O Tempora, O Mores! (March, 1991)

The Yahweh Sect

Hulon Mitchell, known to his followers as Yahweh Ben Yaweh, is the leader of an anti-white “religious” group, known as the Yahweh sect. One of the practices of the Miami-based group has been for members to murder “white devils,” cut off their ears, and present them to Mr. Mitchell as proof of work well done.

In the last several years, there have been at least seven such murders that appear to have been done by the Yahweh sect, but Miami police have gotten convictions on only two. In one, the murderer testified under oath that he had been ordered by Mr. Mitchell to kill a white person at random and bring back his ear as proof. Besides the deaths of the seven whites, the sect appears to have been responsible for killing at least seven black “traitors.” Most of these murders are also unsolved.

Mr. Mitchell, who has been held without bail in connection with these and other killings since November 7, 1990, went before the court in January of this year to ask that he be allowed to post bail. The prosecution, arguing that he is a dangerous man, played a recording of one of Mr. Mitchell’s sermons, in which he talked about the killing of a “traitor” he would like to see done:

I want to see your head come off, personally. I want to see the blood seep from your veins. You know, the jugular vein . . . I can’t wait to see that. What pleasure. All my enemies killed with the sword. Boy, that’s great. You can live forever if you accept me as Yaweh Ben Yaweh.

Mr. Mitchell is being defended by Alcee Hastings, who was Florida’s first black federal judge. Judge Hastings was impeached for bribery charges and removed from the bench by the U.S. Senate in 1989. Black supporters claim to have detected nothing but racism in the proceedings.

Although Florida prosecutors have finally gotten around to making a case against Mr. Mitchell, the police have been hesitant to go after the Yahweh sect. They have not pursued the known accomplices in the killings on which they have already gotten convictions, and have shown little interest in the ones that are still unsolved. According to newspaper reports, they are afraid that vigorous prosecution would bring down charges of racial and religious persecution.

That the police in any American city should be afraid to prosecute murderers for fear that their motives may be criticized is chilling evidence of how paralyzed America has become by distorted racial thinking. The silence the national media have kept on these killings is in spectacular contrast to the coast-to-coast trumpeting of the news whenever a white person kills a black for what may appear to be racial reasons.

AR has learned a few details about these killings only from local clippings that readers have kindly mailed to us. But even the Miami papers have written in great detail about the killings of black “traitors,” while they pass with squeamish brevity over the deaths of whites whose ears were carved off as trophies. It is not hard to imagine the frenzy of press coverage that would follow the discovery of a white sect that engaged in ritual murder of blacks.

Our 51st State?

Which ethnic group in New York City is most likely to have AIDS? If you guessed blacks, you’re wrong. Three hundred sixty-two Puerto Rican men out of every 100,000 have AIDS, while the number for blacks is 267 and the number for whites is 182.

The island that may soon be our 51st state is, in fact, something of an AIDS hotbed. It has a higher rate of new cases, at 47 per 100,000 population, than any state in the union. New York comes second with 39, and the national average is 15. The only city in America that gets new AIDS cases at a faster clip than San Juan is San Francisco. And only Washington, D.C. has a higher overall rate of infection (81 per 100,000 population, as opposed to 48 per 100,000). Puerto Rican blood donors are 27 times more likely to be carrying the AIDS virus than are donors in the rest of the country (Seattle Times, 6/21/90; New York Times, 6/15/90).

AIDS in Puerto Rico has some distinctive twists. Two out of every three Puerto Rican AIDS patients is said to be a needle user, but homosexuality is so despised among the islanders that the numbers could be off. Some homosexuals claim to be drug users rather than confess to anything other than the macho norm. Medical treatment is also skimpy in Puerto Rico, because there is a cap on federal Medicaid spending. A great many AIDS patients therefore take the plane to New York, where they get unlimited Medicaid.

There have always been excellent reasons to grant independence to Puerto Rico and send it on its way. Seventy percent of the population is on the equivalent of welfare, food stamps are a second currency, and no one pays federal income tax. Even so, per capita income is only 40 percent of that of our poorest state, Mississippi. If, as seems likely, we turn Puerto Rico into the 51st state, it appears that along with 5 million Hispanics we will be getting a tropical AIDS incubator.

Africans Seek Reparations

Ibrahim Babangida, the president of Nigeria, has called on the white nations of the world to compensate Africa for having enslaved blacks. He says that before Europeans came along and captured “young, virile Africans,” his continent was almost as developed as Europe.

Mr. Babangida got it wrong. Before contact with Europeans or Arabs, no African people domesticated an animal, built a two-story building or a mechanical device, invented the wheel, figured out the calendar, or even developed writing. One of the most ridiculous myths now circulating about Africa is that it was on the verge of discovering science and technology, but that Europeans somehow nipped the process in the bud.

Furthermore, Africans were enslaving each other long before white people showed up. In fact, virtually every African slave shipped overseas was first captured by other Africans and then sold to Europeans. Africans also continued to practice slavery long after it was abolished elsewhere. Between the two world wars, the League of Nations censured Liberia for slavery.

Finally, many Africans would not mind very much if their ancestors had been slaves, since it would mean that they might now be living in the United States. As any American consular officer in Lagos will tell you, a move to America is the dream of many a Nigerian.

Racial Killings That Don’t Make the News

Christopher Peterson is a black man who has been AWOL from the Marines since last July. He was recently picked up in connection with the shotgun killings of seven white people. He told police that he killed them because of “a deep-rooted hatred for white people.”

Perhaps you hadn’t heard of Christopher Peterson. The same media that go into a frenzy when whites mistreat blacks for racial reasons lapses into something close to silence when blacks commit openly racial crimes.

Hispanics Stick Together

Hialeah, a town near Miami, has an acting mayor named Julio Martinez and a police chief named Rolando Bolaos. Both are Cuban. Mayor Martinez has accused Police Chief Bolaos of abusing his power and wasting tax money by passing out overtime to cronies, but he promises not to fire him. “He’s the only Cuban chief of police in the United States that I know of,” says Mr. Martinez. “I respect my raza [race] too much to hurt him.”

Curious doings. It is impossible to imagine a white mayor publicly protecting a suspect white official with the explanation that he had too much respect for his race — not if the mayor wanted to keep his job. Perhaps that sort of fellow feeling will be permitted to whites only after they become a minority. Of course, since everyone in America will then be a “minority,” everyone will presumably be free to look out for his race rather than for the nation. Pity the nation.

Just for the record, there are at least three other Cuban-American police chiefs in southern Florida alone. And Mr. Bolaos denies the charges.

Black Murder Rate Up

In just four years, from 1984 to 1988, young black men have become 40 percent more likely to kill each other. During that period, the homicide rate for 15- to 24-year-olds leapt from 60.6 in 100,000 to 101.1 in 100,000. This is thought to be the highest rate for any population in the world. For whites of the same age group, homicide rates, per 100,000, edged up from 10.9 to 11.3. This means that young black men are almost ten times more likely to be killed than whites, and in 1987, homicide accounted for 42 percent of all deaths of young black men.

Women generally have much lower homicide rates than men. However, in recent years, the homicide rate of black women has exceeded that of white men.

Race and the Gulf War

The war against Iraq has highlighted how divisive race can be, especially at a time of crisis. When, on January 12, Congress approved military action in the Gulf, a bloc of black congressmen was a solid chunk of the dissenting vote. War money, they said, should be given to the poor.

Blacks have also attributed to “racism” the fact that although they are 14 percent of the enlistment-age population, they are 28 percent of the army. In a Middle East ground war, they claim, they will take an unfair number of casualties. It is hard to take this complaint seriously. Ever since 1973, when the draft was abolished, every soldier has been a volunteer.

No one complained about the racial disproportions in the all-volunteer army until it looked as though there might be a fight. The logic of the “disproportion” argument is that a largely black army should never be sent into combat, since blacks might be killed in “unfair” numbers. Nevertheless, the media have been clucking sympathetically about the heavy burden that blacks are carrying for the nation.

The political costs of multi-racialism were again in evidence when a Hispanic congressman, Henry B. Gonzalez of San Antonio (TX), presented a resolution in Congress to impeach President Bush for his conduct of the war. The very first article in the resolution says this:

U.S. soldiers in the Middle East are overwhelmingly poor white, black, and Mexican-American, and their military service is based on the coercion of a system that has denied viable economic opportunities to these classes of citizens . . . [C]alling on the poor and minorities to fight a war for oil to preserve the lifestyles of the wealthy is a denial of the rights of these soldiers.

Whatever one may think about the advisability of war, a nation with a racially divided population will be dangerously divided when it most needs to be united.

Dog Eat Dog

Last year, Jackie Speier, a California state legislator, introduced a bill that would make it a crime to eat a dog. She didn’t care for the idea of Asian immigrants tucking into Bowser. Assemblywoman Speier didn’t quite get her bill right the first time. Chinese and Vietnamese yelled at her for “insensitivity” to their culinary habits. She managed to pull a fast one on them, though. She broadened the bill to forbid dining on any household pet, thus making the law seem less anti-Asian. It passed.

Andrew Lam is a Vietnamese columnist, who publicly denounced the bill as insulting to Asians. His column prompted a number of letters from readers, pointing out that when one is in Rome, it is customary to do as Romans do.

Mr. Lam’s reply to this, in an article in Mother Jones, was to say something that Americans of European descent would do well to ponder: There is no Rome. The melting pot days are over, says Mr. Lam, and anything goes in this country. White folks had better figure that out sooner rather than later.

It is refreshing to hear someone with enough cheek actually to say that. Is Mr. Lam possibly being “insensitive” to the cultural heritage of white folks? No chance of that. All the same, we would like to know what Mr. Lam would think if white immigrants swarmed into Vietnam and announced, “OK, Asians, the way you have been running things is finished. From now on, anything goes!” But no — everyone knows that Vietnamese are entitled to live in a land that is Vietnamese. Only Americans must be taught that it is a privilege to live in a land that is ceasing to be American.

The Border Patrol Game

Sometimes it’s hard not to think that the US border patrol, which is supposed to stop illegal immigrants from entering through Mexico, is playing some kind of game rather than protecting our borders.

There is a stretch of Interstate 5, just north of the Mexican border, that illegals often cross on their way north to San Diego. Many of them are peasants who have no idea how to judge the speed of freeway traffic and, since 1987, 127 have been hit and killed. Since it is well known where the illegals are crossing and where they are coming from, it would seem an easy job to stop them at the border. That is not how America plays the game.

Along one stretch of highway, signs have been posted saying “Caution. Watch for people crossing road.” Other signs show pedestrians hurrying across the freeway. Road crews have cut back bushes so that the illegals can get a better look at the traffic and vice versa. To keep the night-time casualties down, a $180,000 lighting system has gone up to help drivers swerve around sprinting Mexicans.

Another proposal is to lower the speed limit at places were illegals like to cross, so as to give them a better chance. The California Highway Patrol says that would be dangerous, because changing speed limits makes drivers put on the brakes and cause accidents. The current plan is to spend $10 million on a five-mile long, eight-foot high wall in the median strip.

The wall is scheduled to be finished in 1993, but it has drawn fire from immigrant advocates. Roberto Martinez of San Diego says that the wall would trap illegals on the median strip, and they would have to run back the way they came. He also says it would give the border police an unfair advantage, since it could round up people who were stuck in the median. The border police piously insist that the wall would be only a deterrent to crossing in the first place, and that they would not use it as a net to catch illegals.

We’d like to know why not. We’d also like to know why the state of California is spending money on signs, lights, and road crews to make it easier for illegal immigrants to get into the United States. We also think that a $10 million wall belongs on the border, not in the median strip of an American highway. Until the American government shows it really means to enforce the immigration laws of this country, aliens will continue to flout them.

Women and Children First

One of the reasons why illegal immigrants are being hit by motorists in increasing numbers is that more of the Mexicans dashing across the border are women and children. In the past, a large number of Mexican men would sneak across the border in the summer, get off-the-books jobs harvesting crops, and sneak back over the border in the fall. The winter was traditionally a slow time for the border patrol.

No longer. Last November, border police in the San Diego area were making 1,000 arrests a day, 22 percent more than the year before. Agricultural laborers now account for only 15 percent of illegal crossings, and the number of women and children has shot up. They don’t work the harvests and then go back to Mexico. They come to America to stay.

It is clear that many Mexicans expect another amnesty, like the one that was granted in 1986 to 1.3 million illegals. It is also clear that employer sanctions — which were supposed to make it hard to hire illegals and thereby discourage them from coming — are a flop. After the initial publicity there was a dip in the flow of illegals, but it was soon back up to record levels.

Ironically, the war against Iraq has put a temporary damper on illegal immigration because of rumors among Mexicans that they will be rounded up and set to fight in the Middle East. One of the most comical fears is that the American government plans to shut down the border and “trap” Mexicans inside the United States. The illegals will then be hustled off to the front with no training.

Many Mexicans believe that the United States could seal off the border at a moment’s notice. They must think that since we don’t do that, the government is not serious about immigration control. They’re right.