American Renaissance magazine
Vol. 18, No. 10	October 2007

CONTENTS

The ‘De la Rey’ Song
How to Rear Children
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters

COVER STORY

The ‘De la Rey’ Song

Is it a sign of Afrikaner resistance?

by Dan Roodt

Over the past nine months, a seemingly innocuous song about a Boer War general named Koos de la Rey went from the esoteric fringes of Afrikaans rock music to being cited on the front page of the New York Times, the London Guardian, Le Monde in Paris, and by every newspaper, radio and TV station in South Africa. On July 21, the Financial Times of London devoted 3,300 words to the song.

Why so much attention? In South Africa, some Afrikaners have treated “De la Rey” almost like a new national anthem, with people standing at attention at concerts where it is sung, and waving old Boer republican flags. In bars, school halls, wherever it is played, Afrikaners of all ages and persuasions assemble, some swaying to the music, others standing at attention, with everyone deeply moved, even to the point of tears. In the summer heat of last December, a group of young people parked their cars in a kind of wagon circle or laager on the beach, pushed the buttons on their CD players at the same moment, and blasted an entire seaside town with “De la Rey.”

There are even reports of American troops in Iraq taking to “De la Rey.” Some 8,000 Afrikaner soldiers and security men, unable to find work in South Africa because of race preferences, work for the US Army in Iraq. As the song spread among Afrikaners overseas, it was only natural that it penetrate the barracks and fortifications in Iraq.

When the local mass circulation magazine, Die Huisgenoot, did a front-page article on Bok van Blerk, the boyish singer of “De la Rey,” the magazine asked the black Minister of Culture, Pallo Jordan, what he thought of the song. Mr. Jordan warned against “the hijacking of the popular song by a minority of right-wingers who do not simply see De la Rey as a war hero, but who want to mislead parts of Afrikaans society with the idea that it is a struggle song, a call to arms.”

Suddenly the song was banned at the rugby stadium known as Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria, home of the famous Blue Bulls. A few days later, the rugby union “unbanned” the song, but some radio stations — notably the one on the campus of Pretoria University — refused to play it. Of course, fueled by the controversy, sales soared and Bok van Blerk earned at least 2 million rand (about $300,000) in royalties in nine months, in addition to appearance fees at a host of venues around the country and before expatriate Afrikaners in Britain, Australia and Canada.

Who was Koos de la Rey, and why is a song about him causing so much controversy? Is our esteemed Minister of Culture right about a “call to arms?” Here is an English translation of the Afrikaans lyrics:

On a mountain in the night

I lie in the dark and wait

In the mud and the blood

As cold rain soaks me.

And my house and my farm were burnt to ashes

So they could capture us,

But those flames and that fire now burn

Deep within me.

De La Rey, De La Rey come lead the Boers,

De La Rey, De La Rey

General, General, to the last man we shall fall for you.

General De La Rey.

Against the British laughing,

A handful of us against an army of them

With the cliffs of the mountains against our backs

They think it is over.

But the heart of a Boer is deeper and wider,

They will still realize.

On a horse he is coming,

The Lion of the Western Transvaal.

De La Rey, De La Rey come lead the Boers

De La Rey, De La Rey

General, General to the last man we shall fall for you.

General De La Rey.

Because my wife and my child

Are rotting in their camps,

The British running over us,

But our nation shall rise once more.

De La Rey, De La Rey come lead the Boers . . . .

Koos de la Rey did not want to fight the British, and argued for compromise. When war with the British Empire seemed inevitable in 1899, De la Rey is said to have told the Boer national assembly, the Volksraad: “You will get your war and I will have to help you fight it. However, long after you have all surrendered, I will still be in the field.”

These words were prophetic, as De la Rey became one of the bittereinders or bitter-enders. During the war, he pioneered guerilla tactics, as well as the use of trenches at the famous battle of Magersfontein on December 11, 1899 where he humiliated the Scottish Highlanders led by Major General Wauchope. Wauchope himself was killed in the nine hours of intense fighting, after which the decimated British beat a disorderly retreat.

Apart from his courage and military intuition, De la Rey was also the perfect gentleman who refrained from unnecessary killing. On one occasion he released hundreds of captured and wounded enemy soldiers because he thought that they would be better treated in superior British field hospitals. During the guerilla phase of the war, he evaded capture time and again, some say due to the presence in his ranks of an eccentric prophet, Siener or “Seer” van Rensburg, who was widely believed to be able to tell the future.

In 1914, De la Rey was involved in the so-called “rebellion” against South African involvement in the First World War. While on his way to a political meeting on September 15, 1914, he died in a hail of police bullets at a night-time roadblock. The police apparently mistook his car for that of the notorious Foster criminal gang that was active at the time.

Despite his courage and Hollywood- script life, many people believe the composer of “De la Rey,” a half-Irish half-Afrikaans youngster called Sean Else, chose him from among many Boer War generals because his name rhymed with the word lei, to lead, which is in the refrain that has now been echoing all over South Africa for almost a year:

De la Rey, de la Rey,

Sal jy die Boere kom lei?

De La Rey, De La Rey

come lead the Boers

Clearly, the popularity of “De la Rey” has rattled many South African blacks who still fear the Afrikaner capacity for resistance despite being hugely outnumbered and dominated under the current system. During a panel discussion on the song in May organised by the left-liberal weekly Mail & Guardian, black columnist John Matshikiza claimed that the Afrikaans word for British soldiers used in the song, “kakies” (referring to their khaki-coloured uniforms) was seen by white Afrikaners as “darkies” or “kaffirs,” the derogatory word for blacks in South Africa. According to him, “De la Rey” could be interpreted as inciting Afrikaners to rise up against their black rulers.

Most Afrikaner commentators have downplayed any political significance to the song, emphasizing that it was simply a folk song dealing with the ancient history of conflict between Boer and Briton. In reaction to black suspicions of an Afrikaner uprising against racial domination, they portray Koos de la Rey as “a man of peace” because he opposed war with Britain. A columnist in the Johannesburg Beeld, Ferdi Greyling, went so far as to compare De la Rey to Robert E. Lee, who opposed secession but fought valiantly for the South. Unlike Robert E. Lee, who was turned back at Gettysburg and forced to surrender at Appomattox Court House, De la Rey never suffered defeat.

So what does the reaction to “De la Rey” mean? Above all, it points to a trend in Afrikaner youth culture which is deviating from Western youth culture that anomically celebrates consumerism and multicultural ideals. Contrast Bob Geldof’s crusade for Africa’s poor with singer Bok van Blerk’s vibrant call to nationalism. There is a host of other protest songs about anti-white discrimination and violence against whites. A good example is the album Genoeg (Enough) by Hoezit Music. Sub-titled “the voice of young South Africa,” the CD contains no fewer than 19 Afrikaans protest songs in a variety of rock styles, many of which are far more radical and politicized than the De la Rey song.

At one level, the romantic, bearded figure of General Koos de la Rey represents an unlikely youth icon. But so were Mao or Ché Guevara in the 1960s. Our Afrikaner youth are not like the spoiled brats of Western consumer society who benefited from the post-war economic boom, and developed a penchant for radical chic that idealised Third-World rebellion. Young Afrikaners are expressing their anger and alienation in the face of systematic anti-white discrimination the like of which the world has never seen.

South Africa’s system of radical race preferences — known as “transformation” — all but prohibits large companies like banks, mines or telecoms from hiring whites. Although experienced white managers or technicians sometimes find jobs simply because there are no trained blacks, young, inexperienced whites are told not to bother to apply. Despite their intelligence and high levels of education, they can work only in family businesses or small firms. Add to that the racial quotas imposed on universities, where only the most brilliant, straight-A white students can study medicine, law or accounting, and one understands the immense sense of frustration among young whites who feel that they have become third-class citizens.

As we know, South Africa is not at peace. There is enormous racial violence on the streets every day, masquerading as “crime.” First we had “farm attacks” in which marauding black gangs tortured and killed defenseless whites, usually women and children or elderly men. Now the Institute for Security Studies, an academic think tank in Pretoria, has coined the phrase “house attacks” for similar black-on-white violence in the suburbs.

The outside world has focused on the problems in Zimbabwe under its notorious dictator Robert Mugabe, but most Americans and Europeans are unaware of deteriorating race relations in South Africa. Even the liberal editor of the Afrikaans Sunday paper Rapport has started to compare our president, Thabo Mbeki, to his Zimbabwean counterpart. Tim du Plessis recently wrote in his weekly column: “Nothing carries more weight with Mbeki than race. Just like Mugabe.”

Within this context of rising racial tension, it is perhaps not surprising that a song like “De la Rey” should have become heavily politicized. In my view, its popularity is due to an underlying mood of disaffection and even rebellion among white Afrikaners that just needed a trigger to come out into the open. Bok van Blerk’s song provided that trigger. Afrikaners instinctively recognize in it a resurgence of the age-old Afrikaner spirit that has sustained us since the pioneering days of the Great Trek in the 1830s.

Most Afrikaner intellectuals now recognize that the imposition of black majority rule in 1994 has been a complete disaster, and that we are not going to regain racial equality or any significant form of freedom without a major liberation struggle that might even include a guerilla war against the ruling African National Congress (ANC). The De la Rey song has lifted spirits in the Afrikaner movement. The rebellious mood among our young people, who are reaffirming their identity in the face of official attempts to eradicate our language and culture, is seen as a godsend.

Since the 1970s, Afrikaner nationalism had been in decline, and the surrender of F.W. de Klerk to the ANC in 1994 must be seen as its nadir. Britain, with the backing of the United States, reasserted control over South Africa and dictated to us that we should accept permanent racial and cultural domination by one of the most radical Afrocentric organizations the world had ever seen.

After 1994, English also became the de facto official language of South Africa, with the express aim of marginalizing Afrikaans. At the same time, the notion of white guilt that has become almost the norm in the English-speaking world was inculcated through the mass media, the churches, universities and schools. Not so long ago, our language and culture, as well as the ideal of an independent, white nation on African soil for which we fought for more than two centuries, were declared dead.

The slogan of the ANC and its mindless black voters responding to black racial nationalism is something like that of the Borg in the Star Trek movies: “We are the Borg. Resistance is futile. We will assimilate you.” Just the other day, a leading black commentator, Rich Mkhondo, wrote in the Johannesburg Star that the pace of integration was too slow, and that there were too few mixed marriages between blacks and whites. Afrikaners are supposed to be racially and culturally assimilated into the Borg-like New South Africa founded in 1994.

The De la Rey song, as well as the boom in Afrikaans protest music are signs of a resurgent Afrikaner nationalism that asserts a specific white Afrikaner identity. This is, of course, exactly the opposite of the “grand plan” for South Africa, hatched in the liberal West and currently applied by Thabo Mbeki, which requires our Borg-like assimilation to the African masses.

The De la Rey song marks a radical change in Afrikaner nationalism, which has become almost mainstream. Afrikaans newspapers now openly criticize the ANC’s racial policies, something they were loathe to do only a year ago. Accordingly, the fairy tale of racial reconciliation that the global media served up in 1994 when Bill and Hillary Clinton, together with other heads of state, flew to Pretoria to celebrate the “South African miracle” is turning sour. We face the same intractable problems of racial coexistence as before.

The multicultural model with its black racial domination through numbers is not working. Despite its anomalies and deficiencies, apartheid was an exemplar of fairness and justice compared to the ANC’s “transformation,” which combines the worst of both right-wing and left-wing 20th century totalitarianism to achieve a kind of racial communism in which everyone will be equal and whites will have disappeared. We shall either be driven out as in Zimbabwe or killed in an orgy of violence as happened to the Tutsis in Rwanda. Certainly the degree of violence — attacks and massacres of entire white families — is already alarming.

Within the next few years, the age-old ethnic strains and divisions combined with the current anarchic violence may well result in full-blown civil war. We face an uncertain and increasingly violent future. Small wonder, then, that a clean-shaven young man called Bok van Blerk singing a nostalgic, patriotic song about a time when our people resisted the might of the British Empire against all odds should be dominating the airwaves.

Dan Roodt is a well-known novelist and Afrikaner commentator who has played a leading role in what has become known over the past four years as the “Third Afrikaans Language Struggle.” He lives in Johannesburg.

BOOK REVIEW

How to Rear Children

Some Americans — guess who? — still marry.

Kay Hymowitz, Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age, Ivan R. Dee, 2006, 179 pp., $22.50.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

Every society in human history has had a ceremony to mark the union of a man and woman and recognize their children. Marriage, which Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute calls “the core cultural institution,” is universal — at least it was until the late 1960s, when it became fashionable in the West to view it as just another “lifestyle.”

This excellent little book explains why marriage is important, and describes what we get when some mothers think they can do without it: “A self-perpetuating single-mother proletariat on the one hand, and a self-perpetuating, comfortable middle class on the other.” Nor does Mrs. Hymowitz ignore race. She recognizes that the “single-mother proletariat” is mostly back and increasingly Hispanic, and even has a go at trying to explain why.

‘Separate and Unequal Families’

Mrs. Hymowitz starts with a history lesson on marriage. She points out that up until the 1960s, it was essentially unheard of for Americans to have children without ever bothering to marry. There have always been class and race differences in this respect, but even among high school dropouts, barely one percent of American women had children without a husband. Divorce was rare: Ninety-five percent of marriages were permanent.

The big change came with the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Feminists said marriage was sexist, hippies said it was unnecessary, and even the middle class decided it could be casually junked if Mom and Dad stopped getting along. Marriage became purely a matter of adult romance, and certainly not something to be held together for the sake of children. Broken homes and single mothers were “alternative families,” just as good as the real thing. Sex became pure recreation, with procreation as an afterthought.

All social classes, therefore, embarked together on what Mrs. Hymowitz calls “unmarriage,” but rich and poor soon parted ways. By the 1980s, the divorce rate among college-educated women stopped rising, and it started to decline in the 1990s. Among the poor, the divorce rate stopped climbing in the 1990s, but only because poor people were not marrying, so there were fewer marriages that could fall apart. As illegitimacy rates climbed to 70 percent for blacks and 45 percent for Hispanics, they peaked at just four percent for college-educated women and then headed down.

Mrs. Hymowitz’s point is that although close to 35 percent of American children are illegitimate and 40 to 50 percent of marriages are likely to fail, the norm for middle-class white women is once again children within marriage and “’til death do us part.” Hollywood stars and sports celebrities still shuck spouses, and the media still treat this as liberated daring, but suburban couples who want their children to get into good schools stay together. Mrs. Hymowitz says informal polls show that about 90 percent of students in elite universities come from intact households.

The damage done by single motherhood and divorce are now well known. Thirty-six percent of female-headed families are poor, while only six percent of married-couple families are poor. Divorce clearly hurts children: Those from broken homes are significantly more likely to drop out of school, get pregnant, or go to jail. In this respect, remarriage or long-term cohabitation are not substitutes for the real thing: “As society’s bulwark social institution, traditional marriage — that is, childbearing within marriage — orders social life in ways that we only dimly understand,” writes Mrs. Hymowitz.

College educated women understand this instinctively. They know that a permanent father is the best guarantee that children will stay in school, go to college, keep out of jail, and climb into the security of the middle class. It’s a bonus if marriage is a life-long love affair, but it has a more important role: “In middle-class families the child’s development — emotional, social, and (these days above all) cognitive — takes center stage. It is the family’s raison d’être, its state religion.” Mrs. Hymowitz continues: “The bourgeois nuclear family is by its very definition a factory for producing competent, self-reliant, and (at its most successful) upwardly mobile children.” Marriage may not guarantee successful children, but for the middle class, it is an absolute precondition for having them.

Mrs. Hymowitz writes that the mentality that leads to marriage means a woman must follow a particular “life script,” and that this mentality is what makes the middle class different from the underclass:

A marriage orientation . . . requires a young woman to consider the question of what man will become her husband and the father of her children as a major, if not the major, decision of her life. In other words, a marriage orientation demands that a woman keep her eye on the future, that she go through life with deliberation, and that she use self-discipline — especially when it comes to sex: bourgeois women still consider premature pregnancy a disaster. In short, a marriage orientation — not just marriage itself — is part and parcel of her bourgeois ambition.

The Underclass

It is one of Mrs. Hymowitz’s key insights that underclass women are not simply middle-class women who happen to be poor or happen not to know how to use contraceptives. They have a different “life script” or, perhaps more accurately, they do not have one at all. Policy makers keep making the mistake of assuming underclass women have all the same motives and aspirations of the middle class but just don’t have the means. They think that a little more money and a course in “life skills” will end reckless procreation and put poor women on the road to the suburbs. Mrs. Hymowitz bravely explains that this isn’t so, and that for many blacks it is emphatically not so.

It has been taboo to discuss the mating habits of blacks ever since Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out that a black illegitimacy rate of (just) 25 percent portended disaster. When he wrote in 1965 that “a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure,” he was hooted down for “blaming the victim.” Liberals insisted that the problem was “racism,” not illegitimacy, and that it was “sexist” to think black women needed husbands. The black “family” was touted as a resilient, multi-generational network of extended kin that could give children a better start than the isolated, white two-parent family. Liberals were convinced the government would abolish poverty, and that a new era of happy, well-adjusted “alternative families” was around the corner. Of course, Moynihan was right, and we are now stuck with an entrenched black underclass and a growing Hispanic underclass.

How did it happen? Mrs. Hymowitz tries to answer that question by explaining how the underclass really thinks. She says that what most strikes whites is the passivity of ghetto mothers. For them “sex simply happens. Then babies happen. In fact, life happens.” Mothers then expect babies that “happened” to grow up more or less on their own, while middle-class mothers “are strategizing their children’s growth the way the generals planned D-day.”

Underclass mothers do not plan. The future “happens” like everything else. And yet, as many have noted, 15-year-old black mothers talk casually about becoming doctors or lawyers, as if that too will just “happen.” They have no idea of the effort and dedication it takes to get into the middle class.

That marriage and a husband are an important part of that process is beyond their grasp. In ghetto housing where no one even knows anyone who is married, fathers are “the extra parent,” occasionally useful as a source of cash. “Why do I need to worry about a father?” asks a newly pregnant 15-year-old. “My mother raised me and my sister just fine without one.” She adds: “All my friends have babies. I was beginning to wonder what was wrong with me.”

Mrs. Hymowitz points out that for underclass teen-agers, a baby is definitely not an unwelcome interruption to their studies. They want babies. They will probably not see any of the other rites of passage to adulthood — high school graduation, college, first real job, marriage, down payment on a house — so babies are the only thing that distinguishes them from children. There is never a shortage of boys who will knock them up. Mrs. Hymowitz writes of underclass men who tattoo themselves with the names of their illegitimate children the way pilots painted kills on their fighters. She says some may deliberately puncture condoms so they can add to the list.

Nine months later, neighborhood women fawn over the new mother and her baby, who gets paraded around in cute clothes. The parade lasts until about age two, when children begin to talk back and become trouble. Then, says Mrs. Hymowitz , mothers lose interest and dress them like bums.

Many people have noted how different ghetto black mothers are from middle-class whites. In the suburbs, mothers talk constantly to children, encourage them to learn, praise their accomplishments, shower them with affection and attention. Underclass mothers not only talk much less; their speech is harsh, and centered on the word “no.”

By the time black children are in kindergarten, they are “much less likely to show persistence in school tasks, to pay attention in class, or to seem eager to learn new things” compared to whites. Hispanics are somewhere in between. Underclass mothers leave education entirely to the schools.

Sociologists have noticed that children do better if they have parents who talk to them, read to them, and check their homework. Some liberals have been so stupid as to set up programs to pay ghetto mothers to do these things in the hope it will make a difference. As Mrs. Hymowitz points out, middle-class parents are not following a “parenting skills” checklist. Their child-rearing mission comes from the heart, and paying someone to go through the motions is futile.

Head Start was touted in its early years as the way to close the black/white gap, but Mrs. Hymowitz points out that even the most intensive “early intervention” efforts like the Perry Preschool and the Abecedarian Project got poor results. She notes there is still Head Start here and there, but says it is just a fancy pre-school. No one thinks it is going to change a child’s life.

Mrs. Hymowitz claims that some of the “accidental fathers” in the underclass have a vague sense of responsibility to their children. She says they realize it was a disadvantage to grow up without a father, and want to do better. To the extent this is true, these young men face terrible obstacles. They have never known a man who was part of a long-term child-rearing team, and have no idea how to be fathers. At the same time, they may have children by several women who, in turn, have children by several men. With the best will in the world, this kind of tangle leads, in Mrs. Hymowitz’s words, to “confusion, jealousy rage, abandonment, and violence.”

Underclass fathers reportedly pay more attention to sons than to daughters. Mrs. Hymowitz says this is because the only people they could ever count on were “homies.” Women are good for sex but are not friends or allies. A daughter will just be another fickle female but a son might grow up to be a pal.

Backlash

Mrs. Hymowitz writes that the current generation of middle-class young people — the Generation Xers — are more conservative about marriage than their baby-boomer parents. She says many suffered through their parents’ divorces, and have vowed to spare their own children. According to pollsters, they are considerably more likely than their parents to say that traditional families are best.

Mrs. Hymowitz says Gen X is more conservative across the board: far more likely than the ’60s generation to agree that making money is important; less inclined to drink, take drugs, or have sex for sport. They are also finished with feminism. Many think Mom should stay home with the kids. They saw their own mothers drag themselves off to work and come home beat, counting the days until the next vacation. They don’t believe bra-burner propaganda about how careers liberate women. Gen X wives may want their husbands to help around the house, but they want to be “nester-in-chief” — as Mrs. Hymowitz says “they like being boss at home.” She says taking the husband’s name is back in vogue, and cites the occasional female MBA who ditched a high-powered career to stay home and breastfeed.

The new generation of the middle-class-to-be, argues Mrs. Hymowitz , has suffered the consequences of treating marriage lightly and will not repeat their parents’ folly. “The question that confronts us now,” she adds, “is whether the poor and near-poor can do the same.” The short answer to that question is “no,” and the reason is that a whole class of Americans has drifted into a dysgenic dead end.

Genes or Harp Lessons?

As Mrs. Hymowitz herself recognizes, there is a real question here as to what causes what. If, by some miracle, the same teenagers who are having children by accident were to wait five years, get married, and then have children, how much difference would it make? Mrs. Hymowitz toys with the idea that people who cannot graduate from high school or keep a job may simply be defective. Their children will be defective too, because they inherit their parents’ defects, not because Daddy didn’t read them Winnie the Pooh. Mrs. Hymowitz quickly drops this idea, however, no doubt because it leads in disagreeable directions.

Environment surely makes a difference, but genes are a big part of the problem. If the average black IQ is 85, the average IQ in the projects is surely no more than 75. People with IQs of 75 can hold jobs, and sometimes even marry and rear children, but only if they are surrounded by smarter people who set an example and help them lead orderly lives.

Whole neighborhoods are now full of people with 75 IQs, where not a single person lives responsibly, and from which not even a child with an IQ of 100 could probably escape. As Mrs. Hymowitz points out, these people are not like white Gen Xers. They have learned no lessons from the folly of their parents. They drop out of high school to have babies and still think they are going to become lawyers. Each new crop of babies is a generation of double victims — dealt a sorry genetic hand and born into the worst environments in the developed world. Mrs. Hymowitz is right to say “programs” will do nothing unless there is a revolution in the way the underclass thinks, but shows us no signs of revolution.

Economically, the underclass could not have come at a worse time. Even if its members had the gumption to show up on time for blue-collar jobs, those jobs no longer support a family. Not even a college degree guarantees a middle-class salary these days, and many blacks and Hispanics are lucky to get a GED.

Mrs. Hymowitz applauds the 1996 welfare reform that cut off automatic raises for every new welfare baby, and limited the number of years a woman could stay on the dole. Liberals screamed that blacks would be starving in the streets. Instead, the number of black children living with two parents had inched up — to 39 percent. Isn’t the lesson that there should be no welfare at all? If 15-year-olds knew that they would be entirely on their own with that baby — or that they were going to have to go begging to friends and family — there would be a lot fewer underclass babies. The hard truth is that some people should not have children, period.

This is farther than Mrs. Hymowitz cares to go. Publishers like books with happy endings, or at least hold out prospects for one. But Mrs. Hymowitz has gone a great deal farther than most, and hers is one of the most readable, persuasive defenses of marriage in a long time. She even blasts homosexual marriage as another attack on an institution that is supposed to bring forth new citizens, not consecrate copulation.

America got its first underclass because it had a population of blacks that could not hold out against the message of “do it if it feels good” and a welfare system that took the pain out of shiftless baby-making. It is getting a second underclass because Mexican immigrants are pouring into the groove well worn by blacks. Mrs. Hymowitz tells us whites are pulling out of the moral nose-dive of the 1960s; sadly, there are no signs that blacks or Hispanics will do the same.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

She Won’t be Missed

Elvira Arellano is a 32-year-old Mexican janitor, unwed mother, and illegal immigration cause célèbre. She jumped the border the first time in 1997, making her way to Washington State, where immigration agents caught and deported her. She returned almost immediately, gave birth to an anchor baby named Saul in 1999, and moved to Illinois, where she found a job cleaning airplanes at O’Hare International Airport. Her luck ran out in 2002 when she was arrested and convicted of working under a fake Social Security number. Miss Arellano fought her second deportation for nearly four years, arguing that being sent to Mexico would violate the rights of her son, an American citizen. By August 2006, immigration authorities had finally had enough, and ordered her into custody. Instead of surrendering, Miss Arellano took “sanctuary” in Adalberto United Methodist Church, a Chicago storefront headed by Rev. Walter “Slim” Coleman, a left-wing political activist and “labor organizer.” The principle of religious sanctuary, a holdover from the Middle Ages, has no standing in American law. Nevertheless, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took no action against Miss Arellano, perhaps fearing there would be bad press if they raided a church.

Miss Arellano wasn’t exactly cowering in fear inside her “sanctuary.” Undoubtedly coached by Rev. Coleman’s wife, Emma Lozano, the director of an immigration pressure group called Centro Sin Fronteras, Miss Arellano conducted several press conferences. On August 15, the anniversary of the day she came to the church, she announced she would go to Congress to testify about illegal immigrants. In her statement, she blamed the United States for making her come: “I came because of what NAFTA and other US economic policies had done to my country in which I could no longer find work that paid a living wage.”

Instead of heading straight for Washington, Miss Arellano left Chicago by car on August 17, for Los Angeles, where she spoke at a rally for illegal aliens. On August 19, ICE agents arrested her outside of Our Lady Queen of Angels church and deported her to Tijuana. At first her son stayed in the United States, but has since flown to Mexico to be with his mother.

We haven’t heard the last of Elvira Arellano, who is now being compared by the pro-illegals to Rosa Parks. She says she intends to continue to fight against US immigration law. “She’ll be organizing on the Mexican side of the border while we’re organizing in the States,” says Rev. Coleman.

Miss Arellano is already a hero in Mexico. On August 22, a Senate committee voted to urge President Felipe Calderon to send a diplomatic note to the United States protesting her deportation. In late August Miss Arellano even met President Calderon. “What I’m asking for is a diplomatic visa so that I can be an ambassador for peace and justice because I’m not a terrorist and the United States can’t continue treating undocumented migrants as terrorists,” she explained.

President Calderon has asked the foreign ministry to look into this, and he even mentioned Elvira Arellano in his annual state of the nation address delivered on September first. “I want to express again an energetic protest at the unilateral measures taken by the US Congress and government which exacerbate the persecution and abusive treatment of undocumented Mexican work,” he said, and repeated “the categorical rejection of the building of a wall on our common border.” [Illegal Immigrant Deported after Leaving Church, AP, Aug. 20, 2007. Istra Pacheco, Mexican Senate Takes Up Cause of Mother Deported from United States, AP, Aug. 23, 2007. Deported Mexican Migrant Mom Asks Mexican President to Return to US as Peace Ambassador, AP, Aug. 28, 2007. Mexico’s Calderon Protests US Crackdown on Immigrants, Reuters, September 2, 2007.]

Too Few Whites

In late August, the Civil Rights Project of the University of California at Los Angeles issued a report claiming that the June Supreme Court decision limiting the power of school administrators to assign students by race threatens to increase school segregation. It says the US risks becoming a nation in which the coming non-white majority (non-whites now make up more than 40 percent of all school children) will suffer in “separate and inferior” schools. “Resegregation . . . is continuing to grow in all parts of the country for both African Americans and Latinos and is accelerating the most rapidly in the only region that had been highly desegregated — the South.” The report also warns that this will damage the US economy by shortchanging non-whites. Hispanics, the fastest-growing segment of the population, will suffer the most: “Too often Latino students face triple segregation by race, class and language.”

Interestingly, the report doesn’t blame “racism” for any of this. The main culprit is the rapidly growing number of blacks and Hispanics, and the decrease in the number of white children, thanks to the post-“baby boom” generation’s preference for smaller families. There just aren’t enough white children to spread around anymore. [Matthew Bigg, Segregation in Schools is Increasing: Report, Reuters, Aug. 29, 2007.]

Death in Black and White

According to a new study from the Public Policy Institute of California, white men in California can expect to live an average of seven years longer than black men: 75.5 years, compared to 68.6 years. Differences in heart disease and homicide rates account for much of the gap. Homicide is the sixth leading killer of black men but only the 20th for whites. White women live, on average, five years longer than black women, in large part due to higher black rates of diabetes and stroke. Asians and Hispanics in California live longer than whites. Among Californians of all races, heart disease, cancer and strokes were the three leading causes of death, except for Hispanic men, for whom accidents are the number three cause of death. Accidents are the fourth leading cause for black men.

Hispanics live considerably longer than blacks, despite similar levels of poverty. Experts believe this may be because immigrants ate less junk food and were less sedentary in their native countries, before they came to the United States. Better health among Hispanics tends to disappear in the second generation.

The “legacy of racism” rather than genetics or differences in behavior is the first explanation some health experts give for mortality differences between whites and blacks. Dr. Robert Ross, president of the California Endowment, a private foundation that works to improve the health of poor people, says racism is part of “a pretty complicated soufflé” that includes poverty, education and “health issues.”

The differences in life expectancies between white and black men in California are greatest at younger ages, because many of the leading causes of deaths for blacks — homicide, accidents, and AIDS (the eighth leading cause) — kill at younger ages. Once black men turn twenty-five, the life expectancy gap shrinks to 5.6 years compared to seven years at birth.

Whites have always had higher life expectancies than blacks. In 1900, the nationwide average for whites was 47.3 years, compared to 33 years for blacks, for a gap of 14.3 years. By 2003 the national gap had narrowed to 5.3 years. [Mary Engel, Study Finds Whites Still Outlive Blacks, Los Angles Times, Aug. 30, 2007.]

Unpardonable

Gabriel Prosser was a black slave who led an abortive slave revolt in 1800 known as Gabriel’s Rebellion. The plot was discovered when two slaves revealed plans of the uprising to authorities in Richmond, Virginia. Prosser (he had no official surname, and is referred to by that of his master, Thomas Prosser), along with 34 of his co-conspirators, was hanged on August 30, 1800. He had ambitious plans: he intended to capture Virginia governor (and future US president) James Monroe, negotiate an end to slavery, and “drink and dine with the merchants” of Richmond. Prosser expected to kill whites, although he told his followers to spare Methodists, Quakers and Frenchmen. One of Prosser’s two white co-conspirators was French, a fact kept secret at the time. (The plot occurred during the so-called Quasi War with France, and Thomas Jefferson, a French sympathizer running for president, allegedly had Monroe suppress knowledge of French involvement.)

In August 2007, Virginia governor Timothy Kaine issued an informal pardon to Gabriel Prosser, would-be murderer. In a letter to the NAACP, Gov. Kaine wrote that Prosser was motivated by “his devotion to the ideals of the American revolution.” “Gabriel’s cause — the end of slavery and the furtherance of equality of all people,” he continued, “has prevailed in the light of history. It is important to acknowledge that history favorably regards Gabriel’s cause while consigning legions who sought to keep him and others in chains to be forgotten.”

Virginia NAACP official King Salim Khalfani says the governor’s action properly honors Prosser and his followers as “women and men of integrity who fought for freedom,” adding, “In the capital of the Confederacy, where monuments to the traitors of the Union are maintained with tax dollars, this is a momentous occasion.” [Virginia Governor ‘Pardons’ Slave Who Was Hanged for Leading Gabriel’s Rebellion in 1800, AP, Aug. 31, 2007.]

Taylor in Lansing

On August 4, AR editor Jared Taylor spoke at a Council of Conservative Citizens meeting held in Lansing, Michigan. He spoke about the cover up of the murder of Laura Dickinson, a white woman who was killed by a black student at Eastern Michigan University last December. For months, the administration told no one about the murder, not even Miss Dickinson’s parents, who were led to believe their daughter had died of a previously diagnosed heart condition. When the truth came out, the president of the university, John Fallon, was fired along with several other top officials. Mr. Taylor spoke about the lessons to be learned from this case as well as from other high-profile — and not so high-profile — interracial murders.

Mr. Taylor was followed by Canadian immigration and free speech activist Paul Fromm, who gave an excellent talk on recent developments in his country. Afterwards, both speakers had lively discussions with an appreciative and welcoming audience. The meeting was hosted by John Raterink of the Michigan Council of Conservative Citizens.

Blacks and Herpes

During the 1990s, the federal government found that 21 percent of Americans had herpes, but 48 percent of blacks had the virus. A more recent survey found the figure is down to 17 percent for the general population, but there is no change among blacks.

GlaxoSmith-Kline, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures the herpes drug Valtrex, has started an advertising campaign aimed at blacks. Called “Say Yes to Knowing” the campaign urges blacks to be tested. It features print and radio ads, with the radio ad copy reading in part, “Nearly one in two African-American adults has genital herpes. Could it be you? Could it be your partner? . . . A simple blood test is the best way to know if you have it.” The ads are running in heavily-black Atlanta, Baltimore and Detroit. They are co-sponsored by the National Medical Association, a society of black doctors, and the American Social Health Foundation, which fights venereal disease. Herpes cannot be cured, but Valtrex reduces the duration and severity of outbreaks, and makes the disease harder to give to others.

Critics say there is no need to conduct large scale testing on people who do not show symptoms, and accuse GlaxoSmithKline of using scare tactics to drum up sales of the medicine, which costs $192.88 per month. Others say the ads insult blacks. The Baltimore commissioner of public health refused to support the campaign, but Anita Moncrease, a doctor and consultant to the Detroit Health Department, supports it. “I am concerned about the negative connotations because this is a sexually transmitted disease,” says Dr. Moncrease, who is black, “but I am concerned about the public health of the citizens of Detroit even more.” [David Brown, Ads Urging Herpes Test Target Black Community, Philadelphia Inquirer, July 30, 2007.]

‘White Males Wake Up’

Retired CNN anchorman Bernard Shaw, 67, recently received a lifetime achievement award from the National Association of Black Journalists at Bally’s hotel in Las Vegas. In his acceptance speech he said: “Beyond this ballroom tonight, white males wake up. Globally, you are an island speck in an ocean of color. The reins of power will weaken and so will your grip — if you do not faithfully support our nation’s greatest strength, diversity.” [David Paulin, Former CNN Anchor Bernard Shaw has a ‘Don Imus’ Moment at a Convention of Black Journalists, www.BigCarnival. Blogspot.com, Aug. 28, 2007.]

Homicide Rate Up

In the 1970s, 29 percent of the people murdered in Philadelphia were black men aged 15 to 29. Now that group accounts for 50 percent of murder victims, with approximately one in 66 being killed every year. The Philadelphia Inquirer notes that gun killings rose 25 percent from 2003 to 2006, “fueled mostly by young black males shooting other young black males.” Fifteen years ago, 23 percent of all black men in Philadelphia were either in prison, awaiting trial, on probation, or on parole. Today, that figure is 30 percent.

The Inquirer, admits that the rise in killings “is not a white problem,” adding, “The number of homicides among whites has remained fairly stable for 25 years, despite yearly variations.” [Tom Ferrick, Jr., A Generation at War with Itself, Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 29, 2007.]

Best Cities for Blacks

Black Enterprise magazine, which claims a circulation of 3.9 million readers, has recently published a list of the “top 10 ‘best’ cities” for blacks to “live, work, and play.” Here they are:

1. Washington, DC
2. Atlanta, Georgia
3. Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
4. Houston, Texas
5. Nashville, Tennessee
6. Dallas, Texas
7. Charlotte, North Carolina
8. Indianapolis, Indiana
9. Columbus, Ohio
10. Jacksonville, Florida

[Sherri Williams and Tracy Turner, Columbus is Magazine’s No. 9 Best City for Blacks, Columbus Dispatch, April 26, 2007.]

De Facto Amnesty

According to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, the US Department of Justice prosecuted only two percent of illegal aliens caught trying to cross the US-Mexican border between October 1, 2000 and September 30, 2005. This means the authorities escorted no fewer than 5.2 million illegals back across the border and released them. According to a recent Department of Justice memorandum, in Texas, most illegal border jumpers have to be caught at least six times before their cases will even be referred for prosecutors. [Alicia A. Caldwell, Prosecution Negligible for Illegal Immigrants, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 7, 2007.]

Blue-Eyed Advantage?

A recent study by University of Louisville professor emeritus Joanna Rowe suggests that people with blue eyes are likely to achieve more in life intellectually and academically than people with brown eyes. Prof. Rowe also found that lighter-eyed test subjects were generally more successful at planning and time management and were better strategic thinkers. Brown-eyed people were better at tasks involving reaction time. Prof. Rowe had no explanation for what she found. “It is just observed, rather than explained,” she said. Press accounts did not say whether Prof. Rowe’s subjects were all white or were a mix of races. [Ben Clerkin, Why Blue-eyed Boys (and Girls) are so Brilliant, Daily Mail (London), Aug. 20, 2007.]

Prof. Rowe’s research confirms work published by Morgan Worthy in his 1974 book, Eye Color, Sex, and Race, in which he found behavioral differences related to eye color in animals as well as people.

Sensible Swiss

The Swiss People’s Party, the largest party in Switzerland, wants to get tough on young criminal aliens. It is pushing for a referendum on a proposal to deport the families of immigrant minors convicted of violent crimes, drug offenses or welfare fraud. The poster for the campaign is explicit: three white sheep kicking out a black sheep over a caption reading, “for more security.” “As soon as the first ten families and their children have been expelled from the country, things will get better at a stroke,” explains Ueli Maurer, People’s Party president. “We believe parents are responsible for bringing up their children. If they can’t do it properly, they will have to bear the consequences.”

Critics liken the campaign to “Sippenhaft” or kin liability, according to which the Nazis are said to have held the relatives of criminals responsible for their crimes. “This way of thinking shows an obvious ‘blood and soil’ mentality,” sniffs an editorial in the Zurich newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. Others say the policy is similar to those enacted by Stalin and Mao to punish opponents. Despite the hyperventilation of the critics, there has been little negative reaction to the posters from the Swiss public. “We haven’t had any complaints,” says Mr. Maurer.

The People’s Party has used racial imagery to win political victories in the past. In 2004, the party successfully campaigned for tougher immigration laws using a poster that featured a picture of dark hands reaching into a box filled with Swiss passports.

The People’s Party is working on several other proposals. It wants to ban the construction of minaret towers on mosques and Justice Minister Christoph Blocher, the highest-ranking party official in the Swiss government, says he wants to “soften” anti-racism laws because they infringe on freedom of speech. [Frank Jordans, Swiss Deportation Policy Draws Criticism, AP, September 1, 2007.]

Stalin Would be Proud

You would think an organization with nearly $200 million in the bank and a budget of close to $30 million could do something right — not the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

On August 21, commentator Patrick Buchanan quoted a few statistics from the New Century Foundation study, The Color of Crime, in his syndicated column, which also appeared on the VDARE.com web site. He noted, for example, that blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks, and that they are seven times more likely than other Americans to commit murder.

This is just the sort of thing the SPLC doesn’t want you to know, and one of its writers named Heidi Beirich went right to work, trying to keep anyone else from quoting The Color of Crime ever again. Did she try to prove that blacks do not commit more violent crime against whites than blacks? Or that they are not more likely than other groups to commit murder? Of course not; the facts can’t be refuted. Instead she screamed that the New Century Foundation is “white supremacist,” and that our publications and research are racist, racist, racist, racist. (She can’t say the word often enough — she used it, on average, every 85th word.)

Just how racist are we? Miss Beirich cited American Renaissance: “A 2002 article, for instance, argued that blacks are inherently pathological, suffering from a ‘personality disorder of which the central feature is lack of a moral sense.’”

What did we actually say? The complete sentence — written by Professor Richard Lynn, emeritus of the University of Ulster — was not about blacks: “Psychopathic personality is a personality disorder of which the central feature is lack of a moral sense.” He then pointed out that in the 65 years since the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) has been in use, blacks have consistently scored higher than whites on psychopathic personality, while Asians have scored lower.

These are the scientific facts Miss Beirich twisted to make it sound as if Prof. Lynn thinks all blacks are “inherently pathological.” No wonder her article posted on the Internet included live links to other sources, but not to Prof. Lynn. She wouldn’t want her readers to know what he really said.

Even more extraordinary was Miss Beirich’s attempt to explain how The Color of Crime got things wrong. An article in the SPLC’s very own “Intelligence Report,” she claimed, soundly refuted it. The article is seven years old. Our research was published in 2005. Even with $30 million a year you can’t refute studies that have not yet been written.

Miss Beirich went on with the SPLC’s usual hash of distortion, smear, and guilt-by-association — throwing in “racist” every 85 words — as she tried to scare Mr. Buchanan away from facts she doesn’t want Americans to hear. That won’t work, of course, because Mr. Buchanan cares about the truth, not about the SPLC’s dishonest yapping.

Miss Beirich hopes that others may not be made of the same stuff as Mr. Buchanan, that they will be scared off at the thought she might blast them with her favorite word. For that is the SPLC’s mission: suppress facts, shout down opponents, stamp out dissent, demonize anyone who disagrees. Stalin was good at this. So was Mao. It’s what people do when they have neither facts nor morals.

Another Persecution

Membership in the British National Party, while still legal in Britain, may be hazardous for one’s career. Peter Phillips’s candidacy for the presidency of the Royal Institute of British Architects was derailed in 2006 when his party membership was revealed in the press (he still got 17 percent of the vote in a three-way race). Most AR readers recall the case of Simone Clarke, the “BNP Ballerina” who endured weeks of bad press, protests, and an organized campaign to get her fired from the English National Ballet when her party membership became public in December 2006 (she is still dancing).

The latest victim is Mark Walker, a 36-year-old instructor at Sunnydale Community College in County Durham, England. The school suspended Mr. Walker for “misusing” school equipment: He logged onto the BNP web site on an office computer. Mr. Walker and the BNP claim the suspension, and a series of “harrowing” investigative meetings that followed, are retaliation for Mr. Walker’s membership in the party (he stood as a candidate in a local election) and his open criticism of Labour. “We are certain this action would not have been taken against someone who had looked at the websites of the Commission for Racial Equality or the Green Party,” says BNP spokesman Phil Edwards.

The school says otherwise. “We are happy to state categorically that Mr. Walker has not been suspended because of any political affiliations he may hold,” says Headmistress Sue Byrne. She would not elaborate on the reason for the suspension, citing “privacy concerns.”

More than 50 supporters of Mr. Walker protested outside the school on September 3. BNP Chairman Nick Griffin urges anyone interested in helping Mr. Walker to contact Miss Byrne at general@sunnydaleschool.co.uk. [Demo Over BNP Teacher Suspension, BBC, September 3, 2007. Caroline Smith, School Picket for Right-Wing Leader, Sunday Sun (Newcastle), September 2, 2007. Matt Weaver, BNP Member Fails in Riba Presidency Bid, Guardian (London), July 26, 2006.]

‘White Gold’

Nigeria is Africa’s largest producer of crude oil, but Nigerians do not know how to pump their own oil. Westerners get the oil out of the ground and are also a source of revenue for Nigerian gangs and regime opponents. Kidnapping “white gold,” as the oil men are called, is big business. More than 150 have been snatched so far this year, double the total for all of last year. These unexpected staff cuts have reduced Nigerian oil production by 25 percent, contributing to the rise in oil prices.

Government officials have found a way to cash in. They often act as mediators between the kidnappers and the oil companies’ hostage negotiators and like to take a cut of the ransom. “Practically everyone involved in hostage negotiations has had his hands soiled,” says a member of the rebel group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which is, itself, responsible for many high-profile kidnappings. “Officials merely up the demands of the abductors and keep the rest to themselves, most times unknown to the abductors.” In one instance, members of the Nigerian security forces threatened to kill a Westerner if he told anyone that middlemen had siphoned off part of the ransom.

The business is growing; there were five kidnappings in the first two weeks of July alone: a three-year-old British girl, an adult Briton, two New Zealanders, an Australian, a Venezuelan, and a Lebanese. All were released unharmed.

Oil workers now travel in heavily armed convoys, with sirens blaring. When you hear the sound, says a local, it means, “Ah, the whites are coming. It’s like ice cream vans in a [Western] country.” [Katherine Houreld, Kidnap Gangs Target ‘White Gold,’ Scotsman (Glasgow), July 13, 2007.]

Novel Solution

In the small Himalayan nation of Nepal, which borders India and China, it is common to sacrifice animals to appease Hindu gods. When something went wrong with one of the state-run airline’s two Boeing 757s, airline officials sacrificed two goats to Akash Bhairab, the sky god. The ceremony, carried out on September 2 at the international airport in Kathmandu, appears to have worked. Says Raju K.C, a senior airline official, “The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights.” [Airline Sacrifices Goats to Appease Sky God, Reuters, September 5, 2007.]

In the Jeans

We reprint the following item verbatim and in toto:

“In Congo, which has lost an estimated 4 million people in the civil wars of the last decade and where many must get by on about 30 cents a day, ‘gangs’ of designer-clothes-wearing men periodically square off against each other in preening contests in the streets of Kinshasa to prove that Versace and Gucci look better on them than on others. Papy Mosengo, 30 (interviewed for a November 2006 Los Angeles Times report), still lives with his parents, sleeps in a dingy, closet-sized room, and leaves the child-care expenses to his ex-girlfriend, but he owns 30 top-of –the-line outfits and spends $400 monthly on clothes. Said he, ‘This is just what I am.’ (The ‘cloth cults’ of Congo are said to have been around since the 1970s.)” [Cultural Diversity, Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird, July 5, 2007.]

Like Father, Like Son

Falsal Wangita, 25, is one of the 43 children of the late Ugandan tyrant, Idi Amin. He now lives in England, where he has racked up a string of convictions as leader of a gang known as the “North London Somalis.” On January 28, 2006, up to 40 North London Somalis surrounded “engineering student” Mahir Osman, 18, and stabbed him to death with 21 knife wounds. The victim was a member of a rival Somali gang, the “Centric Boys.” Closed circuit video recorded the murder as Mr. Wangita and his pals surrounded their quarry, shouting “Stab him through the heart.” At his murder trial in August, Mr. Wangita was convicted of “violent disorder” and “conspiracy to wound,” and was sentenced to five years in prison. His father killed an alleged 400,000 people, so Mr. Wangita is not yet in his league.

Mr. Wangita’s mother, Idi Amin’s fifth wife, is said to be Sarah Kyolaba Amin, now 52. She met Amin while she was a go-go dancer known as “Suicide Sarah,” attached to an Ugandan military unit called the “Revolutionary Suicide Mechanised Regiment Band.” Mrs. Amin left her husband in 1982, claimed asylum in Germany, and then moved to England. When Idi Amin died in August of 2003, she was running a cafe in East London, serving African dishes like goat stew and cow hoof in gravy. [Steve Bird, Idi Amin’s Son was Leader of London Gang that Stabbed Teenager to Death in Street, Times (London), Aug. 4, 2007.]

i.beat.Blaxx

German electronics manufacturer TrekStor recently introduced a new model of MP3 player, to which, in all innocence, it gave the name “i.beat.Blaxx.” Daniel Szmigiel, executive director of TrekStor, claimed that the new i.beat.Blaxx “precisely reflects the desires of the young, trend-conscious target group we are aiming for,” adding that the new player was ideal for “those who wish to do a lot more with their MP3 players than just listen to music.” When English speakers complained, TrekStor quickly changed the name to “Blaxx.” [Stuart Miles, Pocket-Lint — Gadget News & Reviews, www.Pocket-Lint.co.uk, www.AdRants.com, Aug. 27, 2007.]

Suffer the Little Children

According to New Zealand police statistics, Maoris are two to five times more likely than whites to beat or torture children. Liz Segedin, a doctor at Starship Hospital for children in Auckland, says at least one child a month is admitted with brain injuries.

In June, Maori Chris Kahui was arrested for bludgeoning to death his three-month-old twin sons. In July, police arrested four Maoris in the case Nia Glassie, who was hung on a clothesline and spun in an electric dryer. The child’s other relatives usually know about abuse, but Maoris like to solve problems without going to the police.

Maori are worse off than white New Zealanders by nearly every social indicator: They are more likely to be poor, uneducated, unemployed, on welfare, or alcoholic. Experts say this is what makes them beat their children.

Prime minister Helen Clark, whose government depends on Maori support, denies that Maoris hurt children more than whites. “It occurs in all communities,” she says. Peter Dunne, leader of the United Future Party, sees it differently. “It’s time to stop pretending that the kind of child abuse suffered by Nia Glassie and the Kahui twins is not a Maori problem,” he says. “Within some of the families, there is a culture of cover-up and collaboration that condones long-term child abuse.” [Child Abuse Claims Raise Queries about Maori Culture, Independent (London), July 31, 2007.]

Liberal Going Illiberal?

Hispanics are changing the face — and the thinking — of a small farming town named Liberal, which is in the heart of the first county in Kansas to become majority Hispanic. Seward County became officially 51 percent Hispanic in 2006; most people in Liberal, population 20,000, seem to think it is 60-70 percent Hispanic, and that most are illegal immigrants.

The school district’s 4,325 students are now 67 percent Hispanic and the police force is desperate for interpreters. In the early evening, downtown Liberal throngs with Mexicans pushing three-wheeled carts adorned with bells, hawking Mexican-style popsicles known as paletas. “The scene looks like one out of Mexico,” writes The Wichita Eagle.

This is a big change for a town that has a Yellow Brick Road and an annual pancake race, and is proud of its Norman Rockwell image. Jesse Russell, 65, a former Liberal High School quarterback, doesn’t like it. “The town went from being a clean town to a filthy town,” he says, and adds that people must buy extra insurance because of uninsured Hispanic drivers. “This ain’t the town I grew up in,” he says, and he would like it back. His plan? “We spend $10 billion on Iraq,” he says. “We should spend $10 billion sending them home.” [Brent D. Wistrom, Hispanic Influx Gives Liberal, Kan., a New Face, The Wichita Eagle, September 2, 2007.]

Judge Stops Crackdown

Many illegal aliens steal social security numbers from American citizens to get work. The Social Security Administration planned to stop this fraud by sending letters to the public to check the identities of social security card holders. The plan, ordered by Homeland Security, was to use the social security database to cross-reference authentic social security number identities with the people who were actually using the numbers.

Before the government could mail its letters, the AFL-CIO, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued to stop it. The suit claims Homeland Security is exceeding its authority to enforce immigration laws and is illegally misusing the Social Security Administration’s database. The AFL-CIO further claims that the verification letters will pressure businesses to fire workers whose documents are flagged, and that this could expose many immigrants — including legal residents — to job discrimination.

On August 31, a federal judge in San Francisco, ordered the government not to send out the letters until she hears arguments on October 1. In the meantime, Homeland Security must forego the help of the Social Security Administration. [Spencer S. Hsu, Immigrant Crackdown Halted: Judge Delays D.H.S. Plan to Check Social Security Numbers, Washington Post,September 1, 2007.]

Robots to the Rescue

According to the US Department of Labor, more than half of all farm workers are illegal aliens. In California alone, which produces half of the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables, there are hundreds of thousands of illegal-alien farm hands. California farmers claim that without them, produce would rot in the fields or they would have to pay legal workers astronomical wages. Agricultural interests adamantly oppose increased border security or crackdowns on illegal aliens.

A simple solution would be mechanization, but farmers and growers claim it is too expensive and does not work on delicate crops. Recent advances in robotics may put an end to this claim.

A new generation of harvesters has robotic arms and digits that use computers and hydraulics to operate with near-human sensitivity. They use state-of-the-art mapping and imaging to recognize and sort fruits and vegetables, and should soon even be able to judge ripeness.

“The technology is maturing just at the right time to allow us to do this kind of work economically,” says Derek Morikawa, of San Diego-based Vision Robotics. His company is working with the California Citrus Research Board and Washington State Apple Commission to develop an advanced fruit picker, which he believes will sell for about $500,000.

Others are working to develop a machine to harvest premium grapes, which still have to be picked by hand. A company called Ramsay Highlander already sells machines that partially automate lettuce picking, and is working on a new model that picks, cleans, cores and packs lettuce and other greens. [Jacob Adelman, Robots May Become Essential on US Farms, AP, September 6, 2007.]

A harvesting machine has never been known to produce an anchor baby.

Lessons from Herndon

Like many American cities, Herndon, Virginia had a problem with Hispanic day laborers congregating on street corners looking for work. During the first half of 2005, the town — located just 25 miles west of Washington, DC — went through a bitter debate over whether to build a hiring hall to keep these men off the streets. Opponents argued that this would be implicit approval of illegal workers, but in August 2005, the town council voted to build the Herndon Official Workers’ Center. The council later made it illegal for people to hire workers anywhere but in the center.

The people of Herndon were furious over what they saw as a capitulation to illegals, and took revenge in the next year’s elections. They tossed out all but one of the five city councilors who had voted for the hiring hall — including the mayor — and replaced them with candidates who had campaigned on a crackdown on hiring illegals.

The new mayor, political newcomer Stephen DeBenedittis, had promised to make sure only legal workers used the hiring center, and Herndon tried to find an organization that would check papers and turn away illegals. Amazingly, the city could not find a single site operator willing to enforce the law.

In the meantime, a man who broke Herndon’s ordinance by hiring a laborer in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven rather than in the hiring hall sued to overturn the ordinance. In August 2007, Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Leslie Alden ruled that the First Amendment permits people to discuss employment wherever they like, so Herndon could not restrict hiring transactions to the hiring hall. Worse, the judge said the city had no right to keep illegals out of the hall.

Mayor DeBenedittis and his town council were in a fix. They could no longer restrict hiring to the hall, nor could they keep illegals out of it. On September 5, 2007, the mayor announced the city would shut down the labor center rather than let illegals use it. Thanks to a meddling judge, the city is now right back where it was, with gangs of men hanging out on street corners looking for work. Mr. DeBenedittis promises he will use zoning and traffic laws to keep order. [Bill Turque and Nikita Stewart, Labor Site Backlash Felt at Polls in Herndon: Three Who Supported Immigrant Center Ousted, Washington Post, May 3, 2006. Bill Turque, Anti-Solicitation Law Challenged, Washington Post, January 7, 2007. Bill Turque, Herndon to Shut Down Center for Day Laborers, Washington Post, September 6, 2007.]

Herndon’s experience has been instructive. First, government flouted the will of the people and made it easy for illegals to find work. The people elected a new government to undo the damage. Now a judge has again thwarted the will of the people.

LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — I take exception to only two sentences from Thomas Jackson’s September review of Walter Laqueur’s The Last Days of Europe. To wit: “A small number of Third Worlders [in Europe] identify completely with the West. By all means let them stay [in Europe], but the rest should be encouraged to leave.”

Why should any non-whites be allowed to stay in Europe, whether they identify with the West or not? How is that in the interests of Europeans? And what are they identifying with? The interests of Europeans are, above all, in their continued possession of their native countries, whereas the presence of non-whites harms these interests. Genuine identification with the interests of Europeans would require non-whites to leave Europe voluntarily and return it to its rightful owners.

Since when has “identification with the West” been grounds to admit non-whites into our gene pool? I suppose the Sidney Poitier character in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner “identified with the West” — at least he behaved as if he did. Does that mean Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn were right to accept him as the husband of their daughter and father of their grandchildren-to-be? Allowing non-whites to stay in Europe means accepting them into the European gene pool.

Non-whites now average around 10 percent of the population in most of Western Europe, and their proportion of births is around double this. If “identification with the West” became the standard for allowing them to stay, the great majority would claim such identification, and most would sincerely believe they were telling the truth.

And good luck with “encouraging” any of them to leave voluntarily. The encouragement would have to be enough to set them up as veritable potentates for life before any measurable fraction would find it sufficient, and even then the number leaving would be much less than the natural increase.

Richard McCulloch

Sir — Your September article “Equality Essentials and Jane Elliott” reminded me of an incident 30 years ago, when I worked for a company in Manhattan. In a different office worked a black man with whom I had no professional or social contact. Inexplicably, one day he came to my desk, sat down, stared for a minute or two, and said: “Ann, when I die and am reborn, I don’t want to be rich or famous or both. I want to be born white.” Realizing that this statement from a virtual stranger deserved a reply, I answered: “You are still a young man (he was about 35) so you have a long way to go, but if you get your wish, you may bitterly regret it. By then your people will have huge advantages and my people will be pushed around.” I saw the beginnings of it 30 years ago.

Three weeks later that man died by falling from a window during a wild party somewhere in New York City.

A. McAuley, Ridgefield, Conn.

Sir — France has been a disappointing “ally” in our fight with terrorism, and now you report without comment in your August issue that French law requires “a balance of male and female candidates” in the National Assembly! No wonder they have problems with socialism and everything else! I think of French women as feminine, so was surprised at this androgynous lapse into Marxist craziness. And then Frederic Legrand tells us that “conservative” hero, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has forced his daughter onto the country as the new, presumably “conservative” leader! This is conservatism?

W. Edward Chynoweth, Sanger, Cal.

Sir — No doubt the film “300” is technically well made and conveys a strong racial message. However, I have misgivings about this film. Having already gotten us into a costly and frustrating war in Iraq, US leaders are giving signals that they intend to attack Iran. What better way to prepare the American public than to release a major film glorifying past wars with Persia?

There is a group of policy advisers, known as the neoconservatives, who urged President Bush to attack Iraq and who are now agitating for action against Iran. Their influence extends to the media and, quite possibly, to Hollywood. My conspiratorial suspicions are that the makers of this film may have been willing to serve the neocon political agenda.

William McGaughey, Minneapolis, Minn.

Sir — Both the cover story and the book review in the September issue make the same point: Mainstream authors (Robert Putnam and Walter Lacqueur) recognize the terrible costs of diversity but claim it is ultimately a good thing anyway. It is impossible not to wonder what these men really think. How can they report the data they do and not realize that diversity has been a calamity for white people?

I try to avoid attributing devious motives to others. It is hard enough fully to know our own motives, much less those of strangers. And yet, when intelligent people take positions so contrary to facts they admit to be true, there is a strong temptation to assume they understand the implications of those facts and are lying when they claim otherwise.

Or is it that the thought of becoming a complete dissident and subversive is so terrifying that they genuinely lose the ability to think? Perhaps to say outright that America is committing suicide would require too grievous a renunciation of respectability.

Sarah Wentworth, Richmond, Va.

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