Posted on January 1, 1997

O Tempora, O Mores! (January, 1997)

American Renaissance, January 1997

Fish Swim, Birds Fly

In October, there were race riots in St. Petersburg, Florida. Two white policemen stopped two black men who were speeding in a stolen car. The driver refused to obey repeated orders to roll down his windows, which were so heavily tinted it was impossible to see into the car. Despite repeated warnings to open his windows and to keep the car still, the driver lurched the car forward, bumping one of the officers four times. The officer, who saw this as an attempt to run him over, finally fired through the windshield, killing the driver.

When word of the incident got out, blacks burned 28 buildings, including a police substation, a post office, and a community center established to provide government services to the neighborhood. In at least one case, rioters looted an Asian-owned store but spared black-owned businesses on either side. Blacks burned police and news vehicles, and attacked passing whites. When rioters started stoning firemen, fire trucks withdrew and a number of buildings were left to burn. At least 11 people were injured and 20 were arrested.

On the day after the riots, young blacks paraded on the street corner where the shooting took place, bearing signs that said, “Stop the genocide,” and “You can’t kill us all.” The mayor of St. Petersburg reported that race relations had never been worse in the city, and called for a federal civil rights investigation. The police chief declared a 72-hour emergency and both the state police and National Guard were put on alert.

The next month, when a grand jury decided that the white officer had been justified in killing the driver, blacks rioted again attacking passing whites, and firing shots at the police. One officer was hit in the leg and the co-pilot of a police helicopter was hit in the arm. A black separatist group called the National People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, which has called for death for the white police officers, had been urging violence if there were no criminal charges. Things would have been worse if 200 police in riot gear had not been deployed in advance of the grand jury’s decision.

The federal government’s reaction is true to form. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros, has proposed spending $20 million on the black part of town, for job training, public works, and to encourage employers to move there. He said the federal money was not “for the purpose of rewarding any behavior that may have resulted in the disturbance.”

209 Stymied

The will of the people of California has been at least temporarily thwarted. Chief U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson has issued a temporary restraining order against implementation of Proposition 209, which would abolish all state-sponsored race and sex preferences. He will hold a hearing in December to determine whether the voter initiative violates the Constitution. At that point he can decide whether to issue a preliminary injunction against the measure, which the state of California could then appeal.

In his ruling, the judge, who is black, wrote:

Plaintiffs argue that Proposition 209, despite its facial neutrality, violates the Equal Protection Clause because it restructures the political process to disadvantage those seeking to enact affirmative action programs designed to remedy past or present discrimination against women and minorities.

In other words, despite the fact that the proposition says all people are to be treated equally without regard to race or sex, Judge Henderson thinks that it really means they will be treated unequally. Such is the logic of today’s “civil rights” movement.

The case against 209 was argued by Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1980, when he was appointed to the bench, Judge Henderson was on the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, the Black American Political Action Committee, and Equal Rights Advocates (a group that litigates against sex discrimination). (Confirmation hearing of Thelton E. Henderson, June 10, 1980, p. 4.)

Big California companies were almost unanimous in opposition to Proposition 209. It took intense lobbying by Gov. Pete Wilson to keep them from lining up behind Pacific Gas & Electric, which publicly opposed the measure. Now, many are saying that 209’s success means only that they must put more effort than ever into “diversity.” (Heather Mac Donald, Race Still Matters to California Companies, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 11, 1996.)

On almost the same day, another federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that blocks a California plan to stop using state money to fund prenatal medicine for illegal immigrants. The state gives prenatal care to some 70,000 illegals every year at an estimated cost of $69 million. (Craig Marine, Judge Blocks Wilson Ban of Illegals’ Prenatal Care, San Francisco Examiner, Nov. 27, 1996, p. A2.) It is not clear why illegals cannot be deported if they can be identified and counted. Of course, all babies are born on American soil become U.S. citizens.

Two years ago, Californians approved a ballot initiative to strip illegal aliens of a number of benefits. This expression of the people’s will has also been thwarted by a federal judge, but is still in litigation. More and more Californians are waking up to the fact that they live under a judicial dictatorship rather than a democracy.

The Great Shakedown

November was a big month for corporate “racial discrimination.” Texaco drew national attention because of a controversy over whether an executive had been caught on tape talking about niggers (the company said he was talking about St. Nicholas). The suit was resolved with a record-breaking and well-publicized settlement for $176 million. Texaco has hired a black ad agency to tout to blacks the company’s “commitment to diversity.” Lawyers for the firm that brought the case against Texaco, Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger, & Grossmann, reported they were getting about ten calls a day from people asking how to sue employers and make a lot of money. Just a few days after the Texaco settlement, 22 former employees of the nation’s largest printing company, R.R. Donnelley and Sons, accused the company of racial discrimination, and demanded $500 million in compensation.

In the same month, both the U.S. State Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms settled multi-million dollar class action suits brought by blacks. Some 245 black ATF agents were to get $4.7 million in an agreement that Hispanic agents (no doubt correctly) called nothing more than quotas for blacks. Black foreign service officers were to get a windfall of $3.8 million.

Likewise in November, three blacks brought a federal class action suit against an Avis Rent-A-Car franchise with outlets in North and South Carolina, claiming they had been turned away because of race. Before the month was out, the owner of Avis, HFS Inc., said it would break its contract with the franchisee, John Dalton. Henry Silverman, chairman of HFS, said he did not know if the bias suit had any merit, but feared that the controversy would hurt Avis as a whole. HFS also hired a law firm to snoop on other Avis franchisees and see if they have been “racist.”

(Jim Fitzgerald, Texaco Argues Claim Of Racism, Associated Press, White Plains, N.Y., Nov. 12, 1996. Texaco Scandal Encourages New Plaintiffs, Reuter, New York, Nov. 25, 1996. Tamara Starks, Donnelley Sued For Race Bias, Associated Press, Chicago, Nov. 26, 1996. Settlement Approved in ATF Race Discrimination Suit, Raleigh News and Observer, Nov. 23, 1996. Avis Wants to Cut Ties With Franchise Owner Accused of Racial Bias, Associated Press, Raleigh, Nov. 26, 1996.)

These cases are infuriating for many reasons. First of all, a private employer should have the right to make hiring decisions on any basis he chooses. Second, the U.S. government and companies like Texaco are probably already giving blacks preferential treatment, and have been snared on the basis of “statistical underrepresentation” alone. Finally, most of the beneficiaries of these “class-action” settlements don’t have to show any actual injury in order to collect; checks and promotions drop out of the sky simply because they are in the “injured” class, which includes all blacks. And, of course, the plaintiffs’ lawyers routinely become millionaires.

The greatest annoyance, however, is the pusillanimous behavior of whites. Not one company has ever mounted a defense on the basis of group differences in ability. They have watched silently as company after company is shaken down for huge settlements, and have meekly accepted the label of “racist,” and the resulting de facto racial quota system of employment. They have done nothing to counter forces that could make it impossible to run a large company in this country without a workforce that is in perfect racial balance — at every level of pay and responsibility — with the surrounding community. If they are beaten by foreign competitors who can actually hire people because they are capable, they will have only themselves to blame.

Glimmerings of Common Sense

A survey of American high school students with A and B averages has unearthed a certain amount of common sense. Fifty-two percent said they thought the country has too many immigrants. Fifty-nine percent said they thought immigration and affirmative action would make it more difficult for them to get jobs. Seventy-two percent of the respondents were girls and 79 percent were white. (Deb Riechmann, Teens: Too Many US Immigrants, AP, Washington, Nov. 13, 1996.)

Army Sex Abuse

Reports that army drill sergeants have been molesting and even raping lady recruits have the feminists and uplift artists in a lather. On the front page of the November 19 New York Times there was a photo of black non-voting congresswoman Eleanor Jordan of the District of Columbia grilling a pair of white generals while two other congresswomen looked on. Once allegations of groping began to emerge others have come in a torrent. So far, only the foreign press seems to have wondered what kept the lid on for so long. Says the Sunday Times of London:

Another reason why many allegations have been covered up is that the sergeants and officers involved were black and the privates were white. In politically correct America, where race is a sensitive and volatile issue [read: where whites are cowards], it was simpler to disregard the complaints and bury the problem. (James Adams, Women Expose Rape Cover-up by US Army, Sunday Times, Nov. 24, 1996.)

Pity the poor white generals. Congress forces them to recruit women and pretend to treat them like men. It then forces them to put white recruits in the hands of all-powerful boot-camp sergeants who are black. Women in congress then yell when officers molest the privates.

Branded a Paedophile

Christopher Brand is a professor of psychology at the University of Edinburgh who has written a sensible book on intelligence called The g Factor. Because he wrote about the heritability of intelligence and the strong likelihood that blacks are less intelligent than whites, Prof. Brand got into trouble with the media and with his university. In April, his publisher, John Wiley & Sons, suddenly discovered that the book was “repellent,” and withdrew it from stores.

Since that time, the University of Edinburgh has been trying to think of ways to fire Prof. Brand, and has finally hit upon an excuse. In his on-line newsletter, the professor came to the defense of a 73-year-old Nobel prize winner, Carlton Gadjusek, who went on trial in the United States in October for acts of pedophilia committed while doing research in New Guinea.

“It seems incredible that a court should be concerning itself with events of some twenty or thirty years ago that apparently yielded no complaint at the time,” wrote Prof. Brand. “Academic studies and my own experience [when he was a choir boy he was occasionally propositioned by older men] suggest that nonviolent pedophilia with a consenting partner over age 12 does no harm so long as the pedophiles and their partners are of above-average IQ and educational level.”

If Prof. Brand were a liberal, this might be considered a noble form of “gay advocacy,” but in his case, it is “conduct [that] is bringing the university into disrepute.” Prof. Brand has been suspended from all duties and a process has been initiated that could lead to revocation of tenure and dismissal.

Ancient Aryans

Carbon dating on the skeleton of a white man, found in a remote part of Washington state, shows that it is some 9,300 years old. This suggests that at least a few whites crossed the land bridge from Asia 12,000 years ago and settled in North America. Scientists are eager to do more studies on the skeleton, but may be stymied by the Umatilla Indian tribe.

The tribe has invoked a 1990 law that requires ancient Indian remains to be turned over to Indians for burial. The Umatilla claim to have an oral history that goes back 10,000 years and that anyone found in their territory must be an ancestor. Anthropologists say it would be nearly impossible to match the skeleton with any American Indian tribe, and that the Indians probably fear the racial implications of the discovery. So far, the Army Corps of Engineers, which has custody of the skeleton, says it will hand the bones over to the Indians. (Timothy Egan, Tribe Stops Study of Bones that Challenge History, New York Times, Sept. 30, 1996, p. A1.)

‘Mind Frame of Entitlement’

In 1994, Chicago’s most famous woman, black talk show host Oprah Winfrey, announced that she would finance a program to get 100 poor families off public aid. Two years and $1.3 million later, only five families have gone through the self-help training — with indifferent success — and the program is on hold.

Even the most ardent liberals are scratching their heads over the results. The program was called Families for a Better Life, and was administered by Chicago’s most famous benevolence agency, the Jane Addams Hull House Association, which heavily loaded the dice in favor of success. After Miss Winfrey’s much ballyhooed announcement, 30,000 people called, asking to take part. Hull House ended up sending out 4,000 applications to people who met the criteria for participation: poor people who lived in public housing. Out of the 1,600 applications they got back, they picked six women with children and one married couple with children. These people were thought to have the best possible chances of getting out of poverty, and were not typical welfare bums. No one had a drug or alcohol problem, and four of the seven families had a member who had completed some college. One woman was actually in college when the program started and another was in nursing school.

The eight-week training program involved intensive doses of such mumbo-jumbo as “setting directions,” “preparing for change,” and “taking risks.” All participants got spending money and, if necessary, driving lessons, help with house-cleaning, and cooking lessons. Two families dropped out.

The progress of the remaining participants has not been stunning. Four of the five families were on AFDC when the program started. One is still on it, and another is getting food stamps. Four of the families had an adult who had at least a part-time job when the program began. Two of these people now work full-time, two still work part-time, and the one who started out with no job still doesn’t have one. The women who were attending college and nursing school are still in school.

Isabel Blanco, who ran the program for Hull House says that no matter how carefully the candidates were screened they still had “the mind frame of entitlement.” “We had to keep emphasizing that this is not about what you get. This is about what you do.” Even the Chicago Tribune, in a lengthy account of the program, concluded that poor people lead such disorganized lives and have been so bred to a hand-out mentality that their mentality “def[ies] even programs designed to overcome these obstacles.” (Louise Kiernan, Oprah’s Poverty Program Stalls, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 27, 1996, p. 1.)

Freedom of Religion

Under the guise of attending Islamic prayer services, prostitutes have been entering the D.C. maximum security prison at Lorton, Virginia, to peddle their wares and sell drugs. The women claimed to be members of the Moorish Science Temple of America, and because they were thought to be coming for religious services at the jail they were not subject to usual search procedures. Guards fear lawsuits on religious freedom grounds if they pat down congregants, so it was easy for the women to smuggle drugs.

The “services” were held in a room into which guards could look through a small window, but prisoners set up partitions to block the view. Inside, the prostitutes handed over the cocaine and had sex with prisoners. Another prisoner videotaped the encounters and sold the tapes to other inmates. Thirty-six women and two men have been arrested for a pattern of behavior that dates back to early 1995. (Gretchen Lacharite, Religion Used as Guise for Lorton Sex, Drug Ring, Washington Times, Sept. 27, 1996, p. A1.)

Jungle Encroaches

The University of Pennsylvania is one of many American campuses that was established in a civilized city but is now surrounded by squalor and savagery. In the month of September alone, 28 students were mugged or robbed on or near the campus. In the latest incident, a 21-year-old student was shot twice while he was walking near the campus with two friends. The predation continues despite strict security measures that cost the university about $15 million a year. (Kimberly McLarin, Robberies Near Penn Spark Fears, New York Times, Sept. 27, 1996.)

Racial Politics

As was the case in the previous Presidential election, whites did not get the candidate they voted for. Robert Dole edged out William Clinton, 45 to 44 percent among whites (Ross Perot got nine percent of the vote). Interestingly, Asians voted for Mr. Dole by an even greater margin: 49 to 42 percent. Mr. Clinton won, thanks to the black vote (84 percent to 12), and the Hispanic vote (72 to 21 percent). (Vote for the President, U.S.A. Today, Nov. 7, 1996.)

Racial Justice

A black judge in Pensacola, Florida, has given a black defendant a slap on the wrist for beating up a white police officer. In September, Raymond Hewitt was leaving a night club and was accused by the doorman of using false identification. Mr. Hewitt, who is black, says the doorman was being “racist.” There was an altercation, and the doorman called for help. A white police officer, Mark Holmes, was on bicycle patrol wearing civilian clothes and answered the call. He says he identified himself as a police officer repeatedly and showed his badge. Mr. Hewitt says Mr. Holmes attacked him without provocation. In any case, Mr. Hewitt knocked the white officer to the ground and beat him severely.

Mr. Hewitt pleaded no contest to battery on a law-enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence, and criminal mischief. The black sentencing judge, Ken Williams, let him go with a $253 fine and an order to pay for the officer’s broken glasses. He said the beating was “a one-time unfortunate incident,” and that police have sometimes beaten criminals more severely than officer Holmes was beaten. Pensacola police chief, Norman Chapman is furious. “The message is you can come to Pensacola, beat up a police officer, get a $250 fine and leave without a criminal record.” (Judge, Police Feud Over Sentence in Officer’s Beating, Tallahassee Democrat, Nov.12, 1996, p.3B.)

Chipping Away

Until now, the Delaware Bar Association and the Delaware state government have sponsored a minorities-only clerkship program for law school students. Two whites sued for discrimination and received $20,000 settlements. The Clinton Justice Department sided with the sponsors of the program because, as one of the lawyers who represented the students put it, “the Clinton Administration has never met a quota it won’t defend.” (Delaware Desegregates, Human Events, Nov. 8, 1996, p. 25.)

Calling all Black Saxons

The Coca-Cola Foundation has established a new, full-tuition scholarship at the University of Arkansas. As a spokesman for the university explains, it is available to “anyone other than white Anglo-Saxons.” “The neat part about this scholarship is that it’s based on merit,” she adds. “We’ve never had a minority scholarship based on merit before. Usually, the scholarships are based only on financial need.” The meritorious non-Anglo-Saxon must maintain a grade-point average of 3.0 in order to get the money. (Tammy Williams, Minority Merit Scholarships Established, Arkansas Traveler (University of Arkansas at Fayetteville), Nov. 15, 1996.)

Equal Treatment

Ford Motor Company wants non-white suppliers to account for five percent of its purchases by the year 2000. In order to help such suppliers financially, it has agreed to pay the interest on some of their loans. This program is not open to white-owned companies. (Ford to Pay Interest for Minority Suppliers, Washington Times, Nov. 8, 1996, p. E12.)

Sign of Things to Come

One of the common ways to “fight apartheid” in the black townships was to refuse to pay utility bills. The new government has tried to get blacks to pay up, but with only modest success. Now, in Johannesburg, the plan is to increase rates in the white parts of town by as much as 300 percent to subsidize service for blacks. Whites have actually marched in protest over the move and are threatening a rate boycott of their own. (Sudarsan Raghaven, South African Whites Balk at High Utility Bills, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 24, 1996, p. C2.)

Holding the Bag

A jury in Minneapolis has awarded $400,000 to a black baggage handler for Northwest Airlines because of “racism.” In 1992, after he was involved in an accident, Robert Landon was tested for drugs and was found to have marijuana in his system. He was then fired. It is Northwest policy to test people for drugs after an accident if they appear to be acting abnormal. Witnesses said that Mr. Landon was not acting abnormally, and the jury was persuaded that the decision to test him was based on race. (Jury Awards Bag Handler $400K, Associated Press, Minneapolis, Nov. 28, 1996.)

Nat Turner, Role Model

Grolier Inc. publishes a series of books for young people on black history. One of the titles is Nat Turner: Slave Revolt Leader. In 1831, Turner led a small-scale slave rebellion, in which about 60 whites were killed, mostly in their sleep. Here are passages from the book:

As the General, the Prophet, the leader of the rebellion, Turner knew that he must strike the first blow and draw first blood. He struck with a blunt sword, and the master of Travis farm screamed bloody murder. Will moved in from behind and finished off Travis and his wife before they were fully awake.

Downstairs, the other men began to kill the rest of the whites in the house, one of them being 12 year old Putnam . . . Soon all in the house were dead but an infant, momentarily forgotten in its cradle. Remembering Turner’s instruction to ‘spare neither age nor sex,’ Henry Porter and Will returned upstairs and killed the child.

Coretta Scott King says this series of books can help the reader “discover the principles that we will use to guide our lives.” (Circular from Heritage Preservation Association, 1996, no date.)

Meanwhile, Simon & Schuster’s children’s publishing division has just released its Winter, 1997 catalogue. Books for blacks are sprinkled throughout the 50-page catalogue, but there is a five-page section, beginning on page 5, that is exclusively black. One title is Mississippi Chariot, which unfolds in the following setting: “In Depression-era Mississippi, twelve-year-old Shortnin’ Bread Jackson discovers his father may be lynched for a crime he didn’t commit.” Power to the People, about the Black Panther Party, describes its criminal founders, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, as “two feisty youngsters.” Some titles appear to be realistic inspirational stories. Forged by Fire is about a black teenager “who has to overcome a home of addiction and abuse to save his sister and himself.”

More Good Democrats

The motor-voter law requires states to let people register to vote when they get a license or to take them to the nearest voter registration office. Across the country, social service agencies are interpreting this to mean that they are to register mentally retarded inmates of public institutions. In practice, this often means that the people who tend the inmates cast their ballots for them. Interestingly, some of the fiercest opposition to this practice comes from the parents of adult inmates. They know very well that their children are incompetent and think it is an outrage to give them the vote. (Christi Parsons, Mentally Disabled Join Voter Ranks, Chicago Tribune, Oct. 17, 1996, p. 1.)