosing it as the day for the American Anti-Slavery Society to read its Declaration of Sentiments to an audience that press accounts called “obnoxiously mixed.” Rioters broke up the meeting and attacked stores and homes owned by known abolitionists. At first, not even the militia could control the mobs, and quiet returned only after the American Anti-Slavery Society issued a statement, the first item of which was: “We entirely disclaim any desire to promote or encourage intermarriages between white and colored persons.”
Philadelphia saw a serious riot a few years later. Abolitionists had had trouble renting space to hold meetings, so in 1838 they built their own building, which they called the Pennsylvania Hall for Free Discussion. It was the biggest, most expensive structure in the city, and even before it was completed, one local paper called it the “Temple of Amalgamation,” and another “a stately edifice, sacred to the cause of amalgamation.”
Dedication ceremonies were to last three days, and to include leading abolitionists. On the evening of the second day, the well-known Angelina Grimké addressed the audience. People threw bricks through the windows and attacked several blacks as they left the building, but did not riot.
On the third day, May 17, several thousand angry Philadelphians — many of high social standing — gathered outside the hall. The mayor was summoned, and is reported to have said: “We never call out the military here! We do not need such measures. Indeed, I would, fellow citizens, look upon you as my police! I look upon you as my police, and I trust you will abide by the laws and keep order. I now bid you farewell for the night.” After he left, the mob promptly burned the hall to the ground. Firemen arrived, but only to make sure the blaze did not spread to other buildings. After destroying the hall, the mob went to the part of town where abolitionists lived, and burned down the Friends Shelter for Colored Orphans and attacked a black church.
A police commission that investigated the riot concluded:
It can be no surprise . . . that the mass of the community, without distinction of political or religious opinions, could ill brook the erection of an edifice in this city for the encouragement of practices believed by many to be subversive of the established order of society, and even viewed by some as repugnant . . .
Prof. Lemire notes that less than a year before, a Pennsylvania constitutional convention had voted to keep the vote in the hands of white men only, arguing that “to incorporate them [blacks] with ourselves in the exercise of the right of franchise, is a violation of the law of nature, and would lead to an amalgamation in the exercise thereof.” Pennsylvania was thoroughly hostile to any measure that might lead to social or sexual relations between blacks and whites, and abolitionists often found that the only way to avoid violence was constantly to assert their opposition to miscegenation.
Prof. Lemire cites another example of white racial feeling of the period: a novel published in 1835 by Jerome Holgate (1812–1893) called A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation in the Year of Our Lord 19 — . It is set in the future in a time when whites think it their duty to marry blacks in order to combat race prejudice. In the novel no white ever marries a black for love — that would be impossible — but out of political conviction. One of the characters even drugs his daughter and forces her to marry a black while she is unconscious.
The novel makes much of body odor. In the City of Amalgamation, all whites carry machines that neutralize the smell of blacks. If the machines break down, whites start vomiting. Many whites valiantly train themselves to endure the smell of blacks by sleeping with platters of excrement next to their beds. Prof. Lemire does not tell us how widely-read this novel was, but it was written by a Northerner for a Northern audience.
It was common in the 19th century to publish humorous prints, often with political messages. Anti-abolition and anti-amalgamation prints were common, and many referred to smells. Prof. Lemire reproduces one in which a black hypnotist called Professor Pompey sits on the lap of a white woman with his hand on her breast. She is only partially under his spell and says, “Oh, I seem to be carried away into a dark wood where I inhale a perfume much like that of a skunk.” Another black standing nearby says, “Take care dar ‘fessor Pompey! I hab some notion arter dat young white Lady, myself.”
By the end of the 1830s, prints of interracial couples flirting and kissing were a common form of anti-abolition propaganda designed to stir up disgust for racial mixing. Even children’s books sometimes conveyed this message, as in the print reproduced on the previous page from the Boys Book of Fun.
Newspapers of the period reflected the same views. In a July 7, 1843 account of a mixed-race abolitionist meeting, the New York Times wrote, “There was a full and fragrant congregation . . .” Of the same meeting, the Morning Courier and New-York Inquirer reported that a hymn “was chaunted with great fervour as well as fragrancy by the Mesdames of the ladies of colours.” In an editorial the same year, the New-York Commercial Advertiser made a more general statement: “[The Creator] endowed his creatures with the faculty of TASTE, accompanying it with entire freedom of choice, thereby forming a perpetual and insurmountable barrier to the execrable amalgamation.” (Emphasis in original.)
Prof. Lemire points out that this was nevertheless a period during which there was considerable agitation to overturn the 1705 Massachusetts law banning inter-racial marriage. On Jan. 1, 1831, in the inaugural issue of the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison made the first public call to abolish the ban. Proponents of colonization promptly accused Garrison of wanting to marry a black, though no abolitionist is known to have done so before the Civil War.
Prof. Lemire notes that the Massachusetts movement against the ban was libertarian rather than pro-black; its proponents made no secret of their distaste for miscegenation, but believed people had a right to make bad choices. John P. Bigelow, the primary lobbyist, called marriage to a black “the gratification of a depraved taste,” and the official text accompanying the new 1843 law stated, “It is cruel, unjust and improper to . . . punish that as a high crime, which is at most evidence of vicious feeling, bad taste, and personal degradation.” Prof. Lemire writes that it was possible to change the law, only because even proponents of the change believed good taste would keep the races apart. This conviction arose, in part, because abolitionists had been forced so frequently to forswear “amalgamation” that by the 1840s the public began to believe them.
Later, a few abolitionists did openly promote miscegenation. In 1863, Louisa May Alcott, best known for her children’s book Little Women, published a short story called “M.L.” in the anti-slavery magazine, Commonwealth, in which a white woman marries a black man. Some of the force of her story is lost, however, in that the “black” is the son of a quadroon and passes for white. The heroine learns of his Negro ancestry only after falling in love with him. Some abolitionists did go considerably further, however. In the same year, abolitionist Wendell Phillips wrote of “that sublime mingling of races which is God’s own method of civilizing and elevating the world.”
Ironically, the most widely read pro-race-mixing document of the period was an anti-miscegenist hoax! Late in 1863, two Democrats who opposed Lincoln’s reelection published a 72-page pamphlet called Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro. The two anonymous authors were New York City journalists pretending to be Republican supporters of the president. Lincoln had just issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and they wanted to promote the idea that Republican and abolitionist policies led directly to race mixing, for which they proposed the term “miscegenation.” They argued that amalgamation was an inappropriate, metallurgical term, whereas a new coinage from the Latin (miscere — to mix, and genus — race) “would express the idea with which we are dealing.”
The pamphlet had chapter titles like “The Blending of Diverse Bloods Essential to American Progress,” and insisted that “[a]ll that is needed to make us the finest race on earth is to engraft upon our stock the negro element which providence has placed by our side on this continent.” In “Miscegenation in the Presidential Contest,” they proclaimed that a vote for Lincoln was a vote for miscegenation. “When the President proclaimed Emancipation he proclaimed also the mingling of the races,” argued the pamphlet. “The one follows the other as surely as noonday follows sunrise.” For those with reservations about this happy consummation the authors provided a chapter called “Miscegenetic Ideal of Beauty in Women,” in which they argued that ideals of beauty were arbitrary and that fair-minded whites should find blacks beautiful.
The pamphlet was wildly popular among Democrats, who trumpeted it as a revelation of what the dastardly Republicans really wanted. The new word caught on immediately, and Democrats were soon referring to Lincoln’s proclamation as the “Miscegenation Proclamation.”
In its discussion of the pamphlet, the New York Times took deep offense at the idea that whites should be encouraged to find blacks beautiful. It complained that in the midst of a “gigantic war,” people should not be writing “all about the possibility of the whites of this continent losing their admiration for their own women, repudiating the standard of beauty furnished them by natural instinct, and intermarrying with Negroes.” The Times went on to print a satirical story about whites reduced to going through neighborhoods with tracts and plaster casts, trying to demonstrate the superior beauty of whites in order to keep them from marrying blacks.
Abolitionists were taken in by the hoax just like everyone else, and some of the wilder ones applauded it wholeheartedly. Angelina Grimké wrote to the authors telling them that she and her sister Sarah were “wholly at one” with the arguments in the pamphlet. However, she raised a question of tactics: “[W]ill not the subject of amalgamation so detestable to many minds, if now so prominently advocated, have a tendency to retard the preparatory work of justice and equality which is so silently, but surely, opening the way for a full recognition of fraternity and miscegenation?” Miscegenation was great stuff, but talking about it openly might scare people.
Parker Pillsbury, editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard (official journal of the American Anti-Slavery Society) wrote to the authors that their pamphlet had “cheered and gladdened a winter morning.” His paper printed a glowing review of the book, agreeing with the authors that “there will be progressive intermingling and that the nation will be benefited by it.”
A number of political cartoons appeared, capitalizing on the popularity of Miscegenation. One, printed in 1864, was called “Miscegenation or the Millennium of Abolitionism.” In it, a black woman named Dinah Arabella Aranintha Squash is being presented to Abraham Lincoln who replies, “I shall be proud to number among my intimate friends any member of the Squash family, especially the little Squashes.” Since Miss Squash, in her words, likes to “gallevant ‘round wid the white gemmen” and enjoys “de hebenly Miscegenation times,” the little Squashes are likely to be mulattos. In the same cartoon, a black man pleads to a white woman: “Lubly Julia Anna, name de day when Brodder Beecher [Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, former editor of the abolitionist Independent] shall make us one.” She replies, “Oh! You dear creatures. I am so agitated! Go and ask Pa.” Another print called The Miscegenation Ball depicts black and white couples dancing together and sitting on couches groping each other.
Shortly after Lincoln won reelection, the authors of the pamphlet laid open claim to it, and their triumph inspired imitators. Democrats circulated a “Black Republican Prayer,” in which a Negro asks God to make “the blessings of Emancipation extend throughout our unhappy lands and the illustrious sweet-scented Sambo nestle in the bosom of every Abolition woman . . . Amen.”
Another Democrat posing as a Republican wrote the 1864 pamphlet reproduced on the previous page. Of the illustration on the cover, “L. Seaman” wrote:
“The different shades of complexion of the two contrast . . . beautifully and lend . . . enchantment to the scene . . . [T]he sweet, delicate little Roman nose of the one does not detract from the beauty of the broad, flat nose, with expanded nostrils, of the other — while the intellectual, bold majestic forehead of the one forms an unique though beautiful contrast to the round, flat head, resembling a huge gutter mop, of the other.” Probably even Angelina Grimké would have realized this was satire.
Prof. Lemire ends her book with the obligatory assertion that race is a mirage: “The idea that there is a special kind of sex that is ‘inter-racial’ is just as much a racist social fiction as the idea there is something namable as ‘miscegenation.’” But what power this “social fiction” seems to have!
Prof. Lemire does not appear to think it necessary ever to explain to readers why it was wrong for generations of Americans to oppose miscegenation. No doubt, in her circle, it is impossible even to imagine anything so retrograde. Fortunately, healthy preferences persist despite race-mixing propaganda. As recently as 1991, 66 percent of whites were prepared to tell a pollster they would disapprove if a close relative married a black. Probably even more would disapprove, but were afraid to say so.
Interesting and heretical sentiments come to light in the privacy of the voting booth. Like many states, South Carolina and Alabama wrote prohibitions of miscegenation into their constitutions. After the Supreme Court decision of 1967, these bans were unenforceable, but the language remained. In 1988 and 2000 respectively, voters in the two states went to the polls, in accordance with the procedures required to amend the state constitutions. Substantial minorities in both states voted to keep the ban: 38 percent in South Carolina and 41 percent in Alabama. Five of 47 South Carolina counties voted to keep the ban, as did no fewer than 23 of 67 counties in Alabama. There was no racial breakdown of the vote, but it may be that close to half the white electorate may have opposed rescinding the ban. As it so often does, published opinion and “respectable” discourse completely ignore the convictions of many millions of Americans.
It was, of course, opposition to miscegenation that was at the heart of centuries of law, custom, and sentiment that kept the races apart. The races cannot now avoid contact, but where it matters most, whites have not entirely forsaken the wisdom of their ancestors.
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Prospects for Southern Africa
A South African responds to an AR reader.
In the August issue we printed a letter from a reader criticizing AR for reporting on the depredations of blacks in Zimbabwe, and for pushing “the line that the hate-whitey terrorists are winning everywhere and there is nothing we can do to stop them.” “This,” he wrote, “only promotes the lie that our situation is hopeless.” The writer called for us to “compare white attitudes to Africa now with those of 30 years ago,” pointing out that “whites no longer view despots like [Zimbabwe president Robert] Mugabe with rose-colored glasses.” The editor of South Africa’s Impact Magazine believes the writer raised some valid points, and offers the following comments:
Various factors explain why attitudes toward Africa have changed over the last 30 years. In the first place, the West has wearied of the destructive antics of black despots, who continue to demand aid; “sympathy fatigue” has set in. Second, after the collapse of the Soviet system, Africa found it could no longer play off the West and the Soviets against each other for influence and aid. Furthermore, for all his Western academic degrees, Mr. Mugabe has brought about probably the most blatantly unjust situation in Africa’s history, causing a socioeconomic catastrophe for his own people as well. Some people say Mr. Mugabe is insane, but he is really just another African upstart in a tight spot, incapable of finding solutions.
The most important difference since 30 years ago, however, is that publications like American Renaissance are exposing the truth about Darkest Africa. We at Impact Magazine are doing the same. The Internet has been an additional factor.
One can agree with the letter writer when he says, “Now is not the worst time for whites . . . and the best news is that whites around the globe are putting aside their foolish differences and starting to close ranks against . . . the Third World.” This is indeed true. It is called racial nationalism.
He goes on to write that whites in southern Africa “are certainly in severe danger,” and adds: “Let’s try to think of ways to help them there or help them escape to new lives in places like Australia, Canada, North Dakota.” This is a generous thought, and was tried by a British-South African endeavor called Solidarity some years ago, though with little success.
Those outside southern Africa have little idea of the real circumstances here. Zimbabwe is not totally kaput. There is still some industry and mining — by whites of course. The white farmers have been the hardest hit, but because they remember that it was the British government (in league with Henry Kissinger and the treacherous post-Verwoerd South African government) that sold them out to terrorists like Mr. Mugabe, they are loath to seek refuge in Britain. Most have found safe harbor in neighboring African countries and are starting up farms there. They are holding on to their Zimbabwe land titles, since Mr. Mugabe could be on his way out, and there could be an altogether new game soon.
Most South Africans who wanted to leave South Africa have already done so, having found jobs in dozens of other countries. Those who remain are a tough and creative bunch, able to look after themselves. South Africa is several times bigger than Zimbabwe, with many more sub-races. It still has a white population of over 4 million — more than Norway. But here again, it is the white farmers who bear the brunt: 1,400 have been murdered since 1990; they are harassed by rustlers/poachers; hemmed in by government restrictions and taxes; and in some districts threatened with expropriation. But industry is fairly stable and, in spite of government bribery and corruption, the economy is in reasonable shape. Taxes — 95 percent of which are paid by whites and Indians — are onerous, and are resented because most of the revenue goes down the Black Hole.
The quality of life all depends on location. In the Johannesburg/Pretoria area, and in big cities like Durban and Cape Town, crime is bad. But elsewhere, and in most country towns, life is not “hell.” The schools are largely segregated, and where they are not, pupils associate only with their own race. There is a lot of home schooling. Television images of people of different races living together are seldom a reality. At the formerly white universities there have been serious racial incidents in the residences when non-whites have been pushed in.
The biggest danger here is the creeping Africanization known as “transformation.” Like an aggressive parasite, it is using the structures built by whites and sucking out the energy for its own advantage. This parasite aims gradually to dispossess the creative and innovative founders of this country. And it is here that publications like American Renaissance and Impact (and others around the world) perform their most valuable function. This is the nexus where the enemy, claiming to occupy the moral high ground, is exposed as a thief.
Most of the white South Africans remaining in the country have never forsaken their racial and national integrity. They realize they are more than individuals. And they know that as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, matters will not remain as they are. Circumstances change, and things are not hopeless. They know that without a stubborn, irrational, heroic streak in their nature they might as well never have been born.
W. James is editor of Impact Magazine, Box 2055, Noorsekloof, ZA-6331 Jeffreys Bay, South Africa.
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O Tempora, O Mores!
Cashing In
The 70,000 mostly black and Hispanic residents of Lynwood, California, earn on average just $9,500 per year, making their town one of the poorest in sprawling Los Angeles County. Some of its part-time city councilmen, however, are among the best-paid politicians in California. Though the job officially pays $9,600 per year, Councilmen Louis Byrd and Paul Richards — both black — and Arturo Reyes each made over $100,000 last year. They padded their salaries by serving on city agencies, for which they received $900 per meeting, and were paid to “represent” Lynwood at parades, sporting events and other functions. “We earned every penny of it,” insists Mr. Byrd.
The five-member council is not required to show receipts for city credit card purchases, nor does it have to get approval for out-of-town travel. Not surprisingly, in the last six years, the council has cost Lynwood taxpayers more than $600,000 in travel and credit card bills. Since 1998, Mr. Byrd has cost the city $75,000, including $1,300 he charged to attend the reunion of his black college fraternity. Mr. Richards has billed taxpayers $80,000 since 1998. He spent $3,000 to stay in upscale hotels near his home, and $14,000 on rental cars (on top of his $500-a-month car allowance). The city also paid for his stay at a beach resort in Ghana to “foster trade and cultural ties.” Between them, Mr. Richards and Mr. Byrd have made more than 90 out-of-town trips — 25 in just the last two years. Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn, who governs the nation’s second largest city, made just nine out-of-town trips in the last two years.
Arturo Reyes billed the city for a trip to Mexico City to attend the inauguration of Vicente Fox, and also charged $1,152 in airline tickets for his wife. He says he reimbursed the city, but has no proof. Former council member Ricardo Sanchez went to Guadalajara in 1999 to attend a mariachi festival. Other city councilmen have traveled to Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on the city tab.
Lynwood’s mayor, Fernando Pedroza, was a harsh critic of council spending when he ran for office in 2001, but quickly rose above his scruples. He quit his day job, and has traveled at least seven times to Mexico. When asked about charging the city for a dinner show featuring samba dancers in Rio de Janeiro, he said he “inadvertently pulled out the wrong card” — but did belatedly reimburse the city.
Lynwoodians who know about the city council’s high life don’t want to clean up the system — they want to cash in. No fewer than 16 people are running for two seats in November. As Mr. Byrd, a 12-year council veteran who helped establish the Lynwood kleptocracy, puts it, “A whole lot of people are running for the same thing, and none are going to turn anything down.” [Richard Marosi, Lynwood Council Members Enjoy Lavish Perks and Pay, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 15, 2003.]
Nyborg Speaks
Helmuth Nyborg, a prominent scientist at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, has set the country on its ear by pointing out the obvious: “Between 10 and 20 percent of the population, who are at the lower echelon of society and who cannot fill in a time sheet at work or who cannot hold down a job or take care of their children, should not have children. The debate has to be raised now because the trend is cause for concern in Denmark, where we have an increasing number of problem kids.” He says intelligent women should have their workloads reduced so they can devote more time to child-rearing and that unintelligent women should be paid not to have children. “We are all aware of this problem, but we don’t dare talk about it,” he says. “But we should, for the sake of society and the future, so that we can have productive citizens and not people who need help.” [Outcry Over Call to Curb Low IQ Children, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Sept. 30, 2003.]
Reality of Race
Medical researchers have long known that blacks and whites differ in their susceptibility to certain diseases and in responses to some medications. For example, black women are more likely than white women to get aggressive forms of breast cancer, are three to four times more likely to get lupus, and are up to nine times more likely to develop uterine fibroids. Blacks suffer from heart disease, diabetes and asthma at rates much higher than whites, and are 60 percent more likely to be obese.
Beta blockers, used to treat hypertension, appear to lower blood pressure for three in five whites, but only two in five blacks. Tamoxifen seems to work less well for black than white women in preventing the recurrence of breast cancer. NitroMed, a heart medication, seems to work for blacks but not whites, so the company that makes it is conducting clinical trials using only blacks.
Historically-black Howard University’s medical school will spend the next five years creating a “biobank” to store the DNA of 25,000 blacks, which it will study to help determine the genetic links between race and disease. Howard hopes the National Institutes of Health will pay for much of the $18 million project, called GRAD (Genomic Research in the African Diaspora), as part of the federal government’s commitment to eliminate racial disparities in disease rates by 2010. [Melissa Healy, The Race Factor, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 8, 2003.]
Flag Flap
The football team of Southern High School in rural, downstate Stronghurst, Illinois, is called the Rebels. After each touchdown, its mascot — dressed as a Confederate soldier — runs through the end zone waving a battle flag. It adopted the Confederate mascot in response to a rival school’s use of a Union soldier.
On Sept. 13, Southern was scheduled to play the Longwood campus of the Chicago International Charter School, a nearly all-black high school from the South Side of Chicago. Early that week, Southern coach Scott Dillard called his Longwood counterpart, Bill Ham, to ask him if the ritual would bother his team. Coach Ham, who is white, says he was horrified by the custom, as were his players. “They kind of looked at me, and a few had their mouths open. This can’t really be true,” he says. Acceding to the wishes of his players, Coach Ham forfeited the game, even after Coach Dillard told him the school would not use the flag. Coach Ham says he was afraid Southern supporters would make racist comments to his team.
Chances are Southern will have to give up the flag and the mascot. Illinois High School Association (IHSA) Executive Director Marty Hickman condemned the school and applauded Longwood’s decision to forfeit. He says the IHSA is considering punishing Southern. Coaches from other predominantly black schools that play Southern are piling on, saying they will demand Southern ban the flag. [Barry Temkin, Confederate Flag Leads to Prep Football Game Forfeit, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 13, 2003.]
Life Under Mugabe
A white Zimbabwean farmer reports on what used to be his land:
On our occupied farm, the borehole has been destroyed so there’s no piped water any more. The solar water panels and tanks have been stolen and the huge water reservoir stands permanently empty. Most of the huge gum tree plantations have been felled for firewood. The dairy no longer sees cows with udders heavy with milk, but only lines of clothes hung up to dry on the milking stalls. The tobacco barns are derelict: doors, flues, furnace covers and bricks are being stolen. A handful of huts are dotted in the fields and next to them stand little patches of scraggly, yellowing maize plants which may feed a family for a few weeks at the most. The people there are hungry, the children beg from the kitchens of a nearby boarding school, and the adults queue up for World Food maize, beans and oil. In the main, the 1,000 acres of our farm is a neglected wasteland, the fields empty except for a few painfully thin cattle which are never dipped, dewormed, or de-horned.
Over the road, on what was only one year ago a thriving beef and chicken producing farm, there is absolutely nothing going on. A local village chief has moved into the once-beautiful house and there he lives entirely alone. He has not held out his hand to his fellow villagers, nor does he allow the villagers to graze their cattle there. Nothing whatsoever is being grown or produced on the land and slowly the bush is reclaiming the cattle dip and chicken runs.
These two farms employed two dozen people, and produced milk, timber, beef, lamb, wool, chickens, eggs, fruit and vegetables for the town of Marandera and paid out millions of dollars in telephone and electricity charges, road rates, drought and Aids levies, stock feed and farming equipment. Now, nothing is produced for sale, no one gainfully employed, nothing comes onto or goes off the farms, and there is no more running water. [A Day in the Life . . ., Impact Magazine (South Africa), August/September 2003, p. 5.]
The collapse of agriculture has virtually destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy. Four million people — one third of the population — are on the brink of starvation in what was once a major food exporter. Seventy percent of Zimbabweans are unemployed, and inflation is officially running at 365 percent per year. With black market price gouging, the actual rate is closer to 700 percent. The government can’t print enough money to keep up with rising prices, and blames the cash shortage on hoarding. [Angus Shaw, Currency Shortage Latest Crisis to Hit Zimbabwe, AP, July 31, 2003.]
People are so poor they cannot afford to bury dead relatives. With more than 5,000 people a week dying of AIDS, and a rising overall mortality rate, Zimbabwe has no place to put the corpses. The morgue at Harare Central Hospital was designed for 164 corpses; it now holds nearly 600, with bodies piled on top of each other everywhere. Cremation would help, but Harare’s one crematorium ran out of fuel for its furnaces last June. [Angus Shaw, Full Morgues Reflect Zimbabwe’s Plight, AP, Aug. 10, 2003.]
Man’s Best Entrée
Unlike many of their countrymen and Asian neighbors, the citizens of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, frown on eating dogs. Until recently, diners had to ask quietly for “special meat” or “jogging cow” in restaurants. Phnom Penh governor Kep Chuktema thinks a change in diet would solve the city’s burgeoning stray dog problem. “Come on, dog meat is so delicious,” he says. “The Vietnamese and Koreans love to eat dog meat.” Cambodians, he adds, “don’t have wine, but poor people can enjoy their dog meat with palm juice wine.” [Eat More Dogs, Cambodians Urged, Reuters, Sept. 13, 2003.]
Religious Diversity
We reprint the following news item:
DENVER — A federal appeals court has decided that a New Mexico church’s use of hallucinogenic tea is likely to be protected under freedom of religion laws.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld a preliminary injunction against the US attorney general, Drug Enforcement Administration, and other government agencies that sought to prohibit use of hoasca tea by Brazil’s O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal church, whose US operations are based in Santa Fe, N.M.
The appeals court agreed with a lower court that the church has shown substantial likelihood of success in winning exemption for sacramental use of the tea, which contains a drug from plants found in the Amazon River basin and barred by the Controlled Substances Act.
[Hallucinogenic Tea May Get Religious Exemption, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 13, 2003.]
Loose Lips
In Rochester, New York, during a broadcast, WHAM radio talk show host Bob Lonsberry compared Mayor William Johnson, who is black, to an orangutan. Mr. Lonsberry isn’t being fired but may wish he had been. He was suspended from broadcasting for a week, had to apologize publicly, and must undergo “diversity training.” [Lonsberry to Take Training, Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester), Sept. 26, 2003, p.1B.]
The Right Approach
Israel has an estimated 300,000 foreign workers — mostly from China, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Romania, and Africa — only a third of whom have work permits. With the country in a three-year recession and unemployment at 10.6 percent, the government wants them out. Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Ehud Olmert says, “The damage caused by foreign workers to the Israeli economy is greater than any other damage,” and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls them a “cancer.” The government is serious. It has started raiding the homes of people who hire illegal foreign household help — and broadcasting the raids on television.
Illegals are getting the message: 60,000 have voluntarily left Israel during the year, far more than the 17,000 who have been deported. “Our target till the end of the year is to have 80,000 leave,” says spokesman Rafi Yaffa. The government of Ariel Sharon is ignoring protests from “human rights” groups, and fines people who knowingly hire illegals. [Tova Cohen, Recession-Hit Israel Expelling Foreign Workers, Reuters, Sept. 16, 2003.]
‘Great White Hope’
Last year, Sandy Trammel, who is white, taught fourth grade at overwhelmingly black West Riviera Elementary School in Riviera Beach, Florida. West Riviera’s scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test were so bad the school was rated “F.” Mrs. Trammel’s class was typical: Of her 20 students, only three read at grade level and four couldn’t read at all. During the year, Mrs. Trammel’s students improved so dramatically she won $10,000 for helping West Riviera move from “F” to “C.” The school district made her a “peer assistance teacher,” who was to help colleagues improve their teaching. The Palm Beach Post featured Mrs. Trammel in a big story in June.
Blacks didn’t like the hoopla. As a former West Riviera student wrote in a letter to the Post, they thought the story “painted a picture of the ‘Great White Hope’ coming to save poor dumb black children.”
Mrs. Trammel’s first peer teaching assignment was to be in another black Riviera Beach school, but when she showed up in September, Principal Beverlyann Barton, who is black, told her to go away. Miss Barton insists the problem was not with Mrs. Trammel, but with thethree-month-old Palm Beach Post story about her. “The article about West Riviera framed the city in a negative light,” she says, adding that because of her portrayal in the article, Mrs. Trammel would poison the school environment, and the other teachers would not be able to work with her. [Mary Ellen Flannery and Kimberly Miller, Riviera School Turns Teaching Coach Away, Palm Beach Post, Sept. 13, 2003.]
Healthy Reaction
The town of Cayce, South Carolina, is a working-class suburb of Columbia. It is 75 percent white, 23 percent black, has a strong religious community, little crime, and a low cost of living. It’s just the sort of place Richard Robinson, a Baptist preacher and refugee coordinator, thinks would be perfect for the 120 Somali Bantus scheduled to begin arriving in South Carolina this fall.
He settled on Cayce’s Pinewood apartment complex, where a two-bedroom unit rents for $399 a month, and then informed the locals. A school district official, Ann Malpass, began circulating a flyer in which she accurately described the Somalis as “a primitive, tribal people” and encouraged residents to attend a city council meeting to discuss resettlement. More than 250 showed up, and applauded when the mayor, city council members and the local state senators all said they opposed resettlement. The people of Cayce say Somalis will consume social services and burden their schools. They worry the Somalis will bring diseases and tribal customs, including female mutilation. Rev. Robinson was aghast. “It was like a lynch mob,” he says.
Rev. Robinson agreed to cut the number of Somalis by half after school officials pointed out they already have 200 Hispanic students who can barely read, and do not want any more illiterates. “I still think 60 [Somalis] is too many,” says Mayor Avery Wilkerson, but he can’t keep them out. He says the city will keep an eye on the Pinewood apartments to make sure occupancy restrictions are observed. Rev. Robinson says he hopes the town will eventually realize what a wonderful thing it is to live with Somalis. “This is an opportunity,” he says. “A calling.” [Peter St. Onge, No Welcome Mat in Sight, Charlotte Observer, Aug. 3, 2003, p. 1A.]
Missing the Point
Governor Gray Davis of California, who may well be out of a job by press time, has come in for considerable media scrutiny. The New York Times recently drew attention to the following line he delivered at a public appearance: “My vision is to make the most diverse state on earth, and we have people from every planet on the earth in this state.” It was only the verbal bungling at the end of the sentence that interested the Times. The criminal bungling of destroying a successful European society went unremarked. [Dean E. Murphy, Twists and Turns of Recall Leave Voters Fatigued, New York Times, Sept. 21, 2003.]
Darkness in DC
The federal government uses a skill level/pay grade system to classify civil service employees. For example, GS-03 workers typically perform clerical duties, while GS-07 positions are considered “professional,” and generally require a college degree. The GS-9 and above ratings usually require considerable experience and/or an advanced degree. The highest civil service rating, GS-15, is for top-level management bureaucrats.
An AR reader who works for the Social Security Administration’s Office of Hearing and Appeals, headquartered in Washington, DC, recently filed a Freedom of Information Request, asking for the racial breakdown by pay grade in his office. Here are the results:
Whites outnumber blacks only at the highest grades, and this is not likely to last much longer. It is, of course, prima-facie evidence of discrimination, and as senior-level whites retire, blacks will replace them. [Response to Freedom of Information Request, Social Security Administration, August 5, 2003.]
Whitey Go Home
As housing prices in good — that is to say white — New York neighborhoods climb, some whites are moving into black areas where housing is cheaper. Many blacks fear “gentrification” will destroy the character of their neighborhoods and force out black-owned businesses.
“Historically, we have had to fight to integrate certain neighborhoods, and when we moved in, white folks moved out,” says Karlena Byers, a black teacher. “Now that white folks are getting priced out of their neighborhoods, they want to move into our neighborhoods. I have a problem with that.” “Look at Harlem,” she adds. “All of 125th Street practically looks like a commercial shopping center to me. Fort Greene is not the neighborhood I used to know and love. It’s so glitzy now.”
Andrew Witherspoon of Harlem, who recently inherited a brownstone, says he won’t sell it: “We’re not just going to relinquish this property over to some white developers who will continue to gentrify this neighborhood. We have to stay.” In black neighborhoods all over New York, activists are urging residents, especially old people, not to sell. They pass out anti-white flyers that say, “Once this community leaves Black, it ain’t ever going back.”
Many of the whites gentrifying Harlem are from France, Italy and even Russia. “I think [the immigrants] have a fascination with Harlem,” says real estate agent Belinda Hardin. Annie Merkowitz explains that “there is a whole group of white people like myself who really want to live in black neighborhoods not simply because the housing is cheaper but because we enjoy black culture.” Miss Merkowitz, who is renovating a rundown brownstone, sympathizes with her neighbor’s fears of gentrification. “I understand that suspicion,” she explains, “but I am here because I love this neighborhood.” [Jamal E. Watson, The Whitening of Black Neighborhoods, Chicago Standard News, July 17, 2003, p. 1.]
Through the Back Door
Goa, on the west Indian coast, was a Portuguese colony from early in the 16th century until December 1961, when India forced out the Portuguese. Under Portuguese law, the people of “Portuguese India” — Goa and the surrounding enclaves of Damao and Diu — were citizens of Portugal. After India seized the colony, thousands of Indians left for Portugal or its African colonies, but many more stayed behind. Now that the European Union allows its citizens to live anywhere within the union, Goans who lived under Portuguese rule, along with their descendents, are claiming Portuguese citizenship.
“Sure, I’ll go to Lisbon — I have eight cousins there,” says Stuart Fernandes, a boat mechanic applying for a passport at the Portuguese consulate in Goa. “But then I will go straight to London.” His friend Glaston Luis also plans to visit cousins in Lisbon before heading to “Scotland or London.”
The colonial-era archives in Goa are bad, and Portuguese officials have a hard time checking the identities of people who apply for passports. Fraud is common, and newspapers are full of ads from people claiming to be experts in Portuguese passport applications. “It’s a business, as if Portuguese citizenship is for sale,” says Portugal’s consul in Goa, Miguel de Caheiros Velozo. “It is a way to go around immigration laws.” [James Brooke, Indians’ Entrée to Europe is a Portuguese Passport, New York Times, June 8, 2003, p. 10.]
Crowding into America
The most crowded big city in the United States is not Los Angeles or New York, but Santa Ana, California. Average household size is 2.8 in Los Angeles, and 2.6 in New York, but 4.6 in Santa Ana. The city’s population grew more than 50 percent in the last 20 years, thanks mostly to illegal immigrants. Many live in squalid, overcrowded, unsafe buildings, but immigration advocates denounced enforcement of building and density codes as racist, and tied up the city with lawsuits. Santa Ana now has half as many building inspectors as it did in 1984, and enforces codes only half-heartedly.
Immigrants cram into any space they can find. Gloria Valadez lives with her daughter and six grandchildren in a ramshackle, rented two-bedroom house. They sublet one bedroom to a family of three and the other to a family of five. Sixteen people live in her 950-square-foot home, which is one of four on a one-third acre lot. The neighbors also sublet, for a total of 42 people in four houses. Before the city forced people out of the garages, the number was 55.
The fire department worries about the fire hazards of cramped living, and the health department worries about mice, rats and other vermin. Crime goes up in very dense housing, and when children live with strangers they are much more likely to be molested and abused.
Third-World immigrants don’t seem to mind. Alejandro Faustino, one of Gloria Valadez’s tenants, came from Mexico with his pregnant wife nine months ago. “We couldn’t ask for more,” he says. “We feel really lucky to have this and to have the chance to get ahead here.” [Jennifer Mena, In Housing Density, It’s Too Close for Comfort, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 13, 2003.]
The Real Score
From 1976 to 1988, the black/white gap in standardized test scores narrowed, leading some to predict that in a generation it would disappear. They were wrong; as 1988 the gap has widened again. In 1976, the difference in average combined scores was 240, a number that narrowed to 189 points, a significant drop. However, by 2002, the difference in average scores was back up to 203 points: 1060 for whites and 857 for blacks. Blacks get worse scores than any other group, including Puerto Ricans and Eskimos. Eskimos average about 100 points higher than blacks.
It is common to argue that family income drives SAT scores, and that the racial gap is explained by black/white wealth differences. However, in 2002, whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had average test scores 46 points higher than blacks from families with incomes between $80,000 and $100,000. Blacks from families with incomes greater than $100,000 had averages scores 142 points lower than whites from equally wealthy families.
There are very few blacks among the ranks of the highest scorers. In 2002, 122,683 blacks took the test — 9.2 percent of all test-takers — but only 838 (one percent of all test-takers) scored 700 or higher on the math SAT and only 822 (1.4 percent) scored that high on the verbal test. Whites were seven times more likely than blacks to score 700 or better on the verbal, and nine times more likely to score 700 on the math parts of the test. Admission to one of the country’s most selective colleges requires scores of 750 or better. Whites were ten times more likely than blacks to score that high on the verbal test, and 11 times more likely on the math test. In the entire country, only about 200 blacks got scores that high on either test. Under affirmative action, about six percent of the 50,000 students admitted to the top 25 schools every year are black. Without preferences that figure would drop to under one percent.
The same race differences appear in scores for the American College Testing (ACT) Program. In 2002, 87 percent of white test-takers scored at or above the median score for blacks. Whites are 11 times more likely than blacks to score at the levels required by the most demanding universities. Given the disparity in numbers, there are approximately 50 times as many whites as blacks who qualify for the top schools. [The Expanding Racial Scoring Gap Between Black and White SAT Test Takers, Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Sept. 3, 2002.]
Remember Goliad!
Shortly after the fall of the Alamo in 1836, Mexican troops under the command of Gen. Jose de Urrea defeated a force of Texans under the command of Col. James Fannin at the Battle of Coleto Creek near Goliad, Texas. The Texans surrendered, believing they would be treated as prisoners of war. Instead, the Mexicans marched the 300 or so survivors to Goliad and shot them. The incident became known in Texas history as the Goliad Massacre, and was memorialized in the cry, “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!”
Mexicans resent the term “massacre.” With Goliad now half Hispanic, they insist “execution” is more culturally sensitive and historically accurate. The Texans, they say, were foreigners in rebellion against a legitimate government. “Would we be surprised today,” asks author Andres Tijerina, “if the US government executed a group of pirates or terrorists . . . who were found operating on American soil?”
Emelio Vargas, an assistant principal at Goliad’s elementary school, agrees: “For so long in Texas history classes it’s been drilled into us that the Mexicans were the demons and Anglos the enlightened heroes. On this point, we’re no longer going to accept it without a fight.” Many Anglos, says Benny Martinez of the Goliad chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), “still hate Mexicans and using ‘massacre’ is a subtle way for them to express it.”
Ron Tyler, a history professor at the University of Texas and president of the Texas State Historical Society, thinks massacre is the appropriate term. “Those men might have fought to the death if they thought their lives would not have been spared,” he says.
One of Goliad’s newest residents, Indian hotel owner Rajesh Bhakta, doesn’t understand what the fuss is all about. “No wonder our town is not growing,” he complains. “Who wants to invest in a place with all this unseemly fighting over long-ago affairs?” [Simon Romero, War of Words Divides Residents of Texas Town, New York Times, July 19, 2003.]
Silver Lining
In early September, the New York City media went into a frenzy when a group of white teen-agers on Staten Island attacked a black girl and yelled racial slurs. In the midst of white breast-beating it came to light that slurs are shouted all the time, and that whites are hardly the only ones shouting them. Later that same month, in a single weekend, there were no fewer than eight incidents reported to police, with plenty of black and Hispanic slur-shouters. “I think if there is any good news,” says Mayor Michael Bloomberg, “there does not seem to be a pattern here. It doesn’t seem to be directed against one group.” [Stephanie Gaskell, Throw Book at All Bias Thugs: Mike, New York Post, Sept. 23, 2003.]
The mayor is wrong. There is a pattern here. Racial diversity is a failure and no one likes it.
Another Flag Flap
Eight states offer specialty license plates honoring the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV): Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and Virginia. John W. Adams of Florida wants his state to be the ninth. Florida already offers 54 specialty plates and has another 40 waiting to be issued. A portion of the surcharge on the plates goes to the organization behind them.
The SCV won’t find any support from Republican Gov. Jeb Bush. Spokesman Jacob DiPietre says, “the governor is adamantly against” the SCV plates. In 2001, Gov. Bush took down the Confederate flag that had flown at the state capitol since the late ‘60s, saying he wanted to avoid trouble. [Rebel Flag License Plate Proposed, AP, Sept. 16, 2003.]
Growing Apart
Census analysts note that 100 years ago, the 20 most popular given names for blacks were virtually the same as those for whites. Divergence began in the 1960s, and now there is scarcely any racial overlap in the most popular names. It has become easy to pick out many blacks — and even some whites — just from their first names. DeShawn and Shanice are almost exclusively black, while only whites name their children Cody or Caitlin. One study of 16 million births in California between 1960 and 2000 found that more than 40 percent of the names given to black girls were not given to a single white girl born in the same year. [Justin Pope, Black Parents Torn Over Ethnic Names, AP, Sept. 28, 2003.]
Perhaps the country needs a new word for what happens when assimilation goes into reverse. “Dissimilation” might do the job.
‘Dark and Lonely’
The following excerpts from a letter were reprinted in an advice column in an Islamic newsletter:
I am 27 years old, unmarried and of [X-ed out] origin. My family has looked for a suitable husband for me for quite some time. I have a dark complexion, and for people from [X-ed out] this is not considered beautiful. In fact, my friends and acquaintances who are light in complexion (and considerably less attractive than me) are married. All of my life this situation has bothered me. I have low self-esteem because of it.
Only non-Muslim men (Caucasians to be specific) have ever seemed attracted to me. It seems that most Muslim men prefer fair skin. Even the ads I see on the Muslim marriage sites and in magazines say ‘Fair Girl Wanted.’
The letter is signed “Dark and Lonely.” [Ask Auntie Hakima, The Muslim Link (College Park, Maryland), August 2003, p. 15.]
Quota Quandary
Blacks are 50 percent of the population of Brazil, but only two percent of college students. Activists pressured the government into reserving 40 percent of admissions for blacks and mixed-race pardos, and 50 percent for public high school graduates (the largely white upper classes go to private schools). This year, the first for preferences, more than half of the 5,000 students admitted to the prestigious State University of Rio de Janeiro got in under a quota. Unlike the United States, Brazil does not yet appear to have grading quotas: Nearly 40 percent of blacks and pardos have already dropped out.
Whites fought the quotas with more than 300 lawsuits, and pressured the legislature. Last March, it voted to narrow the quotas for 2004-2005, reserving just 20 percent of admissions for blacks, 20 percent for public school graduates, and five percent for cripples and Indians. Pardos will get no preferences.
Blacks in the ruling leftist Workers Party want strict quotas for everything from government hiring to television commercials. President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva agrees, saying, “It’s a blatant fact that blacks earn the lowest levels of income, have less schooling and the worst jobs, and make up more than their share of the unemployed.” Mr. da Silva is trying to reduce black unemployment single-handedly. He appointed Brazil’s first black Supreme Court justice, created a Special Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality, and has more blacks in his cabinet than any other Brazilian president. [Hector Tobar, A Racial Quake in Brazil, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 1, 2003.]
LETTERS FROM READERS |
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Sir — In his article on altruism (Part I) in the October issue, Ian Jobling makes some interesting and useful points; I look forward to reading Part II. However, I would like to reply to three criticisms he makes of Prof. Kevin MacDonald’s work on Jews and their influences on Western decline.
- Jews are too small a percentage of the population to have had the effects some claim. This argument is strange, since human history is full of individual men who rose to power, led nations, conquered empires, and changed the course of history. If individuals can be so influential, then certainly a cohesive, intelligent, focused and internationally distributed ethnic group can also be influential. What is important is not Jewish numbers, but Jewish power and influence, which are very great.
- Even if Jews have done all the things Prof. MacDonald claims, it is still true that it is white gentiles who have done much of the “hands-on,” direct destruction of our race and civilization. They pass anti-white laws, promote immigration, etc. This is true, but confuses the issue of “necessary” vs. “sufficient.” No one claims Jews alone were or are sufficient to destroy white racial consciousness; however, they have been a necessary ingredient. Would white gentiles have taken so many racially destructive actions if left to themselves? Various biological processes that have the theoretical potential to take place on their own require enzyme catalysts in order to do so. I believe Prof. MacDonald’s work is consistent with the idea that anti-white, anti-Western Jewish activism has been the catalyst in our decline.
- Prof. MacDonald has not indicated why white gentiles are susceptible to Jewish influence. This is not true. For example, Prof. MacDonald’s essay “What Makes Western Culture Unique” in the Summer 2002 issue of The Occidental Quarterly describes in detail differences between Jews and European-derived gentiles that make it easier for the former to manipulate the latter.
Obviously, there is disagreement among AR readers and contributors about these questions. However, I believe Prof. MacDonald’s work should not be dismissed in a few sentences.
Michael Rienzi, Boston, Mass.
Sir — It was worth the price of an AR subscription to read Ian Jobling’s “Competitive Altruism and White Self-Destruction,” because his article focuses on the real problem — the white community. As much as we might want to blame non-whites for today’s anti-white sentiment, the white elite must take its share of the blame.
It makes sense to me that white “benevolence” towards blacks should be a manifestation of post-’60s social climbing. It also makes sense that lawyers should support greater opportunities to bring anti-discrimination lawsuits, and that the Democratic Party should favor racial policies that win 90 percent of the black vote. “Anti-racist” attitudes can be an expression of white self-interest.
My perspective on race relations is partly a result of being a landlord with mostly black tenants. I live next door, and deal frequently with my tenants. As an inner-city landlord, I am aware of church efforts to push for government funding of “affordable housing.” I have found these advocacy groups are largely uninterested in working with actual landlords in poor neighborhoods. Their real agenda seems to be revitalizing suburban congregations. I think their anti-white attitudes may be a product of the new “suburban Christianity,” in which clergymen make their congregations feel guilty for having fled the cities to escape blacks. This is called “afflicting the comforted,” and competitive altruism may play a role.
My experience with blacks has not stopped me from running for office and raising racial issues in unapproved ways. I ran for the US Senate last year in the Independence Party primary, carrying a sign that called for “dignity for white males.” Despite a news blackout from Minnesota’s largest newspaper, my campaign attracted nearly one third of the vote, statewide. I published a book about that experience and am now seeking the Democratic Party nomination for president with much the same platform.
As Dr. Jobling points out, since the civil rights movement, altruism towards blacks has been the highest form of altruistic expression for white social climbers. Whether white elites can continue to milk their positions for money and prestige, and still retain the political support of black people is questionable. Whites evidently have a higher tolerance for hypocrisy and deceit.
William McGaughey, Minneapolis, Minn.
Sir — In her letter to the editor in the October issue, Elizabeth Tate wrote that while Northerners may find the September cover story, “Urban Law 101,” amusing, she thought it in poor taste. I am a Northerner of unreconstructed Copperhead descent and I found Donald Williamson’s article not amusing but edifying. “Goofy things” blacks do? Let us try bizarre, fanciful, grotesque, preposterous and chimerical — goofy is too, too mild. Thanks also for printing the October “O Tempora, O Mores!” item from the Sears advertisement. I have been waiting for years for someone to point out the racial abuse and humiliation whites suffer in modern advertising.
Steve J. Medve, Canton, N.Y.
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