Posted on January 1, 1995

O Tempora, O Mores! (January, 1995)

American Renaissance, January 1995

Elections, 1994

California voters passed Proposition 187, which denies illegal immigrants welfare, public housing, education, and all but emergency medical treatment. A state court immediately flouted the will of the people by prohibiting enforcement of the provision that applies to education. Fortunately, Prop 187 has the support of Governor Pete Wilson, who has vowed to take the fight to the Supreme Court.

A number of school boards, including those in Los Angeles and San Jose, have outraged voters by joining in the suits against the enforcement of Prop 187. This has provoked a gratifying wave of protest among organizers for the proposition, who find it unconscionable for elected officials to use public money to violate the public will. There has been such an uproar in some areas that school boards have dropped their suits for fear of voter recalls. [Laura Mecoy, Public wrath hits officials suing the foil prop. 187, SF Examiner, 11/22/94.]

Outgoing Mexican President Carlos Salinas denounced the measure as “xenophobic.” The new, recently-installed President, Ernesto Zedilla, has also complained about it. Honduran President, Carlos Reima, has promised to lead five other Central American heads of state in denouncing Prop 187 at a Western hemisphere summit that was to be held in Miami, December 8-11. They say it violates the “spirit” of NAFTA. [Brian Tooney, Next: free movement of labour, Australian Financial Review, 12/1/94.]

The proposition passed by a margin of three-to-two, but whites were the only race whose majority voted “yes”(though a different survey found that a majority of Asians voted in favor, also). The racial breakdown as reported in the Los Angeles Times was as follows: [A Look at the Electorate, LA Times, 11/11/94.]

Yes No
White 63% 37%
Black 47% 53%
Hispanic 23% 77%
Asian 47% 53%

As California’s population — and voter rolls — change, there is no telling what could happen in the state. If 77 percent of Hispanics, who may soon be California’s dominant group, are in favor of welfare for illegal aliens, it is a safe bet that a majority is in favor of complete Mexicanization.

To the dismay of the mainstream press (television commentator Cokie Roberts shed tears on camera as she announced election results), the Republicans have taken control of both the House and the Senate. They will be better than Democrats but they only slow the rot rather than stop it.

Republicans are becoming the party of white people (58 percent of whites voted Republican in 1994, compared to 50 percent in 1990), but its leaders do not dare recognize this. The Republican “Contract with America,” for example, says nothing about reducing immigration or stopping affirmative action.

The Republican victory is nevertheless unhappy news for blacks in the House of Representatives. Under the Democrats, they chaired three full committees and 17 subcommittees. Under the Republicans, they will chair nothing. Republicans will abolish the District of Columbia committee and strip D.C. “representative” Eleanor Holmes Norton of her limited but clearly unconstitutional voting rights. Perhaps most important, Congress will stop funding the Congressional Black Caucus. Blacks can still meet informally, but they will no longer have the taxpayer-funded staff that made the organization so influential. [Eleanor Clift, The black power outage, Newsweek, 10/28/94, p. 32.]

The election season was full of ridiculous statements by candidates of all races, but one of the choicest came from black New York City congressman, Charles Rangel. Only racists, he said, could be in favor of lower taxes or the death penalty. [Deborah Orin, Rangel draws fire by calling ‘tax cuts’ a code for racism, NY Post, 11/3/94.]

Perhaps the most blatantly racial campaign appeal was made by a white congressman from Cincinnati named David Mann. One of his radio commercials, broadcast over black stations, said this about his Republican challenger:

In our congressional election there is a serious threat to the African-American community. His name: Steve Chabot. His party: Republican.

Steve Chabot wants to destroy families of the poor only because they are black and poor . . . Chabot wants more African-Americans given the death penalty than white Americans.

[Paul Gigot, Race card becomes a joker for democrats, WSJ, 11/3/94.]

Fertility and Welfare

Welfare recipients are automatically eligible for Medicaid, which routinely pays for fertility treatments for women who cannot have children. The federal government pays 90 percent of the cost, and the states pay the remaining ten percent. Even liberals have begun to wonder about the wisdom of this. Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York all recently opted to stop putting up the ten percent of matching state funds for these treatments (and thus ended the programs), but about ten states continue to help welfare mothers get pregnant.

In 1993, the last year New Jersey paid for treatments, Medicaid paid more than half a million dollars for drug therapy as well as reversals of tubal ligations. What finally prompted Massachusetts to end the treatments was the news that two welfare mothers with eight children each were being helped to have more. In 1992, in New Mexico, an unmarried welfare recipient had quadruplets after Medicaid paid for fertility drugs. [Evan Gahr, Supplementing mother nature, NY Post, 8/31/94.]

The Rewards of Race

Affirmative action operates so powerfully that non-white college graduates can virtually count on being offered jobs. The Wall Street Journal reports that for the class of ‘94, non-whites received an average of three job offers compared to two for whites. Non-whites also got slightly higher starting salaries. [Leon Wynter, Business and Race, WSJ, 9/7/94.]

Simpson Jury

After interminable haggling, the jury has been selected for the O.J. Simpson murder trial. It is composed of eight blacks, two Hispanics, one white, and one half-white half-Indian. Eight are women and four are men. A majority of blacks have repeatedly told poll-takers that they do not think Mr. Simpson is guilty, and at least some of the black jurors do not think so either. One wrote in a juror questionnaire that he would be “surprised” if Mr. Simpson were guilty. Another wrote that he “just didn’t believe it” when he first learned that Mr. Simpson was a suspect. [Kenneth Noble, A jury is chosen to hear the Simpson Murder case, NYT, 11/3/94]

Truth and Consequences

Earlier in 1994, the Chicago Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) came under unwelcome national scrutiny for having long overlooked a household in which 19 black children were living in filth and squalor. In October, the president of the Illinois Senate, James Philips, spoke to reporters about the DCFS caseworker who should have taken charge much sooner:

‘Of course, she was a minority. Her boss was a minority. It’s probably a terrible thing to say, but I’ll say it: Some of them do not have the work ethics that we have.’ He went on to say, ‘Secondly, they don’t tend to turn in or squeal on their fellow minorities. I don’t know what you do about that, but it’s kind of a way of life.’ [Pate Philip’s Racism and the work ethic, (editorial), Chi Sun-Time, 10/7/94.]

Many unkind things were then said about Mr. Philips, one of the most incomprehensible by Nefertiti Smith, the black woman president of a public employee labor union: “He is part of the problem why we can’t provide services to the children and families in the poor economic communities.” [Ray Lang, Workers Defended; Resignation urged, Chi Sun-Times, 10/7/94, p. 4.]

Also in October, one of the co-writers of a successful television program, “NYPD Blue,” unburdened himself a little too truthfully. During a seminar on screen-writing in Los Angeles, he told participants that blacks do not make good screen-writers. He once ran a special program to encourage blacks to get into the profession, but noted that of all the writers in that program only a handful became successful and “none of them are black. None of the black writing was any good.” [Verne Gay, Race, Writing and ‘NYPD Blue,’ NY Newsday, no date or page.]

Teach Them Young

The Washington Post has recently started a new section in its paper called “Horizon: The Learning Section,” which is geared towards young people. In one of its first issues, “Horizon” published a long cover story about race, in which the very idea of race was generally pooh poohed. In a box, all by itself, was a separate story called “Race and Intelligence.” We reproduce the item in toto:

Arguments that one human population is intellectually superior to another are fairly new in human history, dating mainly from the time of massive enslavement of Africans. The idea of using Africans in the New World, however, grew out of the racist assumption that they were superior to the American Indians. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish priest of the 1500s, argued that Indians being enslaved by the Spanish conquerors were not up to the ‘civilized’ work demanded of them in farming, mining and industry. He argued that the colonial rulers should import more advanced people such as Africans.

Much later, when some people challenged the morality of slavery, defenders claimed that Africans were not fully human, especially in intellect.

In modern times researchers have made many tests of the mental powers of all groups of people and repeatedly found that if they test people of equivalent social and educational background, they find no significant differences. In 1961, the council of the American Anthropological Association ruled unanimously that it knew of no evidence that any population was less capable than any other of participating fully in modern, complex society. Further studies have reinforced that conclusion. [Race and Intelligence, Wash Post, 11/16/94]

One of the less obvious errors in this passage concerns Bartolomé de las Casas. He did not consider blacks intellectually superior to Indians. He recommended them as slaves because enslaved Indians were sickly and often ran away. He soon regretted this recommendation and opposed slavery of all kinds.

Nor is it true that only recently have different races been thought to differ in intelligence. As early as the second century AD, the Greek physician Galen wrote of the African’s “defective brain, whence also the weakness of his intelligence.”

Whitewashing the News

The New York Post of last September 9th published a full-page story about an unusual rush-hour subway shooting in New York City. A black passenger named Garvey Wright approached another black man who was wearing a suit and reportedly asked him, “Why are you wearing those clothes?” The well-dressed black is said to have replied, “I have to because I need them to go to work.” After a brief argument, the man in the suit shot Mr. Wright twice, severely wounding him. Panic ensued in the packed train, and several people were trampled. [Grand central terror, NY Post, 9/9/94, p. 3.]

The New York Times of the same date published two photographs of the incident, one of rescue workers hustling a gurney to an ambulance, and another of police searching the tracks after the attack. It printed brief captions to the photographs mentioning a “rush hour shooting,” but gave no indication of the race of either man or of the nature of their dispute. [NYT, 9/9/94, p. B1.]

On October 17th, all four New York City newspapers ran stories on two unrelated violent crimes: a black raped a white jogger in Central Park, and a black shot a white investment banker to death. Only the Daily News reported that both perpetrators were black. The New York Post pointed out that the rapist was black but left out the race of the murderer — although the Daily News had reported that the dying man’s last words were “I’ve been shot by a black man.” The New York Post said the killer was black but left out the race of the rapist.

The New York Times, needless to say, found the race of the perpetrators irrelevant in both cases, though it did say, rather pointlessly, that the rapist was “in his late twenties, six feet tall, and 160 pounds, and wearing blue jeans and a brown and green shirt.” Several days later the Times did publish a photo of the apprehended suspect: a Senegalese.

We Will Follow You

Even before the latest South African elections, the abolition of housing laws permitted blacks to move into previously all-white neighborhoods. Predictably, whites have been moving out. One reason is that blacks have a practice of propitiating their ancestors by slaughtering an animal on the driveway of their new home — often a sheep, goat or cow. When white neighbors call the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals they learn that driveway sacrifices are protected religious practices.

One black, noting that he briefly had white neighbors, says “They seem to be disappearing. I don’t know where they are going. But there are more of us than of them. Wherever they disappear, we will be there, too.” [Isabel Wilkerson, The suburbs of Johannesburg stay cold to blacks, NYT, 11/3/94.]

We Have Followed You

Many neighborhoods in Queens, New York, have begun to ignore zoning laws. Residents have converted garages into illegal stores and other businesses. In one otherwise quiet neighborhood, a welding shop emits a deafening din. Back-yard roosters crow every morning. The most brazen residents build squat, concrete bunkers for their illegal businesses. The New York Times notes that this “is a particular problem in neighborhoods with high concentrations of recent immigrants.” [Norimitsu Onishi, Why’d a Rooster Cross 30th Ave.? and Amid the Houses, the Bodegas Grow, NYT, 8/28/94, p. 7.]

Another result of immigration has been a change in construction technology. Now, non-white laborers mix concrete on the sidewalk with a shovel and buckets of water, just like in the 19th century. It is cheaper to hire mobs of illegals than to pay for a cement truck. [David Gordon, U.S. Sliding to Third World Status, LA Times, 9/8/91, p. D2.]

Trouble to Come

President Bill Clinton has been steadily stacking the federal courts with “nontraditional” appointees. Of his 82 confirmed appointments, 41 percent are black, 16 percent Hispanic, and only 40 percent white. He has appointed one American Indian and one Asian. Fifty-two percent of his appointees have been women. [Marcia Coyle, Clinton’s judicial choices change the bench’s face, The National Law Journal, 10/24/94.]

Disqualifying the Best

Every year the Illinois State Science Fair gives an award to the Illinois school that enters the best science team project. For the last four years, the winner has been Avery Coonley School, a private academy that does not admit students unless they have IQs of at least 120. This is too much for the people who give out the awards; they have banned Avery Coonley School from the competition for the next two years. “We have decided to give other schools an opportunity to win,” explains the contest sponsor. [AP, Brainy Schoolkids barred from contest, no paper name or date.]

Bad Signs

British deaf people are politically incorrect. Their sign language gesture for homosexuals is a limp wrist. For Chinese, they slant their eyes, for Jews they make crook noses, and for blacks they flatten their noses with a finger. Very bad, indeed, but the Chinese don’t seem to mind. Their sign for a white person is to make circles with their fingers and put them over their eyes like binoculars.

BBC television, which signs some of its broadcasts, has invented new signs to replace the old ones. This has provoked an uproar among British deaf mutes, who are taking no lip, so to speak. They are furious that people who talk should presume to tell them how to communicate. [Rajeev Syal, Deaf fight to keep their offensive signs, Sunday Times, Aug. 28, 1994.]

Tottering NAACP

The national organization of the NAACP, wracked by scandals and squeezed by reluctant donors, has stopped paying its professional employees. The Baltimore-based organization has a staff of about 100 and an annual budget of $15 million. Its troubles do not directly affect local affiliates, which are mainly run by volunteers. [John Cushman, Short of Cash, N.A.A.C.P stops paying its employees, 11/2/94, p. A14.]

The NAACP has had so much bad press, that the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund is considering changing its name. It has been entirely independent from the NAACP since 1957, and in the 1980s the two groups battled over whether the fund would be allowed to keep using the initials in its name. Now it is thinking of shedding even the appearance of any ties. [Steven Holmes, Rights Group Seeks Distance from N.A.A.C.P. Troubles, NYT, Nov. 8, 1994.]

Berserkley Blues

A mother who withdrew her child from public elementary school in Berkeley, California, wrote an article in a local paper, the Berkeley Voice (Sept. 22, 1994), to explain why:

In my son’s first grade class he got to wear the Outstanding Student medal around his neck one day and he came home elated to tell us about it. When we proudly inquired of his teacher as to how he had won it, we were told that every student gets to wear it one day . . .

Elementary school students are never graded on projects or tests. Report cards reflect the student’s level of cooperation and effort rather than any skills actually mastered. One of my sons received S and E (Satisfactory and Excellent) grades all the way through second grade before his teacher informed us at the end of the year that he had not mastered the second grade skills and needed, he felt, to repeat the grade. Prior to that meeting, we had had no communication whatever to indicate that there was a problem.

[Gail Entrekin, Relief, regret marks Berkeleyans’ departure, Berkeley Voice, 9/22/94, p. 2.]

Kappa Omega

The Kappa Alpha Order is a fraternity that was founded shortly after the War Between the States with the express purpose of honoring and preserving the qualities of duty, honor, and integrity embodied by Robert E. Lee. The general is referred to as the “spiritual founder.”

The fraternity house at the University of Florida is still draped with Confederate flags and displays a portrait of Gen. Lee, but the current president is Prineet Sharma, whose parents immigrated from India. The vice president is Cuban, and one member is black. [Jack Wheat, At UF, signs of new South in fraternity of Old South, Miami Herald, 10/18/94, p. 1A.]

Facing the Future?

In the high schools of the Los Angeles Unified School District, fewer than 10 percent of the students are white. Not surprisingly, they are made to feel like unwanted minorities. One 17-year-old has been treated to so much school-sponsored Hispanic-boosting that she says, “I don’t really see any cultural tradition that white people have. But I envy Latin culture, it’s so enriched with tradition.”

One teacher at Hollywood High — which is 95% non-white — founded an Anglophilia Club in order to prevent just this sort of white drift. As he explains, “Any time the school would recognize a holiday it would be something like Cinco de Mayo, which doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the United States. I’d say, why aren’t we having an assembly for Veteran’s Day, for Pearl Harbor Day?” This teacher retired in 1989.

Iris Ring, a student who is now 15 years old, first learned she was a minority at age six. She was playing in a neighborhood park when several girls came up to her and told her that this was a Mexican park and that no whites were allowed.

Katie Coffey, a fifth-grader, goes to a school that is 95 percent black and Hispanic. Her heroine is Harriet Tubman. “Sometimes when they have multi-cultural day, she feels left out,” explains her father, “but she gets a lot of white culture from books . . .” [Denise Hamilton, The new Minority, LA Times, 11/4/94, p. E1.]

Swarthmore Rejoins Union

In the 1960s, the students of Swarthmore College, outside of Philadelphia, voted to take down the United States flag from the administration building. The flag was racist, imperialist, capitalist, sexist, etc., etc. Recently, in a hard-fought battle, students voted, 376 to 239, to put the flag back up. One of the dissenters wrote to the campus newspaper: “I absolutely refuse to believe that a flag that, for most of the world, means bloodshed and violence can mean freedom for me.” [America Reclaims Swarthmore, Accuracy in Academia, p. 3, no date.]

Coup, Anyone?

Hialeah, Florida, which is about 90 percent Hispanic, is having a hard time deciding who its mayor is. A state judge has ruled that “overzealous” and “unscrupulous” campaign workers forged so many absentee ballots that the election results must be thrown out. A new election was scheduled for December 8th.

Raul Martinez, the incumbent, was previously elected despite a conviction in federal court for accepting bribes. His conviction was thrown out on appeal, and a new trial will be held soon.

The city charter is generally interpreted to require Mr. Martinez to step down until the next election, since his reelection has been ruled “invalid.” City council president, Herman Echevarria would then be acting mayor. Mr. Martinez refuses to step down. The other candidate, Nilo Juri, promises to sue. Federal prosecutors have launched an investigation and expect to charge more than a dozen people with voter fraud. [Betty Cortina & Dexter Filkins, Mayor Mess: Who’s Boss of Hialeah?, Miami Herald, 11/8/94, p. 1A.]

The Latin Life

Colombia has its own solution to rampant crime and vagrancy: limpieza social, or “social cleaning.” Street children, prostitutes, drug addicts, bums, and criminals — all known as “disposables” — are often hunted down and killed by neighbors and shopkeepers who are tired of watching their neighborhoods deteriorate. Often the police help them. Between 1988 and 1993, some 2,000 people are said to have been disposed of by furious civilians.

Some vigilante groups have semi-permanent organizations, and give public notice of their intentions. In Medellin, the drug capital, a group calling itself Death to Car Thieves has killed 50 people since it first announced itself in March 1994. In July, a group calling itself Columbia Without Guerrillas issued a statement saying that it would track down and kill left-wing rebels. Limpieza social began in the 1980s along with a sudden rise in crime and vagrancy. [Vigilantes in Colombia kill hundreds of ‘disposables,’ NYT, 10/31/94, p. A7.]

Deutschland Unter Alles

Charlotte Hoehn used to run the Population Studies Institute, a unit of the German government. She was “relieved of her duties” after she expressed the view that Africans may not be as intelligent as other people. “It’s an example of media assassination,” complained Johannes Otto of the German Society for Population Studies; “She said nothing you couldn’t say on a talk show in America. But this is Germany and taboos remain.” [AP, German loses job for ethnic slur, Chi Tribune, 9/17/94, p. 14.]

Who’s Insane Here?

Colin Ferguson is the man who killed six people and wounded 17 others on the Long Island Railroad in December of 1993. He is being defended by William Kunstler and Ronald Kuby who have invented the “black rage” defense. The theory is that Mr. Ferguson was justified in attacking white people because America is so viciously racist.

In November, Mr. Ferguson wrote a letter to the court saying that he doesn’t agree with his lawyers. “The ‘black rage’ defense is nothing more than Kunstler and Kuby satisfying their own dishonest political agenda,” he wrote; “They don’t want to try the case on the facts.” Mr. Ferguson wants to fire Messrs. Kunstler and Kuby and represent himself.

Mr. Kunstler says that Mr. Ferguson is insane and should not be tried. “He is so insane he thinks he’s sane,” he explained. [AP, Suspect rejects ‘rage’ defense, Chicago Law Bulletin, some time in November.]

Hard Times for Columbus

The state of South Dakota (which should know better) and the cities of Berkeley and Santa Cruz in California have all abolished Columbus Day and now celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day. [AP, Town discovers Columbus Day alternative, 10/11/94, no paper.] The Mexicans have doubts about Columbus, too. In October 1994, Mexican riot police battled demonstrators in Mexico City who were trying to pull down a prominent statue of the discoverer.

Non-white AIDS

As homosexuals learn to take precautions against AIDS, it is gradually becoming a non-white affliction. In 1991, 51 percent of the new cases were among non-whites. In 1992, it was 52 percent and in 1993, 55 percent.

In 1993, Hispanics were three times more likely than whites to get AIDS, and blacks were 5.5 times more likely. Black women were about 15 times more likely than white women to get the disease. Minorities accounted for three fourths of the AIDS cases among women and for 84 percent of the cases in children aged 12 and under. About 0.3 percent of all black men got AIDS in 1993. [AP, More minorities hit by AIDS, Wash Times, 9/9/94, p. A3. Reuters, black far more likely than whites to have AIDS, agency says, NYT, 9/9/94]

Remapping the Past

In the United States there is a surprising number of place names that have the word “Negro” in them. In New York State alone, there are Negro Point (two of them), Negro Brook (5), Negro Bar Channel (1), Negro Hollow (3), Negro Creek (1), Negro Lake (2), Negro Marsh (1), and Negro Hill (7). Many of these place names originally used the word “Nigger,” but in 1963 Congress changed every instance of “Nigger” to “Negro.” Well into the 19th century, the word “nigger” was not a insult. For the most part, the names were simply descriptive of places either inhabited by blacks or associated with a prominent black. [John Nordheimer, One man’s campaign to rename a creek, NY Times, 11/3/94, p. B6.]

Our Kind of Diversity

The town of Wilmette, Illinois, is 91 percent white, seven percent Asian, two percent Hispanic, and one percent black. In 1992, 60 percent of the residents responded to a survey by saying that they were satisfied with the town’s current level of ethnic diversity. [Kate Griffin, Wilmette vehicle sticker looks too ‘correct’ for some, Chi Trib 11/15/94.]

The Simple Answer is ‘Yes’

Jim Hogshire has written a guidebook for middle-class people who are either going to prison or who know someone who is. He writes frankly about prison rape:

To the simple question ‘Am I going to get butt-f**ked?’ the simple answer is ‘yes.’. . .

Conservative estimates indicate at least 290,000 males get sexually assaulted every year in prisons and jails. For comparison, the Bureau of Justice estimates that 135,000 women get raped each year in the whole country. . .

Rape, especially gang rape, is almost exclusively a black on white occurrence. More than 90% of the prison rapists are black and the instance of a white raping a black is the rarest of all . . . Blacks do sometimes rape other blacks, however; if you’re black, you’re not in the clear . . .

In some prisons race is everything. If you are unlucky enough to be a white entering a large prison where young, aggressive blacks are in control and race war is continuous, you will be set upon very quickly by black guys who will try to get off in your ass. Being white in a prison like that is synonymous with being a punk.