O Tempora, O Mores! (March, 1992)

Yahweh Update

The trial of Hulon Mitchell, the leader of the Miami-based, anti-white “Yahweh” sect continues in Miami, but the national media do their best to ignore it. Robert Rozier, a former Yahweh sect member and one-time professional football player, testified in January about some of the crimes he committed under orders from Mr. Mitchell. Of the six people he killed, three were blacks who had offended Mr. Mitchell in some way, and the rest were “white devils,” killed at random.

The first two “white devils” were Mr. Rozier’s white roommates. However, Mr. Mitchell gave him no credit for these killings because he failed to bring back parts of the bodies as proof. Mr. Rozier took to riding the subways with a twelve-inch sword, looking for “white devils” to do in. When he finally got his man, and brought back an ear as a trophy, Mr. Mitchell reportedly was beside himself with glee, tossing the ear around the room and calling it a pig’s ear. [Donna Gehrke, I felt power while slaying 6 people, former Yahweh “death angel” testifies, Miami Herald, 1/30/92, p. 1A.]

If a group of whites were on trial for ritual murder and mutilation of blacks, can there be any doubt that the news would be constantly on the front pages?

Multiracial Harmony in California

A recent northern California survey on racial stereotypes has left the chattering classes tongue-tied. Asians, for example, are three times as likely as whites to report that they wouldn’t stand for it if a black or Hispanic moved in next door. Hispanics are about twice as likely as whites to say they wouldn’t have a black neighbor and three times as likely to say they wouldn’t have an Asian neighbor. Whites are supposed to be the big racists in this country, so commentators were reduced to wringing their hands over “how quickly immigrants learn racism in America.” Some racial activists insisted that the questions were ambiguous.

When asked whether blacks could pull themselves up to better positions if they worked harder, 65 percent of Hispanics agreed, followed by 58 percent for both blacks and Asians. Only 42 percent of the whites agreed; most dutifully blamed society for black poverty. When asked if Hispanics could get ahead if they worked harder, the percentages were similar except that an even larger number of Hispanics (72 percent) agreed. [Steve Johnson, Survey finds Bay Area tolerant of diversity, SJ Mercury, 11/17/91, p. B1.] Hispanic activists were annoyed that their people weren’t more worried about “institutional racism.”

‘Stop Apologizing’

Last month we reported on the success of a clever Canadian author who shot to instant media stardom by sending copies of his pro-white book, Stop Apologizing, to media and government bigwigs. His message, which officialdom hates like poison, is that whites should stop feeling guilty for having established a better way of life, and should stop feeling responsible for “the failures of non-achievers.”

This book is available only by mail order, and last month we did not know the address. A reader has kindly sent it to us. Stop Apologizing is available from The Procult Institute, Box 1358, Postal Station A, 757 West Hastings, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6C 2T2. The cost is $30.00 in Canadian currency, but purchases by Visa or Mastercard will automatically be converted at prevailing exchange rates.

The author, Jud Cyllorn, promises his readers two more books this year. Circle Your Wagons! will be “an exposé of the myths of ‘aboriginal rights,’” and We The People will be a “constitutional solution for Canada.”

This Hertz

In January, the Hertz car-rental company announced that it will levy a surcharge on New York City residents who want to rent cars. Anyone living in Manhattan will have to pay an extra $3 per day, with $15 extra for Queens, $34 for Brooklyn, and $56 for the Bronx. The company explained that it has lost $45 million in the metropolitan area over the past three years, because of accidents, stolen vehicles, and insurance claims.

New York State has “vicarious liability” laws, meaning that you may have to pay for something that was not your fault. For example, a Brooklyn car-renter turned over the keys to his cousin, who was unlicensed and below Hertz’s minimum rental age of 25. The cousin ran over a pedestrian and left him so disabled he couldn’t even operate a wheel chair. Although Hertz hardly seems any more responsible for this accident than the auto-maker or even the city that built the street, “vicarious liability” held the company responsible for $2.5 million in damages. Hertz says this sort of thing simply happens more often in places like Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Mayor David Dinkins promptly accused Hertz of discrimination. The city has filed a law suit, claiming that since Brooklyn and the Bronx have large non-white populations, the surcharges are disguised racial discrimination. [Matthew L. Wald, Politicians assail Hertz for New York surcharge, NYT, 1/4/92, p. L23. Michael Cottman, Hit ‘em where it Hertz, NY Newsday, 1/8/92, p. 3.]

Credits to Their Races

The same muddled thinking is behind a recent interpretation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1971. The act was passed to ensure that the information in credit reports be accurate and confidential. Employers sometimes use credit reports when they are considering hiring someone or transferring him to a job with responsibility for money.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found that such use of credit has an “adverse impact on minorities” and may therefore be illegal. Non-whites make less money than whites and their credit ratings are worse, so to use ratings to help make an employment decision is racist. [County of Harris (New Jersey), Personnel Dept., Credit reports: what employers should know about using them, Resource Newsletter, Jan. 1992.]

It is already illegal to use standardized tests to select employees, since non-whites score worse than whites. It is already illegal to require an honorable discharge of potential employees who are ex-servicemen, because non-whites don’t get them as often. In some cases, it is illegal to require that employees have a college education, since not as many non-whites as whites go to college.

All this points in one direction: Soon, any measure by which non-whites perform less well than whites will be “discrimination,” even if that standard is nothing less than how well one does the job. The government is officially against racial “quotas,” but increasingly leaves employers no other option.

Progress Rolls — In Wheelchairs

The latest group to get legal protection from “discrimination” is the handicapped, which includes all the people one would expect, as well as recovering alcoholics and people with AIDS. The Americans With Disabilities Act, which sailed through Congress in 1990, went into effect this January. Businesses and employers must take all sorts of measures to accommodate the blind, the lame, the deaf, and even the “mentally handicapped.” Lawyers will get rich while the courts hammer out what the law’s mandatory “readily achievable” accommodations really are.

In the meantime, the law lays down strict rules for new buildings. Essentially, American businesses must transform themselves for the benefit of a minuscule number of patrons in wheelchairs. Bank teller machines must be low enough to be reached sitting down and must have keys in braille. Stores must reduce the amount of merchandise on display so they can widen the aisles for wheelchairs. Carpets may be only so deep, because a thick pile might slow down the disabled. Elevators must “talk” and have braille keys. Requirements will get stiffer as the years go by.

Employment standards will come under attack. The courts will decide whether jobs requiring a driver’s license discriminate against the blind, or whether insisting that employees be able to speak to customers discriminates against the deaf and dumb. We quake to think just what sort of job standards will have to be done away with in order to accommodate the “mentally handicapped.” [Peter Copeland, New “nightmare” for business, SF Examiner, 1/19/92, p. 1. Michelle Levander, Advocates hoping disabilities law raises awareness, SJ Mercury, 1/26/92, p. E1. Michelle Levander, First phase of sweeping law takes effect, ushering disabled into social mainstream, SJ Mercury, 1/26/92, p. 1.] All this, from a Congress that claims to be concerned about America’s competitiveness.

Loony Tunes

The highest-paid entertainer in America, Bill Cosby, has joined the growing army of loonies who think that AIDS was concocted as a weapon to get rid of undesirables. Late last year he told a television audience that AIDS is “something I think was started by human beings to get after certain people they didn’t like.” Later, he explained his views through a spokesman: “I have no proof, period. I just have a feeling, period.” [Cosby’s theory on the origin of AIDS, NY Post, 11/28/91. Bill Cosby’s AIDS conspiracy, NY Post, 12/4/91, p. 26.]

According to a 1990 poll, 30 percent of blacks were either convinced that AIDS is a plot to exterminate them or think that there is at least a chance that this is so. Mr. Cosby will therefore share the company of 12 million other thoughtful blacks.

Stirring Patriotism

Julianne Malveaux is a black woman who writes a syndicated column in San Francisco. She recently wrote that she finds the words to the Pledge of Allegiance “as much a curse as a pledge,” because they deny the fundamental racism of white America. Her version of the pledge would go like this:

I acknowledge the flag of the United Racist States of America and the repression for which it stands, two or three bifurcated nations, two economies, two health-care systems, two nations under God, divisible by color, class, gender and access [she is all ready for the new disabilities law — see above], with liberty for some and justice for fewer.

It is not uncommon to find blacks who write and think this way. If whites are so awful and America is so evil, why do blacks not live in Africa or demand an all-black homeland in North America? A visit to any black-run nation — or city — probably explains why they do not.

Sex, Illegitimacy, and Obscenity

The Centers for Disease Control report that more than half of all American high school students have had sexual intercourse. By the time they are seniors, 70 percent say they have had sex. Seventy-two percent of black high school students say they have had sex, as opposed to 53 percent of Hispanics and 52 percent of whites. Whites reportedly use contraceptives more often than either blacks or Hispanics. [AP, Sex and the high school student, NY Newsday,1/4/92, p. 6.]

These differences are borne out by the latest data on illegitimacy. More than 70 percent of black babies born in America are illegitimate. The figures for Hispanics and whites are 37.5 percent and 21.6 percent. In the early 1960s, illegitimacy rates for the races were: blacks — 42.4 percent, Hispanics — 19.2 percent, whites — 8.5 percent. [Cheryl Laird, Teen-age moms, Houston Chronicle, 1/8/92, p. 1D.] You’ve come a long way, baby.

Obscenity seems to be creeping into every corner of life, but, happily, it has been completely eliminated in New York City. Obscenity laws now often refer to community standards; one man’s art is another man’s obscenity. In 1983, Appeals Court Judge Thomas J. Meskill ruled that “the community standards in New York are so low nothing is obscene.” [Steven Myers, Obscenity laws exist, but what breaks them? NYT, 1/19/92, p. 4E.] Since that date, there have been no more obscenity prosecutions in New York. This is the way that America likes to solve its problems.

More White Mischief

Blacks smoke more than whites, so the usual uplift organizations are trying to help them quit. Smokefree Education Services of New York has come up with an anti-smoking poster directed at blacks, which it hopes to display in subway cars. It shows a skeleton in a cowboy outfit lighting a cigarette for a black child. The caption reads: “They used to make us pick it. Now they want us to smoke it.” There’s just no end to the evil that white men do.

The Truth at Last

Occasionally, the government actually puts into print such contradictory foolishness on the subject of race that even the most jaded are taken by surprise. IRS Publication 557 explains how to get tax-exempt status for an organization. The publication makes it exceedingly clear that if you run a school, its admissions policies must not discriminate by race. Schools must also advertise in local newspapers or on the radio that they do not discriminate, and the IRS kindly includes a sample of what a print ad should say, as well as instructions on how big it must be. Then the IRS says this, with bold-faced italics in the original:

A policy of a school that favors racial minority groups with respect to admissions, facilities and programs, and financial assistance does not constitute discrimination on the basis of race when the purpose and effect of this policy is to promote establishing and maintaining the school’s nondiscrimination policy.

It’s a riddle as to how favoring minorities promotes a policy of nondiscrimination, but here it is in black and white: discriminate against non-whites and your tax-exemption is over; discriminate against whites and you have the IRS’ blessing — so long as you are practicing nondiscrimination. [IRS publication 557, revised Oct. 1988, copy actually distributed end of 1991, p. 12.]

The Heights of Folly

Shaker Heights (OH), a suburb of Cleveland, has discovered that racial integration is unnatural — but the town wants it badly enough to pay for it. Blacks who move to neighborhoods thought to be excessively white get help with their mortgages. So do whites who move to black neighborhoods. The town has been working at this for thirty years, managing housing the way a company manages inventory, but only three of its nine neighborhoods are integrated in any but a token way.

Students at Shaker Heights’ schools learn early to count by race. Racial sensitivity is taught in the sixth grade, and sports teams have informal racial quotas. Even the photographs in the year book are racially balanced. What is the result of all this sensitivity? Essentially two school systems, with whites in advanced and honors classes, and blacks in regular classes. Almost without exception, blacks socialize with blacks, and whites with whites. As a black sophomore put it, “You don’t have a choice in the classroom,” but “you eat lunch with who your buddies are.” [Isabel Wilkerson, One city’s 30-year crusade for integration, NYT, 12/30/91, p. A1.]

A Real Insight

Insight, the weekly news magazine published in connection with the Washington Times, is well ahead of the pack in its reporting on race. The cover story of its issue dated January 5, 1992 is an astonishingly even-handed account of the controversy over race and IQ differences. The article includes sympathetic portrayals of such outspoken IQ scholars as Arthur Jensen, Richard Hernnstein, Linda Gottfredson, and Michael Levin.

Insight stands on its head the required media view that the idea of IQ is a bunch of buncombe propagated by crazed elitists: “The consensus among professional psychologists is that the pro-IQ researchers are soundly scientific and their critics are the ideologues.”

Interestingly, the ideologues appear to be losing their stomach for the fight. Leon Kamin, Stephen Gould, and R. C. Lowentin used to be willing at the drop of a hat to tell the press that intelligence has virtually nothing to do with genetics; none wanted to talk to Insight.

The article reports, with scarcely a qualification or apology, that the average IQ score is 85 for blacks, 90 for Hispanics, 100 for whites, and 105 for Japanese. It points out that only 3 percent of blacks have scores over 115, the minimum required for learned, professional work. The article makes no attempt to refute the hereditarian view that black progress is held back by a lack of intelligence.

That brave researcher, Arthur Jensen, almost gets the last word. Musing sympathetically about eugenics, he asks: “Which is worse, to deprive someone of having a child, or to deprive the child of having a decent set of parents?”

Small Victories

It would be pleasant to report progress, but whenever the march of folly is thwarted, that too is victory. The faculty of Drake University in Des Moines recently issued a statement opposing any campus regulation that would prohibit speech of any kind. It also refused to single out racial harassment as a crime worthy of special punishment.

The University of Washington has defeated a move to require all students to take a gender- and race-sensitivity course, as has Wichita State University. A disgruntled Wichita professor says the defeat means there is “a closet full of David Dukes” on the faculty.

Set-Asides by the Wayside

In 1989, the Supreme Court struck down the widespread practice of setting aside fixed percentages of public contracts for non-white companies. Thousands of such companies, many of which had never competed in the private market, have failed or are foundering. Ralph Thomas, head of the National Association of Minority Contractors says, “Most of the minority community’s business comes from government programs, and when these programs are struck down, they no longer have a place to sell their services.”

Philadelphia’s recent experience is typical. After set-asides were ended, the percentage of contracts awarded to black businesses shrank in just one year from 25 percent to 3.5 percent. Since set-asides bypassed the usual open bid contract process, they raised the cost of city business. Rather than give thanks for the cost savings, the black city administration has gone to court to try to get the old program reinstated. [Michael Hinds, Minority business set back sharply by courts’ rulings, NYT, 12/23/91, p. A1.]