O Tempora, O Mores! (January, 1994)
American Renaissance, January 1994
Whites Fight Back
The city of Beaumont, Texas has been ordered to pay a white man $376,000 in damages because of racial discrimination. David Shows was rejected for a job as a policeman despite getting a higher employment test score than a woman and a Hispanic who were hired. A judge ordered the city to pay Mr. Shows $76,000 in back pay and a jury awarded him $300,000 for “mental anguish.” The same judge has determined that the city’s discriminatory affirmative action program was unconstitutional and has forced its cancellation. “They forced me to fight,” said Mr. Shows, “and I fought.” [Richard Stewart, Vidor officer wins discrimination suit, Houston Chronicle, 11/13/93.]
In another suit, a judge has found that a Louisiana farmer was illegally kept out of a Farmer’s Home Administration (FmHA) program because he was white. Larry Moore applied to buy 190 acres of land repossessed by FmHA, but received a letter explaining that the sale was not open to whites. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has called this “overt racial discrimination.” Mr. Moore has since filed a claim for $21 million in damages. [Ron Ridenhour, Reverse-discrimination suit: new boundaries?, SF Examiner, 11/21/93, p. B10.]
Likewise, a federal district court has found that the minority construction set-aside program run by the city of San Diego, California was an unconstitutional quota system. The suit was filed by a predominantly white group, the Associated General Contractors. The plaintiffs showed that the system prevented white contractors from getting contracts, even when they offered the lowest bid. [Michael Granberry, San Diego ordered to end minority builders’ program, LA Times, 9/30/93.]
Until last fall the Girl Scout pledge started with the following words: “On my honor, I will try to serve God and my country . . .” At the latest Girl Scout national convention, held in Minneapolis in October, delegates voted 1,560 to 375 to let the girls substitute whatever they like for “God.” They can now pledge to serve Allah or Buddha or Gaia or the great plumed serpent. Boy Scouts continue to serve God, for the time being. [Girl scouts allow for religious diversity in pledge, NYT, 10/25/93, p. A11.]
Brits Show Spunk
Golliwogs are black-face dolls that have been popular with British children since they 19th century. Lately, they have come under attack because they are “racist.” The lefty-dominated city council in Greenwitch recently sent a black woman to inspect the business of Deena Newton, who runs a small day care business in her home. The inspector found that Mrs. Newton owns a golliwog, and the council promptly lifted her childminding license. The resulting outrage forced the council to reinstate Mrs. Newton, and toy manufacturers reported that golliwogs rose to the top of British children’s Christmas wish lists. [Gollies top the toy lists, no paper, no date, British, Dec. 1993.]
Name Change Backfires
As the student populations go from white to non-white, so do the names of schools. Many a Robert E. Lee high school or George Washington grammar school has been changed to Thurgood Marshall or Malcolm X. In San Antonio, Jefferson Davis Middle School once had an all-white student body but is now virtually all black. Last year, school officials decided that it was wrong to commemorate the president of the Confederacy, so they changed the name to S.J. Davis, after the first black to serve on the board of trustees.
People later began to wonder what the S.J. stands for, and since Mr. Davis is dead, they asked his widow. She told them that Mr. Davis’ father had been an ardent Southern patriot, and had named his son Stonewall Jackson Davis.
Four California elementary school children have actually gone on trial for a hate crime that turned out to be a hoax. Jake Thompson, a black student of Encinal Elementary School, claimed that ten white and Hispanic schoolmates had beaten him up, torn his shirt, and held his head in the toilet. He also claimed that they had said “Stupid black boy” while they did it, so this became a sensational act of bigotry.
The defendants, in what was classified as a felony hate crime, were all 10 to 12 years old. The prosecutors were so eager to try the case that when they learned that one of the accused had not been in school on the day of the attack they simply decided it had happened on another day. During the week-long trial, it became clear that young Jake had torn his own shirt, wet his head, and lied about the attack, probably in order to get out of afternoon classes. [Sandra Gonzalez, Four boys to go on trial in school hate-crime case, SJ Merc News, 10/25/93, p. 1B David Sylvester, 4 Schoolboys in San Jose acquitted of hate crime charges, SF Chronicle, 10/30/93, p. A17.]
This case says a lot about America. By the time they are 12 years old, blacks know that the accusation of racism is so powerful that it can send otherwise sane people into a frenzy; and whites have been so terrorized that they will drag ten-year olds into court to show their zeal for combating “racism.”
Eye on the Times
The New York Post, the one New York newspaper that occasionally writes sensibly about race, has started a column called “Times Watch.” Written by Hilton Kramer, a former art critic for the New York Times, it is a weekly roasting of the liberal myopia of the country’s “newspaper of record.” Mr. Kramer has been particularly good about the Times’ reporting on race, which he scoffs at as “affirmative action journalism.” [Hilton Kramer, The mayor’s invisible record, NY Post, 11/9/93, p. 17.]
Ear on the Airwaves
Clayton Riley is the boss of New York’s WLIB, one of the most virulently anti-white radio stations in America. Recently he had this to say about John Taylor, a writer for New York magazine who had said unkind things about black radio programming:
We talk about what Colin Powell said: ‘You find the enemy, you isolate it, you kill it.’ . . . We want to put John Taylor on that list. Remember telling you the story about Miles Davis? Broadcaster asked him, ‘Miles, what would you do if you found out you had an hour left to live?’ Miles said ‘I’d like to spend it strangling a white boy.’ We’re going to add John Taylor to the list of white boys Miles Davis would like to have strangled.
[Minoo Southgate, Why do we tolerate violence?, NY Post, 9/22/93, p. 15.]
Rev. Jackson Changes Tune
Recently, Jesse Jackson has started suggesting that perhaps not all the troubles of the black race can be blamed on whites: “We lose more lives annually to the crime of blacks killing blacks than the sum total of lynchings in the entire history of the country. We are far more threatened by the dope than the rope.” [Words of the week, Jet, 11/15/93.]
Mr. Jackson recently took this message to Roosevelt High School in New York, where black students regularly murder each other, but the students were unimpressed. To Mr. Jackson’s plea that students not bring weapons to school, one senior replied, “I’m sorry, sir. This is 1993, not 1963. I don’t know where you’ve been.”
“You need some kind of protection,” he added, “because nobody else is going to stop a bullet for you.”
Another senior was also skeptical. “He’s a great leader so I’ll listen to him. But it’s easy for him to talk about giving up guns and drugs. He don’t have to live with the same problems we do. Some people bring guns to school because their lives are in danger. He has body guards, we don’t. He has money, we don’t.” [Don Terry, A Graver Jackson’s Cry: Overcome the violence!, NYT, 11/13/93, p. A1.]
Security Where It’s Needed
The usual cry of racism went up when it was discovered that some Drugs for Less stores in Atlanta had put anti-theft devices on products popular with blacks but not on those favored by whites. A spokesman for the stores was unruffled. The only criterion for putting on the devices, he explained, is whether they are likely to be shoplifted. [AP, Security tags on items aimed at blacks, 11/30/93.]
More Security Where It’s Needed
St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh, North Carolina has instituted a new admissions requirement: Freshmen must produce their police records. Students have started killing and robbing each other, and the college wanted to keep out trouble-makers. The usual crew claims that this is humiliating and discriminatory, especially for blacks, but this complaint has an odd ring to it. The administration and nearly all students are black. [AP, Students Divided over college check of police records, no paper or date.]
Homeless Infants
More and more pregnant women go to the hospital, have their babies, and then clear out, leaving the newborns behind. A federal study has found that 22,000 babies were abandoned in 1991, most of them black. Taking care of these waifs costs as much as $125 million a year. [Babies with nowhere to go, US News and World Report, 11/22/93.]
Raven’s Progressive Sonatas
A recent study at the University of California at Irvine has found that listening to classical music can raise your IQ — at least for a few minutes. College students were given a standard IQ test after listening either to Mozart or a relaxation tape, or meditating for 10 minutes. Every student’s score was higher after listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D. However, the effect wore off after about 15 minutes.
The researchers suspect that the complexity of classical music stimulates the brain while the simple, repetitive rhythms of rock music hamper brain activity. They believe that playing classical music rather than just listening to it may permanently increase IQ. [Robert Lee Hotz, UCI study ties rise in IQ to classical music, LA Times, 10/14/93, p. A1.]
On the Rocky Road to Assimilation
Two doctors have recently been fined $10,000 each for an incident that took place in October, 1991. Kwok Wei Chan, surgeon, and Mohan Korgaonkar, anesthesiologist, were about to operate on an elderly woman at the Medical Center of Central Massachusetts when they began to argue. Dr. Chan swore at Dr. Korgaonkar. Dr. Korgaonkar threw a cotton-tipped prep stick at Dr. Chan. The two came to blows. They duked it out on the floor of the operating room, while a wide-eyed nurse monitored the unconscious patient. After a while, the doctors picked themselves up and completed the operation.
In addition to the fines the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine ordered the two to undergo joint psychotherapy. [AP, Doctors fined for scuffling in operating room, SJ Merc News, 11/28/93, p. 7A.]
Too White
The University of Alabama at Birmingham has dropped Blaze, the mascot for its athletic teams, which are called the Blazers. Blaze, who was a big, rough-and-tumble Norseman, drew fire for being too mean, too masculine, and too white. Grant Shingleton, sports information director for the university, explained that poor Blaze was, “I hate to use the word — too Aryan.” [AP, UAB to dump controversial mascot, no paper name or date.]
Amy Biehl was the American woman, working for “liberation” in South Africa, who was murdered by blacks because of her race (see AR, Nov. 1993). Seven blacks were charged in the killing, but the prosecution has not gone smoothly. One defendant, who was not immediately jailed because he was only 15, has disappeared. Three others have been set free because the main witness against them fears he will be killed if he testifies. When the three were freed, they were carried away from the court house on the shoulders of exultant supporters. At a recent hearing involving the three remaining defendants, black visitors to the court taunted whites and giggled when Miss Biehl’s wounds were described. [AP, South Africa Freed 3 in American’s Death, SF Chron, 11/23/93, p. A12.]
Heart of Darkness
In the African country of Burundi, the minority Tutsi (Watusi) tribe has traditionally lorded over the majority Hutu. In pre-colonial times the Tutsi kept the Hutu as slaves, but whites put an end to that. Since independence, the Tutsi and the Hutu have periodically had a serious go at each other. In 1972, an estimated 150,000 Hutu were massacred by Tutsi with the help of the Tutsi-dominated armed forces. In 1988, the army went on another anti-Hutu rampage, killing at least 5,000 and perhaps as many as 50,000.
Now the tribes are at it again. A Hutu, Melchior Ndadaye, was chosen as president in the country’s first-ever election, but Tutsi, who are used to running things, killed him in October. This has set off another massacre that has continued at least into December. This time, Hutu are attacking Tutsi villages with machetes and dismembering everyone they can find. The Foreign Minister thinks the death toll might surpass 1972’s 150,000. [Killings on Rise in Burundi, Official Says, SF Chron, 11/27/93, p. C4.]
Say It Often Enough and Someone May Believe It
In a recent editorial, the Houston Chronicle explained why the city should celebrate the 16th of September, Mexican independence day: “Texans share countless bonds of blood and heritage with Mexicans. The threads of Mexico’s culture run deeply through our state’s fabric. It is not overstating the case to observe that our destinies are intertwined . . .”
“As a people, we Americans need not feel threatened when one group among us celebrates its heritage. On the contrary, our diversity is our strength as a nation. It is cause for celebration.” [Mexico’s Freedom Day, Houston Chronicle, 9/16/93.]
Contented Colonies
Representatives of most of the world’s remaining colonies met in London recently to discuss how to maintain their status. “No country that moved to independence in the last 30 years has any success stories,” said Thomas Jefferson, an official from the Cayman Islands. “We see no benefit in moving on.”
Millions upon millions of people would be better off if they had not shucked European rule. South Africa has enjoyed more years of growth and prosperity under European rule than any other part of Africa. There will be no benefit in majority rule.
Sauce for the Goose
The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) makes it its business to see that protected minorities are hired in proportion to their share of the population. Recently it brought suit against the owner of a dry cleaning business that does only $400,000 of business a year. The company was started by a Korean immigrant, and 81 percent of all the people it had ever hired were Korean. Since less than one percent of the Chicago work force is Korean this sounded like shameless discrimination.
As it happened, new workers learned about jobs solely through word of mouth, and this meant that a virtually all Korean work force perpetuated itself. A seventh circuit court judge ruled that passive recruitment of this kind was not discrimination. We can be sure that this would not have been an acceptable defense for a white-owned company. The judge’s ruling contained the following implied preferences for foreigners and blacks:
Recent immigrants are frequent targets for discrimination, some of it violent. It would be a bitter irony if the federal agency dedicated to enforcing the anti-discrimination laws succeeded in using these laws to kick these people off the ladder by compelling them to institute costly systems of hiring. There is equal danger to small black run businesses in our central cities. Must such businesses undertake in the name of non-discrimination costly measures to recruit non-black employees? [EEOC v. Consolidated Service Systems, 989 F.2d 233 (7th Cir. 1993) — quoted in Texas Employment Law Letter, p. 4 no date.]
White-owned companies are routinely forced to undertake costly recruitment measures to find non-white employees.
