O Tempora, O Mores! (December, 1995)
American Renaissance, December 1995
Vive le Quebec Libre!
By a razor-thin margin, Quebec very nearly missed becoming an independent nation. Immigrants, most of whom are nonwhite, voted overwhelmingly in the October referendum to stay in Canada, and their votes were just enough to defeat the campaign for independence. Jacques Parizeau, Prime Minister of Quebec and leader of the independence movement, blamed “ethnics and money” for the defeat and resigned. At 3 a.m. on the morning after the referendum, Quebec’s Deputy Premier, Bernard Landry, told a Mexican who was working as a hotel night clerk that the loss was because of immigrants like her. He was promptly stripped of his portfolio for immigration and culture. Unionists are now saying that the independence movement was just a cover for racism.
Unsung Casualty
On October 18th, Cecil McCool and Richard Will, both white, were driving through the black part of Chicago when they were stopped by two black police officers because of a broken tail light. The officers discovered that Mr. McCool was wanted for not paying child support, and arrested him. Mr. Will did not have his license with him and the police said he appeared to have been drinking, so they impounded his car. Mr. McCool says Mr. Will begged the police to give him a ride and not leave him in the unfamiliar, black neighborhood. The police left Mr. Will on the street and took Mr. McCool to the police station.
Later, in the station, Mr. McCool says that the officers were smirking, telling him, “Your buddy got burned.” Mr. Will certainly was burned — to death. He was set upon by blacks, who doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. The black officer who arrested Mr. Will says the killing was not racially motivated, that the blacks “were just doing something stupid.”
The Cook County authorities have promised an investigation, and the U.S. Justice Department is monitoring the case — not for civil rights violation but in case racial problems develop in the community. Do not expect this case to be national news. [Michelle Campbell & Phillip O’Connor, Friend says slain man had begged cops for ride, Chi Sun-Times, Oct. 28, 1995, p. 3.]
Straws in the Wind?
Scott McConnell, in an October 11 column in the New York Post, has gently broached the forbidden subject: racial separation. Noting that increased calls for “a national conversation on race” are likely only to recirculate the stale formulas of the past 20 years, he wonders whether Americans will not soon stop wringing their hands over the idea of “two nations” and simply accept it.
He points out that many distinguished whites have advocated racial separation: James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln and more recently, George Kennan. About the Nation of Islam’s current demand for territorial independence, he asks: “Is this . . . really much more outlandish than many of the measures (speech codes, compulsory busing of schoolchildren, restrictions on the use of standardized tests, just to begin the list) that America has employed in efforts to bring about an integrated society?”
Despite this blasphemy, the walls of the New York Post still stand.
Meanwhile, Paul Johnson, writing in the British magazine, the Spectator, has aired another novel idea. He notes that many Hong Kong Chinese, fearful of what life will be like after 1997 when the colony reverts to China, are eager to come to Britain. He also notes that the British have no stomach for more immigrants. He therefore proposes a swap: accept any Chinese who can manage to persuade an immigrant who is already in Britain to leave.
Mr. Johnson has no doubt about who should be encouraged to go:
We are kidding ourselves if we suppose that the black minority can ever be assimilated here. It has not happened even in the United States, where there is so much more space and so many more opportunities, and where so many other large minorities from all over the world have been and are being successfully absorbed. For an entire generation, the Americans created an elaborate legal structure of Affirmative Action, and spent hundreds of billions of dollars operating it, to give the blacks one last chance to fit in. It has clearly failed and is now being dismantled, and the black racial problem is once more the subject of fierce debate. There is no evidence at all that we can handle this problem any more successfully than the Americans, and our resources are much less. [Paul Johnson, Room for the Hong Kong Chinese if they pay for others to leave, The Spectator, Sept. 30, 1995, p. 28.]
Just how the West Indians and Africans would be persuaded to leave, Mr. Johnson does not say, nor would it be an unqualified gift to Britain if they were replaced with Chinese. However, even to have hit upon such an explicitly racial idea is remarkable.
Good Riddance
The Georgia Supreme Court has, for the first time, removed a sitting state court judge “instanter.” In October, Dorothy Vaughn, one of only a few black women on the bench, was found to have shown “an intolerable degree of judicial incompetence, and a failure to comprehend and safeguard the very basics of our constitutional structure.” Miss Vaughn, who was elected to the state court in 1988 and had since won re-election, frivolously issued arrest warrants from the bench, and repeatedly failed to appear at trials that had been scheduled for her court. These appearances had then to be uncanceled because a substitute judge had already been appointed to take over her cases immediately.
After Miss Vaughn finally left her chambers, her files were found to be in a terrible mess. The court clerk’s office also discovered files on cases assigned to other judges — files that Miss Vaughn’s office had officially denied having. A docket supervisor noted that they were “files we’ve been trying to find for months.”
Naturally, some blacks detect racism. One state representative, Tyrone Brooks, calls her removal “a political lynching,” and vows to work for the removal of the Supreme Court justices who ruled — unanimously — to fire her. Miss Vaughn’s departure does not disqualify her from running for the same office in 1996. Mr. Brooks insists that she will run and will have “an awful lot of supporters.” [Trisha Renaud and Judy Baily, Judge Ousted, but Quiet Exit It Wasn’t, Fulton County Daily Report, Oct. 17, 1995, p. 1. Trisha Renaud, Vaughn Leaves a Mess Behind, Fulton County Daily Report, Oct. 19, 1995, p. 1.]
Forty-five percent of Miami’s population is now foreign-born. Thomas Boswell, a professor of Geography at the University of Miami, has completed a new study of different immigrant groups. He finds that among blacks there is a clear socio-economic stratification, with Jamaicans at the top, American blacks in the middle, and Haitians at the bottom. Jamaicans, some 35,000 of whom came to Miami during political turmoil in the 1970s, were among the country’s elite before they immigrated, and are one of the best educated groups in the city.
In the nation as a whole, Cubans are the most successful Hispanic group, but waves of recent Cuban immigrants have pulled down their average level of achievement in Miami. The early refugees from Castroism were mainly white and educated; current arrivals are generally darker and uneducated. Today, the most successful Hispanics in Miami are the 15,000 or so Peruvians who, like the Jamaicans, came to the United States during a period of political chaos at home.
Miami’s bottom-rung Hispanics are from Mexico and Central America. The poverty rate among Mexicans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans is more than 30 percent, approximately the same as for Haitians. [Voice of America broadcast,13-Oct-95 5:46 PM EDT, Jim Teeter reporting.]
Where There’s A Will . . .
Germany has worked out a deal to send Vietnamese back to Vietnam, which has agreed to take back the 40,000 now in Germany. Vietnam agreed to the bargain only after Germany offered $140 million in aid. Under the agreement, 2,500 Vietnamese are to go this year, and all are to be gone by the year 2000. Some came to East Germany as contract workers and some have come as “refugees” since reunification. Germany’s first priority is to expel criminals but eventually to send home all Vietnamese. The bounty paid to Vietnam to take back its own people is $3,500 per person. Germany also pays travel expenses. [AP-NY-10-18-95 0826EDT]
Libya is more unceremonious about kicking out undesirable aliens. It just rounded up 13,000 Sudanese and shipped them to the border in 113 trucks and 38 buses. Libya expects to have expelled 300,000 Sudanese by the end of the year. Since last summer, Libya has gotten tough with illegal aliens, and has expelled thousands of Egyptians and 30,000 Palestinians along with the Sudanese. [AP-NY-10-18-95 0826EDT]
The Best Schools Money Can’t Buy
At Public School 304 in the black part of Brooklyn, only 12 percent of third graders can read at their grade level or above. It is one of 16 New York City schools that have done so poorly that the central schools administration has decided to run them directly. The city, the state, and the federal government have been applying expensive uplift to these schools for years. Private foundations have lavished upon them every possible enrichment technique known to liberals. The halls are gleaming, and the facilities are up-to-date.
“I don’t think it’s money [that is the problem],” concedes Peter Goldmark, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, which has seen program after program vanish futilely into urban schools. What could be the problem? Richard P. Mills, New York State Education Commissioner, thinks he knows: “A structure for success is not in place.” [Maria Newman, At New York’s Bad Schools, Problem Wasn’t Just Money, NYT, 10/25/95, p. 1.]
One cannot help wondering what American schools would be like if the country were as keen on helping smart children as it is on helping dim ones.
Say It Loud . . .
In October, columnist Maggie Gallagher, recently wrote about her views on race: “I hate the idea of being white.” She went on to say, “I never think of myself as belonging to the ‘white race.’ Those who do, in my experience, are invariably second-raters, seeking solace for their own failures. I can think of few things more degrading than being proud to be white.” [Maggie Gallagher, The Rhetoric of Race, NY Post, 10/20/95, p. 25.]
Right Now!
The October 1995 issue of the British quarterly Right Now! has published an excellent interview with University of Ulster psychologist, Richard Lynn. Here are excerpts:
So what future do you see for the United States?
It is impossible not to be pessimistic. It looks set to become like many of the Latin American countries where whites live in their own fortified housing estates while Hispanics hybridised with American Indians and blacks live in lawless shanty towns . . .
Is there nothing that can be done about the decline of the United States to Latin American status?
I think the only solution lies in the breakup of the United States. Blacks and Hispanics are concentrated in the Southwest, the Southeast and the East, but the Northwest and the far Northeast, Maine, Vermont and upstate New York have a large predominance of whites. I believe these predominantly white states should declare independence and secede from the Union. They would then enforce strict border controls and provide minimum welfare, which would be limited to citizens. If this were done, white civilisation would survive within this handful of states . . .
What are your views about immigration into Britain?
Britain has the same problem of a significant black minority with high fertility and the continuing immigration of illegals and bogus refugees. The numbers are much fewer than in the United States, but will grow in the years that lie ahead. There is the same problem in mainland Europe. The immigration of Third World peoples should be much more tightly controlled . . .
Right Now! can be reached at Box 3561, London E1 5LU, England.
Psychologists at the University of Southern California have found physiological processes that can predict criminal behavior. A study of juvenile delinquents and non-delinquents that tracked them from age 15 to age 29 found that the ones who become criminals have an average pulse rate nine beats per minute slower than those who do not become criminals. They also sweat at rates that are three times lower (by whatever standards sweating is measured). Adrian Raine, author of the report, says that these factors, combined with IQ and other psychosocial measures, can predict criminal behavior with 75 percent accuracy. [Roger Field, Calif. Shrinks think they can pick criminals in a heartbeat, NY Post, 11/5/95.]
Beating the Air
In Rockville, Maryland, a single copy of a promotional flyer for a restaurant was discovered to have been defaced with the words “blacks not welcomed.” This has prompted the Montgomery County police to announce a $2,000 reward for anyone who turns in the person who did it. The reward will be paid despite the fact that defacing the poster is not a crime, and nothing can be done to whoever did it. [Dan Beyers, Police seek hate crime information, Wash Post, 10/26/95, p. 1.] One would think the police have better things to do than hunt for people who have not committed crimes.
Reverse Robin Hood
For 22 years, Archie Hardwick ran the James E. Scott Community Association, Miami’s oldest inner-city service organization. Its clientele is mostly black. In October, he was convicted of stealing nearly $800,000, which he spent on luxury cars, jewelry, and even a nose job for one of his mistresses. He claims that he was targeted for investigation because he was a successful black man.
