O Tempora, O Mores! (April, 1992)
American Renaissance, April 1992
Set-Asides by the Wayside
In 1989, the Supreme Court stopped 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.]
Although there are probably more than one million people in the United States who carry the AIDS virus, many do not come down with full-blown cases of the disease for ten years or more. During the eight years from 1981 through the end of 1989, 100,000 people developed the disease, but the second 100,000 cases took only two years to appear. By Dec. 31, 1991, 206,392 Americans had gotten the disease, and 133,232 of them had died.
From the outset, AIDS was a disproportionately non-white disease. Among the first 100,000 people who got AIDS, 27 percent were black and 15 percent were Hispanic. This meant that blacks were nearly three times as likely to get AIDS as whites, and Hispanics were 2.4 times as likely. The second 100,000 cases have increased those ratios to 3.6 and 2.9. [AIDS cases in U.S. now top 200,000, NY Post, Jan. 17, 1992, p. 3.]
The methods by which AIDS is spread are well understood, and blood bank testing has made it nearly impossible to get the virus through a transfusion. In other words, AIDS is now a disease that can be almost entirely avoided through good sense and self control.
AIDS is likely to become an increasingly black and Hispanic disease during the 1990s. It is estimated that it costs about $85,000, on average, to treat an AIDS patient until he dies. [Leroy Schwarz, The medical costs of America’s social ills, WSJ, 6/24/91, p. A10.]
Of all the social programs left over from the 1960s, Head Start has the best reputation. The theory is that a year or two of intensive help for 3- to 5-year-olds will make up for poverty, illegitimacy, ignorant parents, and all the rest. A recent study shows that Head Start-type programs do some good for a while, but the effects quickly wear off.
J. S. Fuerst of Loyola University has tracked 684 black children who attended specially-funded programs that were so intensive that Mr. Fuerst calls them “Head Start to the fourth power.” The children stayed in these programs for two to seven years, and had significantly better test scores than a control group. Ten years later, after the children had returned to regular schools, their performance was practically indistinguishable from that of children who had not gotten the special instruction.
Mr. Fuerst has not, of course, concluded that supplemental training for poor black children doesn’t work. He thinks they just aren’t getting enough of it. He suspects that poor black girls can get by with four to six years of intensive help, but poor black boys need seven to nine years to make up for bad beginnings. [Barbara Kantrowitz, A Head Start does not last, Newsweek, 1/27/92, p. 44.]
Monkey Shines
Dr. Frederick Goodwin, once the head of the government’s Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration, has lost his job because of what the Congressional Black Caucus calls an “extremist and appalling view of the problems of the nation’s cities.”
What was Dr. Goodwin’s crime? In a seminar on urban violence, he said this:
If you look, for example, at male monkeys, especially in the wild, roughly half of them survive to adulthood. The other half die by violence. That is the natural way of it for males, to knock each other off, and . . . the same hyperaggressive monkeys who kill each other are also hypersexual, so they copulate more and therefore they reproduce more to offset the fact that half of them are dying.
So far, so good, but then Dr. Goodwin stepped over the invisible line:
Maybe it isn’t just the careless use of the word when people call certain areas of certain cities jungles, that we may have gone back to what might be more natural, without all of the social controls that we have imposed upon ourselves as a civilization . . .” [Black Caucus expresses concern over remarks by health official, NYT, 2/28/92. Also Spencer Rich, Federal health official resigns, citing controversy over remarks, Washington Post,2/28/92, p. A4.]
Oh, dear. Although humans are, genetically, 96 percent the same as chimpanzees [Boyce Rensberger, Science and sensitivity, Washington Post, 3/1/92], it is against the rules to draw conclusions about human nature from animal studies, especially if such studies upset certain tender sensibilities.
Age vs. Purity
Eatonville (FL) and Princeville (NC) have populations that are 100 percent black. Are they hoping to attract white families the way 98-percent-white Dubuque (IA) hoped to attract black families? No. They are locked in a struggle over which is the oldest all-black town in America. Princeville, incorporated in 1885, is clearly older than Eatonville, which was established two years later. However, Eatonville stakes its claim on purity; Princeville had about 45 white residents when it was incorporated and they didn’t move away until about 1900.
Why the fuss? Both are villages of just a few thousand, and are struggling to stay afloat. Residents want their town to be designated in the National Register of Historic Places as the oldest all-black town in America. They reportedly think this will attract tourists. [Constance Johnson, A place to be free, US News and World Report, 3/2/92, p. 21.]
But what would happen if a white person moved in? If the town could no longer claim to be all-black would it no longer be a Historic Place?
Happy Trails in Houston
Houston (TX) has a population to gladden the heart of a multiculturalist: whites are 40 percent and dropping, blacks and Hispanics are both 28 percent and growing. Here are a few local news items (murders, rapes, and assaults excluded), all from the month of February.
A group of Hispanic parents held a press conference at an elementary school to complain that their children were being taught too much black history. [Hispanic parents protest, Houston Chronicle, 2/22/92.]
Before he even started his job, the new police chief faced criticism because he is white. “We want to know if he is going to regress to that good-old-boy mentality,” said an official from the League of Latin American Citizens. Black groups didn’t like his color either.
A report on the police department found that although Houston is only 40 percent white, the police force is 72 percent white. The city is trying desperately to change this, but classes at the police academy are still two-thirds white. Few non-whites can be persuaded to apply for the jobs and when they do, they are often unqualified.
White police officers formed a Caucasian-American Police Group to fight discrimination against whites.
A white judge offered to let a black, repeat sex offender out on probation if he would voluntarily undergo castration. The NAACP was furious. “This is merely an effort to set a precedent and open doors of opportunity to castrate thousands of black males legally,” said a spokesman.
The city fretted because although most of the bus drivers are black or Hispanic, 35 of the top 44 jobs at the bus company are still held by whites.
Down the road in Dallas, the transit authority has voted to start work on a rail line that would run from the center of town to non-white south Dallas. Twenty-nine percent of the job was set aside for minority- and woman-owned firms. Blacks were angry because the low-bid companies were all owned by Hispanics, Asians, and women; no blacks. All five of the black members of the transit authority’s board voted to hold up construction until blacks got contracts. A black school board member vowed to lead a transit strike if blacks didn’t get contracts.
Back in Houston, the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) thinks that Hispanics don’t get proper care in local hospitals because not enough staffers speak Spanish. The regional manager for the HHS Office for Civil Rights says that millions of dollars in federal money could be withheld unless hospitals find enough Spanish-speakers. The city’s interim health director says the city already pays bonuses to people who can speak both Spanish and English, and is hunting furiously for more — tough luck for native-born whites who want to be nurses.
Just another month in the multi-racial paradise.
Finger in the Dike
Late in January, New Jersey became the first state to pass laws that would end the practice of increasing welfare payments whenever a woman on the dole has another child. Of course, anything remotely resembling a stick must be accompanied by generous carrots. New Jersey welfare mothers can now marry and still get their checks, and will not lose a penny of public support if they take jobs that pay up to half their welfare income. The idea is to encourage them to marry and get jobs. [Wayne King, Florio signs an overhaul of welfare, NYT, 1/22/92, p. B1.]
California may be the next state to stop automatic raises for dole-takers who have more children. The state has one of the most extravagant handout programs in the country. Most recipients get paid as if they had a job with a pre-tax salary of at least $1,300 a month. Welfare shoppers come from all around the country — and from across the border — to feed at the public trough.
California citizens will soon get a chance to vote on an initiative that would keep handout checks at the same level no matter how many babies a women had. It would also pay welfare-shopping newcomers no more than they were getting on the dole in their home states — except for illegal aliens who must, according to federal court rulings, be treated like California residents. If a dole-taker moves, legally, from Mississippi he would get low, Mississippi rates. If one moved, illegally, from Mexico, he would get high, California rates. [Debra Saunders, Welfare reform, California style, WSJ, 2/25/92.] Foreign bums get preference over domestic bums.
Lights Out
In New York City, bums congregate in the shadows of shut-down bridges that yesterday’s New Yorkers built but that today’s New Yorkers cannot maintain. Miami is having trouble keeping the lights turned on. Derelicts living under the freeways steal copper wiring out of street lights as quickly as the Florida Department of Transportation can put it in. The department has given up replacing wire in the lights on Interstate 395. It says that until the bums are moved some place else, people will have to drive in the dark. [Dan Holly, I-395 to remain half-lit, Miami Herald, 2/2/92, p. 1B.]
Waiting for the Revolution
Communism may be dead in Russia, but it’s still alive in America. The Revolutionary Worker of Feb. 23 has this to say about illegal immigration:
Proletarians and progressive people should welcome this! As Chairman [of the Revolutionary Communist Party] Bob Avakian says, “. . . [W]e want to open the back door and knock down the back fence and invite a lot of other people to take part . . . We want to invite them all in and make it even more strategically favorable, not only in terms of revolution in the U.S. but in terms of revolution all over.” [U.S. calls for more racist roundups on the border, RW, 2/23/92, p. 4.]
Liberals have usually been pretty quiet about the fact that massive, non-white immigration gives them a natural political constituency. At least the Communists are honest about it.
Barely News
The following news item is reproduced, verbatim and in toto, from the Orange County Register of Dec. 11, 1991:
“Wilding” attacks: San Diego police are investigating 50 unusually savage assaults that they liken to New York City’s notorious “wilding” attacks perpetrated by youthful robbers for the sake of committing violence.
Police said the young attackers are black and their victims, 46 men and four women, are white. The victims were attacked in the Hillcrest and North Park neighborhoods.
There is no evidence they are hate crimes, Detective Steve Baker said.
Scarcely News
In February, a Miami legal secretary named Pam Crumpler was shot to death in the street in the presence of her husband. She was very popular in the legal community, which raised $20,000 with which to reward informants. Newspapers publicized a telephone number for tips, and the Miami Herald did its best to help readers find the suspects. Mrs. Crumpler’s husband had chased the killers all the way to the getaway car, which the paper described as follows:
. . . a late ’60s or early ’70s midsize, General Motors model — possibly an Oldsmobile Cutlass — with a white top over faded green or brown. The car had tinted windows, over-sized rear tires and a loud muffler.
Good job on the car; what did the suspects look like? The Herald did not see fit to mention their race. [Jeff Leen, Slain secretary fondly remembered, Miami Herald, 3/1/92, p. 5B.]
Mild West
North Dakota has a population of 634,000 — about the same as that of Washington (DC). North Dakota spends $100 per capita every year on law enforcement, and Washington spends $900. Last year, there were nine murders in North Dakota and 489 murders in Washington. North Dakota is 95 percent white; Washington is 24 percent white.
The Los Angeles Times, musing on these differences, observed: “All the elements that keep crime low in North Dakota — family stability, a homogeneous population, an absence of slums, drugs and poverty — are attributes that may be gone forever in many American cities.”
As it happens, North Dakota also has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the country, yet only three of its nine murders were committed with fire arms. [David Lamb, N. Dakota: flavor of mild West, LA Times, 2/5/92, p. 1.] National gun control activists would be happy to punish white North Dakotans because of the crimes of black Washingtonians.
All in a Day’s Work
Running a watch shop in Los Angeles can be exciting, especially for anyone who deals in the Rolex watches popular with drug dealers. Lance Thomas, owner of The Watch Co., has shot to death five would-be robbers in the past two and a half years alone. In several cases, the robbers opened fire first, and the police have ruled that every killing was justified.
The mother of Char-Ru Currie and Tony Currie disagrees. Mr. Thomas shot them to death during an attempted robbery, after they wounded him in the neck and shoulder. Says the grieving mother, “I just feel that someone needs to do something to stop him because he’s a danger.” [AP, Police scrutinize store owner who’s killed 5 in self-defense, SJ Mercury, 2/23/92, p. 8B.]
St. Tom
The Vatican has put the canonization of Pierre Toussaint on the fast track because the Pope wants more black saints (see AR, June 1991). Many blacks are unhappy, though, because they don’t think Toussaint was a good “role model.”
Rather than join in the slave revolt in Haiti, he accompanied his French master to New York, where he became a high-class hair dresser. He made enough money to buy the freedom of several of his friends, but chose to remain a slave until his master died. He was, by all accounts, devoted to caring for the sick and the poor. On his death, in 1853, the New York Evening Post ran an admiring obituary with the headline, “Uncle Tom not an apocryphal character.” That is just what blacks think is wrong with him. [Deborah Sontag, Canonizing a black: Saint Uncle Tom?, NYT, 2/23/92, p. 1.]
Excessive Development of Fat in the Head
Hall 25 of the National Museum of Natural History has been shut down. The exhibit, Human Origins and Variation, was assembled in the 1950s and 1960s, and is, of course, “racist” by today’s standards. The example of homo sapiens is a white man, and the exhibits on human variation include such unfashionable observations as: “Excessive development of fat on the buttocks (steatopygia) is common among Bushman and Hottentot women.” A corrected exhibit will take $9 million and several years to complete. In the mean time, the national museum is mute on the subject of evolution. [Joel Achenback, Butting skulls at the Smithsonian, Washington Post, 2/2/92, p. 14.]
