O Tempora, O Mores! (July, 1994)
American Renaissance, July 1994
Separate but Dependent
A University of Chicago political scientist has found that 62 percent of a polling sample of blacks think the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan is “a positive viewpoint within the black community.” Fifty-six percent of blacks also support the idea of an exclusively black political party. They seek rights but not responsibilities. Eighty-six were opposed to the idea of an independent black nation. [Survey finds growing support for a black political party, SF Chron, 4/15/94.]
Too White
According to the New York Times, the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce has trouble persuading businesses to move to the city because it is too white. Some corporate leaders claim they do not want to set up shop in a city that does not have enough “diversity.” Michael Reagan, president of the Chamber of Commerce says, “We have a lot going for us: a growing economy, a highly educated work force. But the image of homogeneity hurts us.” [Dirk Johnson, White Communities: a corporate deterrent, NYT, 4/18/94, p. A8.]
Only in America
A Los Angeles striptease club called the Odd Ball Cabaret has something called the shower display, in which a naked woman bathes in view of customers. The Los Angeles Disabled Access Commission voted unanimously to force the club to make the display area accessible by nude dancers in wheel chairs. [Scott McConnell, Why is this man whining?, NY Post, 5/20/94, p. 21.]
Chasing a Mirage
An Atlanta-area black bar association recently held a meeting to discuss the subject, “Disbarment: How to Combat the Trend Among African-American Attorneys.” The audience learned that although blacks are only three percent of the Georgia bar, they accounted for 21 percent of disbarments between January 1991 and September 1993. The association’s newsletter reported that “The presentation caused a flurry of activity and a mirage of questions.” [“September Meeting,” Gate City Bar Association Newsletter, 10/12/93.]
Hillaryland
Mrs. Bill Clinton has a personal staff of 13 people. All but one are women. Her chief of staff, Margaret Williams, is black. [WSJ, 4/12/94, p. 1.]
Magic Runs Out for Babyface
Richard “Babyface” Jameswhite of Brooklyn, wanted for 15 murders, three rapes, and untold shootings, was finally run to ground in Stone Mountain, Georgia. The 20-year-old Mr. Jameswhite is only 5’ 5” tall, but was notoriously dangerous. As The New York Amsterdam News put it, “even some who consorted with Jameswhite breathed a sigh of relief at news of his arrest because of his unpredictable nature. He was known to shoot at the slightest provocation.” [Lester Hinds, Jamaican “obeah’ could not protect notorious baby-faced killer forever, Amst. News, 5/7/94, p. 5.] That seems to have been his problem in Georgia. Someone accidentally backed his car into Mr. Jameswhite’s, and was promptly shot to death. Police made a quick arrest.
Mr. Jameswhite is said to have regularly shipped his clothes to Jamaica, to have them treated with “obeah” magic. He believed this made him impervious to bullets and invisible to the police.
Mixed Marriages Still Rare
In 1990 only about two percent of all married couples in America were inter-racial, though about four percent of all marriages that year were inter-racial. Whites and blacks are the least likely to marry outside their racial group, with American Indians the most likely to do so.
Of all white people who are married, only 0.01 percent of men and 0.03 percent of women have married a black. If marriages were random with respect to race, there would be 20 times as many white woman-black man unions and about 50 times as many white man-black woman unions. Whites are more likely to marry Hispanics than blacks. If marriages were random by race, there would be only five times as many white-Hispanic marriage as there are now. Sixty-eight percent of Asians and Hispanics marry without their own groups. [Interracial marriages increase, but still rare, WSJ, 5/9/94.]
Rough Justice
On May 30th, a dissident Black Muslim cleric named James Bess tried to assassinate Kahlid Abdul Muhammad, a close associate of Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Bess fired repeatedly at Mr. Muhammad, wounding him and five other people. He was subdued and then beaten to within an inch of his life by Mr. Muhammad’s supporters, who are said to be among the best disciplined, most restrained blacks in America. If he had not been rescued by police officers with drawn guns, Mr. Bess would probably have been beaten to death. No charges have been filed in what could reasonably be called the attempted murder of Mr. Bess. [Seth Mydans, Suspect Linked to Muslim Fringe Group, NYT, 5/31/94, p. A10. Joe Shea, Shooter was booted from “nation,’ NY Post, 5/31/94, p. 5.]
Colin Ferguson was likewise subdued after he went on an anti-white shooting rampage in a Long Island Rail Road car. He was more successful than Mr. Bess, killing six commuters and wounding 19 others. However, he had the good fortune to be subdued by whites. He was not injured.
One cannot help noting the contrast with a similar case in Mexico. Luis Colosio, a presidential candidate, was assassinated at a political rally. His assassin, too, was beaten nearly to death and probably would have died without the intervention of security guards.
Revealing Comments
Louis Farrakhan and Khalid Muhammad have been making edifying accusations about whites. During an appearance on the Phil Donahue Show (about two weeks before the attempt on his life), Mr. Muhammad maintained that the election of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa was “a sham,” and that Mr. Mandela is the front man for white supremacists who still control the country. “No man can walk out of prison after 27 years and become the President,” he said. Of course, if the races were reversed, it would be impossible. Blacks would never give up power, so Mr. Muhammad cannot believe that whites are doing so. Like many other blacks, Mr. Muhammad refuses to take at face value the self-destructive policies pursued by whites and cannot help but seek motives that are plausible to blacks. [Neil Graves, Khalid calls Mandela pawn of supremacists, NY Post, 5/13/94.]
Earlier in May, at the University of Toledo in Ohio, Minister Farrakhan told a black audience that whites deliberately refrain from stopping blacks from killing each other because the cadavers are a rich source of organs. When a rich white man needs a kidney or a heart, says Minister Farrakhan, he says “get us a nigger.” “When you’re killing each other they can’t wait for you to die,” he added; “you’ve become good for parts.” [Farrakhan links race to transplants, NYT, 5/2/94.] Minister Farrakhan appears not to know that organ transplants ordinarily work best when donor and recipient are the same race. Like Mr. Muhammad, he seems to be imputing to others motives that he, himself, would understand.
Fox Guards Henhouse
In April, 1993, the head of the Smithsonian Institution appointed a task force to investigate how responsive the museums are to Hispanics. The report, just published, lambastes the Smithsonian for failing to devote an entire museum to Hispanics, for not hiring enough of them, for “insensitive” displays, for “willful neglect,” etc., etc. Who led the task force? None other than Raoul Yzaguirre, president of the racialist Hispanic organization La Raza (which means “the race”). [Steven Holmes, Report criticizes Smithsonian on Hispanic focus and hiring, NYT, 5/3/94.] No doubt there are Hispanic activists who refuse to believe that whites would voluntarily let such a man run the task force, and that he must be the pawn of clever white supremacists.
Blackmailing the Feds
The May 1994 issue of Government Executive magazine has an excellent article on how the threat of bias complaints makes it impossible for many white bureaucrats to discipline non-white subordinates. Federal workers file twelve times as many discrimination complaints, per capita, as civilian employees — eight for every 1,000 workers every year — but only 1.4 percent of these complaints — half as many as in the civilian workforce — result in findings of discrimination.
These odds do not make complaints any less effective, because it is a bad mark on a white manager’s record to have provoked a bias complaint, no matter how frivolous. Furthermore, during the year or two it takes to process a complaint, the employee must be handled with kid gloves because anything less may be called retaliation. These are some of the reasons why, in confidential surveys, government managers admit that they give unsatisfactory performance ratings to only one tenth of the employees who deserve them.
Since the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the balance of power has shifted even further towards people who scream “bias.” Government agencies are now liable for up to $300,000 in damages if they are found to have discriminated, whereas in the past they were liable only for adjustments in pay. The Department of Agriculture has announced the defeatist policy that it will always settle discrimination claims rather than fight them to the end. This means that a non-white employee can virtually count on some kind of payoff, no matter how preposterous his complaint.
Government Executive concludes: “[I]f the process cannot be reconfigured to eliminate opportunist complaints swiftly, managers will increasingly duck their disciplinary duties, and the government will increasingly be run by the least competent but the most noisy.” [Leslie Kaufman, Bias or Blackmail?, Government Executive, May 1994, pp. 22ff.]
Federal Tyranny
Hulond Humphries, the principal of Randolph County High School in Alabama, recently made news because of his opposition to miscegenation. He said he would cancel the school’s prom if any inter-racial couples planned to attend and called a mixed-race student a “mistake” by her parents. Mr. Humphries was temporarily suspended by his local school board, but was reinstated. The prom took place, and inter-racial couples were allowed to attend. Now, in an unprecedented action, the federal government has filed a civil rights suit to have Mr. Humphries fired. Never before has the Justice Department tried to take away a private citizen’s job because of something he said. [Thomas Hargrove, Nothing like suit to oust educator, Washington Times, 5/21/94.]
Dunning Denny’s
The Denny’s restaurant chain has agreed to pay $54 million to settle cases brought against it by blacks who claim they were either turned away from restaurants or were given bad service. Lawyers will get $8.7 million for their services, and black customers will share $46 million. The firm that handled the case, Saperstein, Mayeda & Goldstein, is a specialist in shaking down large companies in cases of this kind, and its partners have become very rich. [Stephen Labaton, Denny’s Restaurants to pay $54 million in race bias suits, NYT, 5/15/94, p. A1. Benjamin Holden, Denny’s chain settles suits by minorities, WSJ, 5/24/94, p. A3.]
It is clear that Denny’s had no discrimination policy, and decisions to turn away blacks or make large parties of blacks pay in advance were taken by individual restaurant managers. In a free society, that would be their right. In a society ruled by racial hysteria, this is a crime for which the parent company must pay more than $40 million.
Integration Fails
In a celebrated school integration case in the mid-1980s, a federal judge ordered Kansas City to raise property taxes and build the most lavish public school system in the nation. The theory was that white students would venture out of the suburbs to take advantage of fencing classes, computers, Olympic-size pools, and professional-quality broadcast studios.
Whites have once again shown that race matters more than money. Kansas City’s schools are less integrated now than when the super-magnet-school program began. Furthermore, the test scores of the mostly-black students who attend these luxurious schools are slightly worse than the scores at regular schools. So far, the price tag for this exercise has been $1.3 billion. [John McCormick, “Separate but equal’ again?, Newsweek, no date.]
Marion Barry, the former mayor of Washington, DC who was jailed in 1992 for smoking crack cocaine, has announced his candidacy for this year’s mayoral election. His political comeback began in 1992 when he was elected to the City Council. His campaign theme is “Lessons from the past, visions for the future.” Mr. Barry, who calls himself “a seasoned leader,” claims that “Washington must have a strong and visionary leader who knows how to energize our people and guide the city to recovery.” [Jonathan Moore, Barry targets crime, despair, Wash Times, 5/21/94. Tom Knott, I’ve seen the tape and I’m not hopeful, Wash Times, 5/19/94, p. C2.]
The Rewards of Ingenuity
A Brooklyn woman, race unspecified, has emerged as the champion welfare cheat. Using as many as 15 different aliases and claiming to have 73 children, she has collected almost $450,000 in welfare over the last seven years. Authorities are still not sure what her real name is or whether she really has any children. Jane Doe, as she is called for legal purposes, was finally caught when she applied for several passports. [Cheryl Wetzstein, Brooklyn welfare queen’s scam sets record for aliases, ‘kids,’ cash stolen, Wash Times, p. A1.]
Many black parents have decided that black boys should be taught in separate classes by themselves. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Organization of Women (NOW) have launched suits to prevent this, but blacks are holding firm. As Jawanza Kunjufu, a Baltimore consultant and separatist puts it, “The ACLU and the NOW organization think they can decide that [how children are taught]. I think black parents need to make that decision.” [Janny Scott, Boys-Only Classrooms: separate but equal?, LA Times, 1/15/94, p. A1.] Perhaps white parents need to make the same decisions about their children’s educations.
Taming the Savage
An experiment in San Francisco has shown that it is possible to run an orderly housing project — but only under extra-Constitutional conditions. Three years ago, the 576-unit Geneva Towers were ungovernable. Whenever police responded to killings and shootings, they were pinned down by sniper fire and assaulted with debris thrown from windows. They dodged television sets, an automobile transmission, and even a dead body. The grounds of the complex were as much as a foot deep in broken glass, the stairwells and elevators were privies, the underground garage was filled with abandoned cars, and nearly two-thirds of the windows had been smashed and boarded up.
In 1991, the department of Housing and Urban Development turned Geneva Towers over to a private security firm. It hired 60 beefy, armed guards who swarmed through the building, ejecting about 70 miscreant tenants. They also set up surveillance cameras, forced residents to enter through one well-controlled entrance, and took to frisking anyone who looked suspicious. They also enter apartments without a warrant to search for contraband and criminals.
Ordinarily none of this is legal. Private law enforcement and tenant consent forms do not necessarily make it legal. But it is effective. Not one major crime report was filed from Geneva Towers in all of 1993, and residents profess to be much happier. It is also expensive. Guards and security alone have cost $3.5 million in just over two years. [Jim Carlton, The Trade-Off, WSJ, 4/26/94, p. 1.]
This may be a first step towards a multi-tiered system of legal rights. All-white areas will continue to operate according the norms of Anglo-European civility; other areas are already operating differently and the law may come to recognize this.
Fairness in Broadcasting
Since 1978, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has had two ways of ensuring that non-whites have better-than-equal chances to acquire radio and television stations. If a white owner sells a station to a non-white, he may defer capital gains. This can amount to a very considerable saving for the seller, so a non-white can pay less for the station than a white. Since 1978, 275 television and radio stations, and 20 cable systems have been sold to non-whites under this scheme.
The other method applies to whites who, for whatever reason, have lost their licenses. They have the option of either simply going out of business or selling the station to a non-white. The selling price is likely to be well below market, but a low price is better than nothing at all. Thirty-eight stations have been transferred this way.
The FCC also uses statistical methods to determine whether broadcasters employ enough non-whites. Under the Clinton administration, the commission has just increased the maximum fine it can levy against “offenders” from $20,000 to $250,000. [Geraldine Fabrikant, Slow Gains by Minority Broadcasters, NYT, 5/31/94, p. D1.]
For All Tastes
There is a new crop of magazines catering to interracial couples. One, called New People, styles itself “the journal for the human race.” At the bottom of its masthead there is a notice that reads:
The use of the term ‘race’ and terms of racial classification (e.g. white, black, interracial, etc.) does not mean that we acknowledge any biological validity to these terms. We continue to use them only to challenge conventional notions of racial classification, separation and inequality.
A competitor to New People is called Interrace. A recent cover advertised articles entitled “Top 10 Interracial Turn-ons,” “The ‘Racially Ambiguous’ Woman,” and “What Color Hate?” It, too, has a masthead notice, which reads, with no apparent sense of contradiction: “Our purpose is to dispel negative stereotypes; to ‘accentuate the positive’; to offer a wide open forum for differing views . . .”
The newest offering in the genre is Biracial Child, “your guide to raising happy, healthy multicultural children.” It is said to be “for parents of biracial and multiracial children, transracial adoptive parents and interracial families and stepfamilies.”
