O Tempora, O Mores! (June, 1993)
American Renaissance, June 1993
Business Schools Go Diverse
Because it is now dogma to describe the work force of the future as a rainbow of different races, languages, cultures, etc., “diversity training” is the latest fad at business schools. Rather than explaining to Guatemalans that meetings are supposed to start on time, for example, the “sensitive” manager runs the meeting so that the first part covers matters that José doesn’t need to know about.
The organization that accredits business schools has set up a “task force” to decide what sort of “diversity training” is best. Presumably this means that schools that do not do enough of it will not be accredited. Northwestern University’s business school has already set up an endowed chair in diversity, and virtually all business hire itinerant “diversity specialists” and hold “diversity days.”
The schools are reportedly under pressure from corporate affirmative action officers. In an astonishingly candid appeal to biased research, Anne Fritz, a division manager for AT&T in charge of diversity and “equal opportunity,” explains what she expects from business schools: “We need more research coming out of universities that proves that diversity is good for creativity and productivity.” [Claudia H. Deutsch, “Diversity Bedevils M.B.A. Programs,” NYT4/4/93, Education Supplement, p. 22.]
Christian Candor
There are a few companies that produce textbooks for Christian schools, many of which were set up in the South as refuges for whites fleeing integration. Some of the best known publishers are Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), Bob Jones Textbooks, and Alpha Omega Publications. Their texts have not been completely sanitized as have been those from secular publishers. Here is a passage from an ACE text on South Africa and Nelson Mandela:
Although apartheid appears to allow the unfair treatment of blacks, the system has worked well in South Africa . . . Although white businessmen and developers are guilty of some unfair treatment of blacks, they turned South Africa into a modern industrialized nation, which the poor, uneducated blacks couldn’t have accomplished in several more decades. If more blacks were suddenly given control of the nation, its economy and business, as Mandela wished, they could have destroyed what they have waited and worked so hard for.
[David Dent, “A Mixed Message in Black Schools,” NYT 4/4/93, Education Supplement, p. 28.]
Urban Progress
Along with the reduction of whites to 45 percent of the population, a few other things have changed in New York City in the last 50 years. Since 1942, the city’s population has dropped 150,000 — from 7,472,000 to 7,322,000. During the same period, the number of welfare recipients has risen from 73,000 to 1,200,000. In 1942, only 44 New Yorkers were killed with guns; in 1992, 1,499 were shot to death. In 1942, three percent of the births were illegitimate; in 1992, 45 percent were illegitimate. [“The Eye,” Washington Enquirer, 4/30/93, p. 2.]
All is Forgiven
The takeover of Cornell University’s Willard Straight Hall by armed blacks in 1969 was only a slightly more aggressive disruption than the usual student activism of the times. Tom Jones, a senior who led the takeover, mouthed the obligatory lines:
In the past it has been the black people who have done all the dying. Now the time has come when the pigs are going to die, too. We are moving tonight. Cornell has until 9 o’clock to live. It is now three minutes after eight.
Fortunately, neither pigs nor black people died in the takeover, and Mr. Jones was never punished for what he did. Now he is about to reap his reward; on May 29 he is expected to be elected to Cornell’s 42-member board of trustees. It appears that at some point Mr. Jones learned that threatening to kill policemen was not the best way to get ahead. He is now president of TIAA-CREF, the world’s largest private pension fund, with assets of $115 billion.
In these strange times, it is hardly surprising to learn who welcomes Mr. Jones to Cornell and who does not. Former president, James Perkins, who was forced to resign one month after the takeover, and Dale Corson, the man who replaced him, say Mr. Jones has won the university’s trust. Black activists, on the other hand, are angry that he appears to have given up the “struggle for minority rights” and that he has even expressed regret over his role in the takeover.
On a more prosaic level, there is some doubt as to Mr. Jones’ interest in Cornell. In reply to those who point out that he has visited the campus only once since 1970 and that he has not been an active alumnus, he says, “I’ve been focusing on my career.” [Evolution of a Protester: from gun to governing,” NYT, April 7, 1993.]
Every year, the criminal justice system seems to get more bogged down in race. The trial of a Hispanic policeman who shot a black man has been moved again — for the third time in a year.
In 1989, Colombian-born William Lozano shot a fleeing black suspect on a motorcycle, who he claimed was trying to run him down. Both the rider and his passenger died. When they heard about the incident, Miami blacks rioted and looted for three days. In the trial that followed, a mixed-race Miami jury convicted Mr. Lozano of manslaughter. However, the district court of appeal overturned the conviction after it found that the jury had been swayed by fears of further riots. A new trial was set for last April, but a judge moved it to Orlando, where it was thought Mr. Lozano could get a more unbiased jury.
Unluckily for Mr. Lozano, the riots after the verdict in the first Rodney King beating trial intervened, and someone noticed that only 10 percent of the jury pool in Orlando is black. The judge, fearful of an innocent verdict and more rioting, moved the trial to Tallahassee, where the jury pool is 21 percent black. Then someone noticed that the pool is only 2.4 percent Hispanic, and Mr. Lozano’s lawyer argued that if it made sense to move the trial because of the race of the dead suspects, it made sense to consider the race of the defendant also.
After more wrangling, the prosecutors agreed, and the trial has been moved back to Orlando, which has a population that is 10 percent Hispanic. Now the trial is scheduled for May in Orlando [Miami Officer’s retrial moved yet again,NYT, 3/11/93, p. A18.] . . . or at least that is the latest word.
The Proud Lady
Black-owned manufacturers of skin lighteners and hair straighteners are furious that white cosmetics companies are winning customers in a market they consider exclusively theirs. The manufacturers have joined in a campaign to put a symbol called the “proud lady” on all their products so that customers will know to patronize blacks rather than whites. [Charles Boisseau, 800 phone line steers customers to black businesses, Houston Chronicle, 4/23/93, p. 1B.]
Of the People, by the People . . .
Kay Patterson is a state senator in the South Carolina legislature who has no illusions about his role in government: represent the interests of black people. Currently, the population of his district is 65 percent blacks; “I’d like for it to get up around 100 percent,” he explains, so that he need not worry about the other 35 percent.
Mr. Patterson sprinkles his speech with profanity and black dialect and refers to white legislators as “white boys.” He recently sent a letter to black elected officials inviting them to a segregated strategy meeting. “Now please don’t bring any of your ‘White-Friends,’” the letter read, “this is a ‘Colored’ meeting.” [Patterson offers no apology for actions, Post and Courier (Columbia) 4/5/93, p. 3B.]
Will Zaire Disappear?
Zaire, which has enough raw materials to make it one of the richest nations in the world, is withering away. It does not even have a civil war; it has just stumbled to a halt. Businesses, stores, and factories have been stripped clean by unpaid soldiers. International airlines stopped flying in long ago, and the once-numerous expatriate businessmen have fled. The “nation’s” currency, the zaire, is worth 2.5 million to the dollar, which is to say that Zairian bank notes cost more to print than they are worth. Half of the Kinshasa zoo’s animals have starved to death, and the lions have begun to eat each other.
Only one thing keeps the country going. Zaire is the second largest producer of diamonds in the world, and the smugglers who run the diamond trade ride fine cars and wear expensive jewelry. There is no longer any difference between corruption and government. Rich Zairians hire soldiers to guard their homes from the hungry masses, and unpaid school teachers hold private classes for the children of diamond merchants. “You could feed all of the data on Zaire into a computer and the answer would be that this country doesn’t exist,” says a European diplomat. [Liz Sly, “Collapse of Government,” Birmingham News, 4/6/93.]
Conditions like this are at last coming to the attention of even the most hardened liberals. The New York Times Magazine of April 18, 1993 has actually published an article arguing that since great chunks of Africa have fallen into hopeless chaos, they should be recolonized. [Paul Johnson, Colonialism’s back — and not a moment too soon, NYT magazine, 4/18/93, p. 22.] Of course, Americans could start a little closer to home, perhaps in Detroit, or East Saint Louis, or Camden, or . . .
The University of Pennsylvania has tied itself into knots over whether it is a racial slur to call a black woman a water buffalo. A freshman is said to have shouted this fearful insult out the window at a group of black sorority students who were making noise, adding that there was a zoo nearby if they wanted to party.
Since disciplinary action against the freshman hinges on whether “water buffalo” is a racial slur, a panel of specialists on ethnic insult has been combing the literature to see if the words have ever been used this way. One faculty member has argued that since water buffalo are “large, dark, primitive animals that live in Africa,” the term is ipso facto a racial slur. Others have pointed out that water buffalo live in Asia, not in Africa.
Thus does the administration spends its time. The president of Penn, Sheldon Hackney, is President Clinton’s nominee to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities. [Speech Code Silliness, Wash Post, 5/2/93]
The New Dominion
In the May/June issue of American Heritage, the state of Virginia has paid for a double-page tourism advertisement for itself. It features six large photographs of black people, and has the following text:
Did you know that the North Pole was co-discovered by an African American named Matthew A. Henson? That the first woman bank president Maggie Leana Walker was black? That the District of Columbia was surveyed by Benjamin Banneker, a Virginia publisher, astronomer and African American?
If you want to immerse yourself in African American history, don’t just go to your library. Come to Virginia. Nowhere are the contributions of African Americans more evident. Or more profound.
Of the six photographs of blacks, one is of the current governor of the state, Douglas Wilder. [pp. 28,29 of AH, May/June, 1993.]
More ‘Racism’
George Bojarksi of Richmond (TX) recently died and his son Larry arranged for the body to be embalmed. Later, there was a dispute with the owner of the mortuary, Newell Evans, about cremation fees. Early one morning, in retaliation, Mr. Evans dumped George Bojarksi’s nearly-naked body on the front steps of Larry Bojarski’s apartment. When Mr. Bojarski had Mr. Evans charged with abuse of a corpse, the defendant expressed astonishment and accused the county prosecutor of bad faith. Mr. Evans, who is black, claims that the charge is racist and was filed only because the corpse was white. [Patti Muck, Body-dumping case turns to racial issue, Houston Chronicle,4/23/93, p. 29A.]
Seeing the Light
The rise in anti-white crime has been so great that even the professional white-bashers have begun to notice. An organization in Alabama called Klanwatch points out that in 1992, nine whites were officially designated as having been killed for racial reasons, as were six blacks, four Hispanics, and two Asians. “The problem of black-on-white bias crime is of deep concern because it is on the increase,” says a spokesman. He notes that in the city of Chicago more bias crimes were committed against whites than against any other race.
Fahim Minkah, of a group called the National Black United Front, says these numbers are a meaningless distraction. “I think focusing on that [hate crimes against whites] is a waste of resources. We’ve got thousands of people in America, in the world, that have been denied jobs, housing, because of hateful [white] bigots.” [Terry Box, Hate crimes against whites increase, Dallas Morning News, 4/28/93, p. 1A.]
Last year, six black marines at Camp LeJeune (SC) got drunk in a barracks, worked themselves into a frenzy over “racism,” and decided to do something about it. “We are going to get us a white boy tonight,” Kenneth Parker reportedly said. They went out with a shotgun and found a white marine, Rodney Page, and explained what they intended to do. As Mr. Page begged for his life, they shot him to death in the presence of his pregnant wife. One of the defendants has pleaded guilty and has agreed to testify against the others in exchange for having a life sentence reduced to 28 years. [AP. Marines angry about racism, defendant testifies, Raleigh News & Observer, Feb. 3, 1993.]
The Old Switcheroo
On April 28th, NBC showed a made-for-television movie called “Moment of Truth: Why My Daughter.” It recounted the true story of a mother’s search for justice after her daughter was raped, tortured, and killed. The program was filmed in very convincing documentary style, but the producers made one small change. The real rapist/killer was black; for NBC he was white.
