O Tempora, O Mores! (August 1991)
American Renaissance, August 1991
Mail Order Citizenship
The Immigration Act of 1990 did not merely increase the ceiling on legal immigration to a figure that will soon be close to one million, it also made it possible to become a citizen by mail. Until now, new citizens had to attend a formal naturalization ceremony before a judge, in which they took an oath of loyalty to the flag, Constitution, and laws of the United States. That is now optional; everything can be handled by mail. The Bush administration explains that harried federal judges will now have more time for criminal cases and civil law suits.
“Racist” Insurance
The NAACP has accused automobile insurers of “racism,”since they charge more to insure a vehicle in 70 percent-black Detroit than they do to insure one in the suburbs. Insurers have explained that Detroit cars are involved in more accidents and that they are far more likely to be stolen than cars in the suburbs. A lawyer for the NAACP actually claims that the large number of crashes in Detroit is caused by suburbanites driving through the city.
The NAACP has gone to court in an attempt to force insurers to give the same rates to the entire, five-county metropolitan area, which would include the suburbs. A spokesman for the Michigan AAA, the area’s largest insurer, points out that this is no more than a demand that suburban drivers subsidize the city.
Indians to the Rescue
After the usual anti-white self flagellation, Eastern Michigan University has decided to stop calling its athletic teams the Hurons, and has done away with its Indian mascot. Yet another act of racial insensitivity had been undone. Now, a spokesman for the Hurons has complained that his tribe was never consulted. “We’re proud to have our name associated with an institution of higher learning,”he says; “Are we going to change [the name of] Lake Huron next?”
Fines for Forgers
The Immigration Act of 1986, which granted amnesty to several million illegal aliens, was supposed to discourage further clandestine immigration by forbidding employers to hire people without proper papers. A number of firms have, in fact, been fined for hiring “undocumented”aliens.
Naturally, a cottage industry soon sprang up to supply forged driver’s licenses and social security cards to illegals. These became so widely available that the “employer sanctions”aspect of the 1986 law has become nearly meaningless. Astonishingly, it was only in June of 1991, five years after the law was passed, that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) decided to start punishing people who use, make or knowingly accept forged documents. There will now be fines of $250 to $2000 for the first offense and $2000 to $5000 for a second violation.
The INS will be allowed to use the money to pay for new enforcement programs. If it goes about its work with a will, it should soon have money aplenty.
Money for Mexico
Although it is seldom reported in this country, Mexico suffers from its own problem of illegal immigration — from Central America. There are an estimated 300,000 Salvadorans and 100,000 Guatemalans living illegally in Mexico. The authorities, which are much more ruthless about booting out unwanted migrants than Americans are, would happily deport them if they had the means.
The United States has quietly started supplying the means. Grants of $350,000 a year help the Mexicans get on with the job. Aid to Mexico serves the United States because most of the Central Americans in Mexico are trying to come north. Since the US started funding the program, Mexico has been able to nearly double its deportations of Central Americans from 85,000 to 160,000 a year. As a consequence, the number of Central Americans caught entering the United States illegally from Mexico dropped from 50,000 in 1989 to 37,000 in 1990.
Occasionally foreign aid actually serves American purposes — though in this case it doesn’t stop Mexicans from criticizing even the token resistance America puts up against illegal immigration across the Rio Grande.
‘Historically Underutilized’
The US Commission on Minority Business Development, whose job is to give tax money to non-white entrepreneurs, says that its work is hampered by the word “minority,”which carries too many negative connotations. The commission has filed a formal request with Congress to allow it to change the words in its name from “Minority Business”to “Historically Underutilized Business.”It proposes the acronym HUB for anyone who thinks the new term is too much of a mouthful. So far, it has not yet started calling white-owned companies “Historically Overutilized Businesses.”
Sometimes the struggle to build a “multicultural”America is a tragedy; sometimes a farce. Sometimes it is both.
In good, pluralistic style, Crown College at the University of California, Santa Cruz, had scheduled a campus-wide Filipino dinner. Unfortunately, it happened to fall on Dec. 7, and there were complaints about serving Asian food on Pearl Harbor Day. Don Vandenberg, the Bursar of Crown College, agreed to cancel the dinner.
This roused the usual yahoos, and the college’s Japanese-surnamed budget director, Victor Kimura wrote an open letter saying that Mr. Vandenberg was “racist and bigoted.”Mr. Vandenberg then received death threats and his car was painted with racial insults. He took a leave of absence and later sued Mr. Kimura and the university for defamation and emotional distress.
Any non-white who got death threats and whose car was vandalized could count on a fat settlement from the university, but since Mr. Vandenberg is white, the court threw out his case. Nevertheless, Appellate Justice Eugene Premo did make some interesting observations about contemporary American mores:
“Accusations of racism in a college community are more apt to be expressions of anger, resentment, and possibly political differences of opinion, than to be factual accusations intended to be taken literally . . . We hold that this unreasonable, emotional and angry letter [from Mr. Kimura] cannot reasonably be understood as implying any facts, that it is more opinion than fact, and as such is not appropriate for jury determination.” Perhaps so. But unreasonable, emotional and angry letters can still ruin a man’s career.
Multicultural Manners
Football players at the University of Miami have a disagreeable habit of taunting their opponents, especially when they win. Father Leo Armbrust, the chaplain of the team explains it this way:
“A good percentage of the team is black. They have a way of expressing their values, personalities and culture that a good part of society does not approve of.” Why should it be a surprise . . . that Miami could act in a way that seems taunting, aggressive, civilly offensive?
Rewriting History
Kevin Costner, who brought us the fawningly pro-Indian and contemptuously anti-white movie, “Dances With Wolves,”is back in the saddle with more racial fantasies. In his latest movie, “Robin Hood,”the 12th century English outlaw has, as his second in command, an utterly improbable black man named Azeem.
At Cross Purposes
The city of St. Paul (MN) has outdone itself in the fight against bigotry. It has passed a law making it illegal to burn a cross, swastika, “or similar symbol”on public or private property. Citizens can burn the flag on the courthouse steps but they can’t burn a cross, or anything that even looks like one, in the privacy of their own back yards.
Marketing to Minorities — Beware
Last year, the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company got in trouble when word was leaked of its plans to market a new brand of cigarettes, “Uptown,”specifically to blacks. This was “exploitation of minorities,”according to angry protesters, and Reynolds dropped its plans.
This time it’s the Heilman Brewing Company that is in trouble. It would like to sell a new brand of malt liquor called PowerMaster, with 31 percent more alcohol than other malt liquors. Ads were to feature blacks. Once again the cry has gone up that blacks are being exploited by purveyors of vice. Blacks have organized a boycott of Heilman products in at least six major cities. Heilman may back down.
Campaigns against products like these raise interesting questions. Black leaders are presumably admitting that blacks can be easily manipulated by advertisers into doing foolish, self-destructive things. Those who would like to ban all liquor and tobacco ads are presumably saying that all people can be so manipulated. What does this say about democracy? Political campaigns are even less truthful than commercial advertising. Does a people without the wit to ignore the blandishments of beer-makers have the wit to choose its leaders?
FBI Lowers Standards
One reads a great deal about alleged discrimination against non-whites at the FBI. One reads less about real discrimination against whites. James Perez, the Bureau’s equal opportunity officer, admits that non-whites get an extra three points on the written test and an extra two points on the interview, for an advantage of five points out of a total of 100.
Sometimes the Bureau doesn’t even pay attention to the scores. Hugo Rodriguez, who served as a minority recruiter for the Bureau between 1978 and 1987 says, “It’s a quota system; somehow they would decide they want so many blacks, or so many Hispanics. Then they would go down the list until they got that number.”Mr. Rodriguez later went on to represent Hispanic agents in a discrimination suit against the Bureau.
In response to alleged discrimination against non-white agents, the Bureau is considering whether to promote non-white agents more rapidly than white agents. This has finally brought white resentment into the open. “Previously it was only hiring, and people didn’t care because it was going on below them,”says a white agent. “But under [FBI Director, William] Sessions, it’s going to involve promotions . . .” The victims of discrimination are finally beginning to organize in defense of their interests.
‘Racist’ Ruskin
John Ruskin (1819-1900) was an English art critic and social reformer, who left part of his art collection to the city of Sheffield, England. Recently, the city decided to give his name to a square in the center of town. Plans were changed when it was discovered that Ruskin had supported the violent suppression of West Indian blacks after the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865. As Mike Pye of the Sheffield Council explained, “the advice of our racial equality officers was that the name Ruskin would cause pain to the black community.”Sheffield blacks appear to be remarkably well informed about John Ruskin.
Former French PM Speaks Out
Jacques Chirac, former French Prime Minister and a leader in conservative politics recently caused a furor by speaking out against immigrants, of which he said France had an “overdose”:
The French worker sees . . . a father, with four wives and a score of children, making 50,000 francs [$8,000] a month on welfare — without working, of course. Add to that the noise and the smell and the French worker . . . goes crazy.
Mr. Chirac went on to say, “It’s high time we opened the major debate needed in our country to determine whether it is natural that foreigners benefit from a national solidarity they don’t take part in, because they don’t pay taxes.” A realistic debate on immigration to France certainly is long overdue, and France is fortunate in having major figures who are willing to say so.
Final Fright
The hit Japanese video game, Final Fight, will reach the US market in October — but with a few changes. In the Japanese version, a white hero makes short work of swarms of hoodlums, many of whom are black or Hispanic. Dark-skinned villains were too realistic for the American market, so their skin tones have been lightened for the US version.
SAT Goes PC
The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) has long been criticized because blacks and Hispanics don’t do as well on it as whites. In an attempt to redeem themselves, the SAT’s designers have rewritten many of its questions. In the most recent version, close to half of the questions about real people are about blacks — Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, Jackie Robinson, etc. The fiction selection for the reading comprehension test was from black author Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The SAT didn’t ignore other minorities either. There were questions about Chicanos, Indians, Eskimos, and even a sympathetic mention that Zimbabwe (former white-ruled Rhodesia) celebrated its second year of independence in 1982.
The SAT may have gone politically correct, but somehow this hasn’t improved minority test scores. As usual, the average black combined score was 200 points lower than the white average.
During the 1980s, the Hispanic population of the United States increased by 53 percent, and now accounts for nine percent of the total. Hispanics, who were once concentrated in only a few parts of the country are now gaining in numbers everywhere. Seventy congressional districts now have Hispanic populations of more than 100,000. Each district covers about half a million people, so a block of 100,000 or more can easily sway an election.
Of these 70 districts, 30 are in California, 16 in Texas, and 8 in New York. Other states that have had heavily Hispanic districts for some time are Arizona and Florida (four each), and New Mexico (three). Now Illinois and New Jersey (two each) and Colorado (one) have joined them.
There are currently ten Hispanic congressmen: four from Texas, three from California, and one each from Florida, New York, and New Mexico. After every census, congressional districts are redrawn. Since the Voting Rights Act has been interpreted by judges to require the creation of districts in which minorities have a majority, the next elections should show a sharp increase in the number of Hispanic representatives.
