O Tempora, O Mores! (July-August, 1997)
American Renaissance, July-August 1997
Australian legislator Pauline Hanson, goes from strength to strength. Last year she was kicked out of the ruling Liberal Party for saying that Australia is being swamped by Asian immigrants and that Aborigines are being coddled. She refuses to apologize for the white Australia policy that lasted until 1973, and says that people are afraid to say what they think for fear of being called racists. Now she has started her own political party, One Nation, and reports more than 40,000 supporters.
She has also published a book, Pauline Hanson: The Truth, which explains her ideas in greater detail. The first print run of 1,000 paperbacks sold out immediately, and in May copies were changing hands for about US $40.00. What most infuriates liberals is her account of Aboriginal cannibalism. She first got in trouble on this subject last year when she decided to turn the tables on people who think whites should feel guilty for having civilized Australia: Will the descendants of those blacks who cannibalized Chinese miners on the Palmer River in 1875 [a notorious event in Australian history] be required to bear the guilt of their forefathers? Today’s Australia prefers to ignore the Aboriginal taste for long pig, and an archbishop objected that questions like Miss Hanson’s should never be asked.
Press reports describe Miss Hanson’s book as if it did nothing more than toss off a few unsubstantiated accusations about cannibalism. Far from it. She quotes at length from such books as River of Gold: The Story of the Palmer River Gold Rush by Hector Holthouse, The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime Spent Among the Natives of Australia by Daisy Bates, and Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice by G. Hogg.
Mr. Holthouse writes of the Aborigines of the Palmer River region that they killed and ate their own women and children, and occasionally their men. The older women were often killed for eating purposes like livestock. Of the Chinese employed to dig gold, he writes, Hundreds of them were ambushed, captured, and eaten at leisure.
Daisy Bates (1859-1951), a social worker who devoted her life to Aborigine uplift, writes that baby cannibalism was rife among the central-western peoples. She wrote of Dowie, a member of the Baadu tribe, who went through four wives, killing and eating them as he tired of them.
It is now mandatory in Australia to think of native peoples as spiritual, peace-loving darlings brutalized by whites, so Miss Hanson’s book must be denounced with invective rather than facts. On May 25, at a four-hour anti-Hanson rally in Brisbane, a Jewish leader told the crowd that she and her book were the equivalent of Hitler and Mein Kampf. He said the name of her One Nation Party was suspiciously close to the Nazi slogan, One Nation, One Folk, One Leader.
Asians don’t care for her book either. She writes that if they keep pouring into the country, by 2050 Australia will have a president named Poona Li Hung, a lesbian of Indian and Chinese background. A Chinese group has filed a petition with the Australian Electoral Commission claiming that her new party violates the federal Racial Discrimination and Racial Hatred Acts and should be banned. If her party is not banned, the group vows to join with every possible non-white group to oppose her.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard has been accused of not denouncing Miss Hanson with sufficient vigor. He has finally gotten the message from the people who really run the country, and has managed to strike something like the right tone: “She is wrong when she suggests that Aboriginals are not disadvantaged. She is wrong when she says that Australia is in danger of being swamped by Asians. She is wrong to seek scapegoats for society’s problems . . . ” he said in May to a private group that is trying to do more business in Asia. He went on to accuse her of empty populism, cheap sloganeering, and bitter and divisive recriminations.
Meanwhile, opinion polls show that her party already has the support of 10 to 15 percent of the public and its popularity continues to grow. With Australia’s system of proportional representation, One Nation is likely to seat half a dozen senators or, as the newspaper The Australian puts it, enough to hold the balance of power in the senate and to determine the course of legislation. Somehow, these interesting overseas developments have largely failed to make the American news.
Flying High at the Academy
First Lieutenant Kelly Flinn, the fornicator and now-retired lady bomber pilot, has been baking in the limelight while one of her black former classmates at the Air Force Academy languishes in undeserved obscurity. Crista Davis, likewise a first lieutenant, could get 55 years in prison if she is convicted of various charges, including an adulterous affair with a married officer that produced a child.
The married officer in question, Maj. Greg Russel is, we hope, an unusual case. He is a black gentleman, with tattoos on both arms and, when out of uniform, likes to wear bracelets, chains, earrings, and a ring through his pierced tongue. Until 1994, he taught at the Air Force Academy, but was suspended from teaching because of various criminal charges, not all of which have been made public. He appears to have misused an Air Force credit card and to have refrained from repaying debts, but these charges were dropped when military psychiatrists determined that he had been legally insane since 1992 two years before his teaching career came to an end.
First Lieutenant Davis, now mother of Maj. Russel’s child, Christophe, began her affair with him in 1995, two years after graduating from the Air Force Academy. She claims that she thought he was single, but she is charged with writing spiteful, obscenity-laced letters to his wife, boasting about the glorious sex she was having with him. The recipient of these letters has since become the third woman to divorce Maj. Russel.
First Lieutenant Davis appears to have been a miserable soldier. She is charged with absence without leave, willful dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming an officer, making false official statements, and disobeying orders. Her lawyer claims that these are false, vindictive charges, brought because she’s black, she’s female and she has exposed racism and sexism in the Air Force. (Air Force Officer Faces Prison, Associated Press, May 20, 1997.)
Doing Her Bidding
Black television personality, Oprah Winfrey, has launched an on-air book club. She is so influential that all five books she has recommended have gone to the top of the best-seller list. When she chooses a new book, her producers alert the publisher in advance so it can print enough copies. She also insists that the publisher make 10,000 copies of the book available to libraries to meet demand. (James Howard, Oprah Plugs Book; Price Rises $5, Rocky Mountain News, April 19, 1997, p. 9D.)
White South African liberals have discovered that they get no gratitude from blacks for the fight against apartheid. Helen Suzman, now 79, was one of the original white anti-white activists. I am surprised at the hostility to liberals these days, even from moderates in the African National Congress, she says; I expected it from the right and the far left, who have always called us Lenin’s useful idiots, but I didn’t expect it from them.
Professor Ithumeleng Mosala explains why blacks despise liberals: Liberalism is rooted in individualism and that is part of the problem in our society, and it is rooted in possessiveness. Instead of having a proper revolution in this country, we’ve had a liberal revolution and that is why blacks are still where they are today, in the gutter, and why whites are still rich. Today, it is routine for whites who worked for majority rule to be called racists by the people they helped put in power.
Miss Suzman expects the best: Liberals are a sort of endangered species, but as far as I am concerned we have won look at the constitution, the bill of rights, they are everything we stood for so let them rant. I am surprised, but I am not worried. (Richard Meares, White Liberals Face Hostility in New South Africa, Reuters, March 17, 1997.)
Affirmative action brings many unprepared blacks to universities. This is reflected in dropout rates. What follow are the percentages of white and black students at various universities who manage to graduate within six years. University of North Carolina — whites 86 percent, blacks 64 percent; Rutgers University — 80, 60; U.C. Berkeley — 84, 58; University of Illinois — 82, 54; Penn State — 80, 51; University of Delaware — 73, 56. (After Late Start, University Works Hard to Graduate Blacks, New York Times, Dec. 1, 1996, p. 16.)
Towers Perrin is a consulting firm that touts its customized, individually crafted diversity programs to help bring companies into the multi-culti future for which we are said to yearn. The American subsidiary of Japan’s Nissan Motor Company recently paid the company $105,000 to produce a diversity proposal but was disappointed to find that everything in it was extremely general and not specific to Nissan. In fact, Towers Perrin has boiler plate diversity analyses that it can slap together for most any client. The Wall Street Journal got hold of eleven Towers Perrin diversity reports and found startling similarities. Most similar, of course, was the final recommendation employee training to be conducted by Towers Perrin.
Sample blather: As the nature of [insert company name]’s work changes from a command and control style to a more empowering style where invisible leveraging will be a key to success, leaders must learn how to build, lead, and facilitate both diverse work units and cross-functional teams . . . (Douglas Blackmon, Consultant’s Advice on Diversity was Anything But Diverse, Wall Street Journal, March 11, 1997, p. 1.)
Why They Get Fat
Nearly half of all black women and one third of white women are overweight. Recent research shows that blacks are more likely to get fat because they have more efficient metabolisms. In the resting state, fat black women consume five percent fewer calories than fat white women. (Jane Brody, “Health Watch: Race, Gender and Weight,” New York Times, March 26, 1997.)
Importing Incompetence
In March 1996, about one out of every 10 people in the United States, or 24.6 million, were foreign-born. They were worse off than natives in virtually every respect, with a poverty rate of 22.2 percent v. 12. 9 percent, unemployment at 4.9 percent v. 3.8 percent, and with 5.8 percent v. 4.5 percent getting cash assistance form the government. Needless to say, the native-born include many non-whites. (Census Bureau News Release, Economic Challenges Wane With Time Among the Nation’s Foreign-Born Population, CB97-55, April 8, 1997.)
New Irish Eyes
Ireland has become a popular destination for asylum seekers. In 1992 there were 39 applications; in the first three months of 1997 they poured in at a rate of 2,500 a year. Rumanians mostly Gypsies account for a third of the rush, followed by Zairians, Somalians, Algerians, and Nigerians. Many of the Gypsies speak no English. They stand on street corners, some suckling infants, and beg by showing passersby hand-written cards asking for money. (Paul Cullen, Images Aimed at Tourists Attract Refugees as Well, Irish Times, April 19, 1997. Nuala Haughey, Better Here, Say Romany Gypsies, Irish Times, April 19, 1997,)
Race and Murder
Like many other cities, New York has been enjoying a drop in its murder rate. A temporary lull in the number of people in the most crime-prone age bracket is one of the causes, and we are also seeing the effect of several years of longer sentences for offenders. When they are off the streets they cannot commit more crimes. However, the statistics for New York City show an interesting racial disparity: Murder is down only for non-whites. In the two years from 1993 to 1995, the victimization rate for blacks dropped from 54 per 100,000 to 32 per 100,000 and that of Hispanics from 32 per 100,000 to 20 per 100,000. These are significant reductions, and people who used to sleep in their bathtubs for fear of stray bullets are now back in their beds. The rate at which whites are murdered has stayed the same at about eight per 100,000. (Bob Herbert, Ferrer’s Outta Here, New York Times, May 16, 1997, p. A29.)
Riots Becoming More Common
Researchers at Northeastern University in Boston report that rioting is on the rise in America. Jack Levin and Benjamin Steiner define riots as violence by groups of more than 50 people, and find that there were nine in 1994 and twelve in 1995. They note that disturbances are often race-related and write that many are touched off by white police action against non-white criminals. They also point out that the teenage population will increase 17 percent during the next nine years, especially in non-white neighborhoods, and this is sure to lead to more rioting. (Michael Hedges, Violent Disturbances on the Rise; Trust Level of Police, Courts Cited, Washington Times, Nov. 25, 1996, p. A6.)
From 1990 to 1996, the percentage of California K-12 students who cannot understand English well enough to know what is going on in class rose from 18 percent to 25 percent. In the past decade the number of such students nearly tripled from half a million to 1.3 million. By 2005 in just eight years more than half of all California K-12 students are likely to be Hispanic. The state’s fourth graders perform near the bottom in national achievement tests, but the problem is even worse than this, since many children who cannot speak English are exempted from taking the test.
The Ravenswood School District in East Palo Alto is a good example of things to come. In a decade, it has gone from 85 percent black, to 68 percent Hispanic and 29 percent black. Sixty-eight percent of the students are classified as limited English proficient, and qualify for special help. This means as much as $6,000 a year is spent on them as opposed to the $3,900 spent on native English speakers. (Julian Guthrie, Schools Struggle With Shifting Ethnic Balance, San Francisco Examiner, may 14, 1997.)
Many of the black students can scarcely make themselves understood in English either, and their parents resent the fact that so much money is spent on Mexicans. School board meetings have to have interpreters so that the two groups can understand each other, and at a recent meeting tempers flared. Take [your children] back to Mexico, yelled one of the blacks at the Mexican interpreter, and lunged for her. Others had to hold the two women apart until police came. (S.L. Wykes, Cops Halt Tumult at Ravenswood Event, San Jose Mercury News, April 25, 1997.)
Other states with large numbers of immigrants are keeping a worried eye on how California copes with diversity.
They Never Miss a Chance
Steven Spielberg’s new movie about dinosaurs, The Lost World, is breaking new ground in race mixing. One of the characters, played by Jeff Goldblum, has a 10-year-old child who just happens to be black. Her mother, vaguely referred to as being in Paris, is never seen on-screen. The father-daughter duo is introduced without commentary. I think the way it’s dealt with in the film is neat, says Mr. Goldblum, the way it’s not even explained and kind of just accepted. (Steve Persall, Lost World Ventures into Multiracial Relationships, Chicago Sun-Times, May 23, 1997.)
Harlem Pork
After 23 useless years, the Harlem Urban Development Corporation has finally been shut. It’s job was to bring renovation and new businesses to Harlem, but even after running through $100 million in state money it failed to attract a single new major commercial development. An audit of the corporation’s expenditures has found so few records that its authors wonder whether the lack of supporting documentation for such an extremely large number of transactions was a deliberate attempt to conceal certain irregular activities.
One of the regular activities appears to have been car washes for the agency director’s car, at $50.00 a wash, no receipts. One lawyer that had contracted to provide services for $30,000 actually got more than $170,000. Black New York Congressman, Charles Rangel, complains that the audit is a bunch of Republicans going through the files of a defunct organization run by Democrats. (A Troubling Audit for Harlem, New York Times, May 5, 1997.)
Starting Young
Two black Chicago girls, aged 11 and 13, have been charged with a hate crime. They were with a group of other black girls when they saw a 10-year-old white girl roller skating with an 11-year old black girl. Children in the group of blacks recognized the black skater and someone shouted that she shouldn’t be hanging around with whites and that she was disrespecting her folks. The two hate criminals then knocked the black girl to the ground and punched her white companion. (Jim Casey, Girls Charged in Attack on Interracial Pals, Chicago Sun-Times, May 23, 1997.)
Unsuitable for Prisons
Readers with a copy of the April, 1997 AR, may want to take a look at page 11. We recently received something called a Publication Denial Notification from the Texas prison system, saying that the page contains material that a reasonable person would construe as written solely for the purpose of communicating information designed to achieve a breakdown of prisons through inmate disruption such as strikes or riots. There are three perfectly ordinary O Tempora items on that page, none of which mentions prisons or prisoners. Needless to say, nothing in AR is ever written even partly for the purpose of causing prison riots.
Hernando High School in Hernando, Mississippi does not pretend that race does not matter. Ever since 1970, when it was integrated, it has had a black principal and a white principal. There are homecoming queens of each race, and the yearbook designates white and black class clowns and class flirts. Some student government offices are held in alternate years by a black and a white. Most students find this system agreeable, and Harold Kinchelow, Hernando’s black principal, says the policy worked so well from the start that we just never thought about it again. There are other schools in Mississippi that have dual systems, but the state does not keep track of their numbers. (School Gives Separate But Equal a New Meaning, Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1997, p. 17.)
Always In Season
A few good citizens have taken it upon themselves to nab some of the illegal immigrants pouring into California. Fifty-seven-year-old Robert Maupin leads a group called Bob’s Boys, which patrols Mr. Maupin’s 250-acre ranch in San Diego County. They carry rifles, dress in camouflage, take along an Alsatian dog, and rarely fail to find illegals. My dog speaks their language, says Mr. Maupin. As soon as they see his teeth they understand him right away. We tell them to lay down on the ground and then we radio for the Border Patrol.
There are other groups that operate along other sections of the border. Deputy Sheriff Robert Novak says, We know these guys and they are within their rights to arrest anyone they find trespassing on their property. (John Hiscock, Vigilantes Target Illegal Mexican Migrants, Daily Telegraph (London), May 20, 1997.)
The recent elections in Britain returned the first Muslim member to Parliament. Mohammed Sarwar is now discovered to have kept the culture of his native Pakistan as well as its religion. He appears to have offered opposing candidates the equivalent of $100,000 to stay out of the race and to have paid another $8,000 to conduct a listless campaign. Mr. Sarwar is one of nine non-whites in the 659-member Parliament. (Warren Hoge, Bribery Case in Britain: Labor Figure is Accused, New York Times, May 20, 1997, p. A5.)
Multicultural Manners
Judging from his photograph, George Perry is a black Hispanic. He is a member of the Latin Kings gang. Recently, he and five other Latin Kings were on trial in Providence, Rhode Island for murder and other assorted crimes. Right in the middle of his jury trial, he unzipped his trousers and urinated on the courtroom floor. He was ordered kept in his cell for the remainder of the trial. His five co-defendants filed for a mistrial, saying Mr. Perry’s behavior had prejudiced the jury. Judge Mary Lisi denied the request. (Suspect Urinates at Trial, Chicago Sun-Times, April 4, 1997.)
Send ’em South
The state of Arizona is considering operating a prison in Mexico to handle most of its Mexican prisoners. Their number has gone from 58 in 1980 to 2,373 today, and accommodations cost $40 million a year. Labor accounts for 70 percent of operating costs, and a prison in Mexico could be run for half the US rate. The language of the prison would be Spanish and the mess hall would serve Mexican food, offering what a spokesman for the state calls a more culturally compatible environment. The usual people have objected, saying that Mexican prisons are hotbeds of corruption and cruelty, and that our prisoners deserve better. (James Brooke, Arizona Looks into Building Private Prison in Mexico, New York Times, April 20, 1997.)
District Hoppers
In New York City, many of the available public schools are so bad parents go to extraordinary lengths to sneak their children in somewhere else. A common trick is to pretend to live in some other part of town or across the line in a different community where the schools are better. Parents fool the authorities by presenting fake leases or deeds. They also have telephones installed in their own names in the homes of friends who live in good districts, or even have their own names put on the utility bills of well-placed friends.
Some suburban districts that border on New York City are so plagued by freeloaders that they hire private eyes to check up on suspicious students. The Mount Vernon school district in Westchester catches 100 to 200 district hoppers every year, and the Lawrence, Long Island district recently filed criminal charges against Russian immigrants who had forged documents and lied about their address. (Denis Buffa & Susan Edelman, Some Families Teach Children Deception 101, New York Post, May 11, 1997, p. 6.)
That’ll Do the Job
On April 30th, the United States Senate unanimously passed a resolution declaring that day National Erase the Hate and Eliminate Racism Day. The resolution also calls on the President to issue a proclamation calling on all citizens to make eliminating racism and hate crimes a national priority. We hope to reinforce in the American people that our diversity is something to be proud of, said Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana), who helped introduce the bill. (Business Wire, April 30 Declared as National Erase the Hate and Eliminate Racism Day, April 30, 1997.)
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, the YWCA was to sponsor a five kilometer race against racism, led by Olympic medalists and show-biz personalities. The Race Against Racism is part of the YWCA’s strong commitment to help women and children to eliminate racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination, explained YWCA Executive Director, Prema Mathai-Davis. (PRNewswire, World Class Runners and Celebrities Support Cause, April 30, 1997.)
Non-citizen Voting
Juries in Orange Country, California are selected both from voter rolls and lists of registered drivers. Since many drivers are not citizens, there is a box they can check to be exempted from jury duty. People chosen from voter rolls all presumably citizens get the same form, and 448 were recently found to have claimed exemption as non-citizens. Oh dear. California has been paying more attention to voter fraud since it was discovered last year that the Hispanic rights organization, Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, had registered 700 non-citizens as voters. The situation in Orange County is so bad that a Congressional committee has ordered the INS to check the citizenship status of all 1.3 million voters in the county. Mark Rosenbaum of the American Civil Liberties Union protests that such an investigation would unfairly put non-white voters under a cloud of suspicion. (Peter Warren, Citizenship Check Asked for 448 in Juror Pool, Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1997. Panel Orders INS to Certify All O.C. Voters, Los Angeles Times, May 15, 1997.)
The Price of Folly
The Center for Immigration Studies reports that the ten-year cost of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) amnesty of 2.7 illegal aliens has been approximately $78 billion. This works out to a total federal, state, and local government subsidy of more than $29,000 per amnesty. The center calculates that the illegals got $102 billion in direct government services and paid $78 billion in taxes. Another $54.6 billion went on services for their children and for Americans who have been put out of work.
IRCA was supposed to be a compromise, in which illegals already in the country would get amnesty in return for stiff measures to keep any more out. Only the amnesty came to pass. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, illegals continue to come in at such a rate that there are just as many now as before the IRCA amnesty some five million. Another 420,000 or so long-term illegals are thought to arrive every year. (Center for Immigration Studies News Release, May 5, 1997.)
Prince Charles of England has said that when he assumes the throne and becomes Defender of the Faith, Christianity is not the only faith he would like to defend. He is getting his wish. In just five years there are likely to be more mosque-going British Muslims than active members of the Church of England. Even without further immigration, young Pakistanis are flocking to The Prophet in such numbers that mosques get about 32,000 new members each year. The Church of England loses about 14,000 members every year. At this rate, by 2002 active membership in both faiths is likely to stand at around 760,000. More than 100 new British mosques are planned to keep up with the boom, while Christian clerics wonder what to do with empty churches.
The Rt. Rev. Roger Sainsbury, Bishop of Barking, thinks he is on to the secret of success. One of the attractions of Islam to disadvantaged young people is that Muslims campaign on both racial and social justice. The Church of England should learn from this. Or perhaps the Bishop of Barking should just convert. (Rajeev Syal & Christopher Morgan, Muslims Set to Outnumber Anglicans, Sunday Times (London), May 13, 1997.)
American clerics are, of course, no better. In May, the bishops of the South Carolina divisions of the Lutheran, Anglican, Catholic, and United Methodist churches issued a statement confessing to the sin of racism and asking forgiveness. They asked God to help us in our struggles to overcome the sin of racism, the powerful prejudice which pits one race against the other to the damage of all. The statement followed a two-day reeducation session on racism, in which the bishops fretted over how to increase the number of blacks in church leadership positions, and exhibited anguish over the long-gone practice of relegating blacks to the balcony or the back pews. (Bruce Smith, The Sin of Racism, Associated Press, May 16, 1997.)
Thinking Positively
The South African government has just published a self-congratulatory pamphlet designed to fight Afro-pessimism, or the feeling that the continent has run itself onto the rocks and can only get worse. The government is afraid that screaming headlines about crime in Johannesburg and slaughter in Burundi will scare away foreign investors. As the Times of London points out in words that would never be printed in the Times of New York, there are other reasons for self-promotion:
As continental leaders, South Africa’s elites see Afro-pessimism and the assumptions that surround it as an affront to their self-respect and virtually a suggestion that things would have been better if the Continent had stayed under white-minority rule. They want to assert that Africans can govern themselves democratically and well, that they are not innately backward or violent, and that their economies can grow. (R.W. Johnson, Pretoria Launches Attack on Wave of Afro-pessimism, Times (London), May 13, 1997.)
Mr. Clinton Gets it Right!
William Clinton wants to be known to history as a racial healer. At a June 14th commencement address at the University of California at San Diego he plans to unveil a great initiative that will endear him to posterity. A group of White House bureaucrats is secretly working out the details. People have held back in private discussions, says the President; That duplicity has to end because there are ideas and convictions about race that must be challenged and changed, and neither can happen unless there is an honest laying on the table of what we all believe and think. Seldom do we find ourselves in such complete agreement with our President, but we wonder just what it is he plans to unbosom as part of this honest laying on the table. (Wall Street Journal, May 21, 1997, p. A16.)
Happy Melting Pot
The last census found 301,000 Salvadorans and 159,000 Guatemalans living in the Los Angeles area. A recent study finds that they are victims of discrimination from Mexicans. Louis DeSipio, professor at the University of Illinois who managed the two-year study, reports that Guatemalans and Salvadorans compete with better-established Mexicans for jobs in the garment industry, and are often snubbed and belittled. Many are Indians who do not speak Spanish, and Mexicans despise them. Latin Americans often treat Indians as primitives, and they bring their attitudes with them when they come north. (Julio Laboy, “Mix of Hispanic Groups Creates Workplace Tension, Study Finds,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 1997.)
Stupid Party Gets Stupider
The Republican Party appears to have decided to court the ever-larger number of Hispanic voters. To this end they will downplay opposition to affirmative action and immigration. One unnamed party official has told the Los Angeles Times, We need a couple of years off from controversial initiatives in the area of race. He also said he would do his best to derail any ballot initiatives on race-related subjects. It doesn’t matter whether they’re good on the merits, he explained. You have to weigh the effects it has on our society to have as much racial controversy as we’ve had.
What he means, of course, is that Republicans are afraid they may lose elections if they even flirt with race-related issues. Republican strategist, Dan Schnur, explains further: If you talk about cracking down on illegal immigration, you have to act in support of legal immigration. If you criticize racial preferences, you have to outline what alternative programs are going to look like. (Mark Barabak, GOP Seeks New Image Among Latinos, Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1997.)
Blessings of Diversity
Six months ago Leif O’Connell of South Bend, Indiana was engaged to marry Annie Fulford. He was so obviously smitten that his friends would tease him about it. The couple had picked out a ring and planned to announce their engagement on April 18th, Miss Fulford’s birthday. All they talked about was getting married, settling down and giving me grandkids, Miss Fulford’s mother says.
The bride-to-be did not make it to her next birthday. She was shot to death when the young couple walked into an attempted robbery by four blacks on Miss Fulford’s older brother. Mr. O’Connell was devastated by the death of his fiancee and would come to her house every morning and sob uncontrollably as he stared at her ashes. Less than two months later, he started shooting black men at random. On several separate forays, he and a friend killed one man and wounded four. When they were finally arrested, he told police that he felt better after the shootings. In July he will go on trial for murder, and faces life in prison. Mr. O’Connell had no known history of antagonism towards blacks. (Nancy Armour, AP, Man Whose Girlfriend Was Killed In Robbery Accused of Shooting Black Men in Retaliation, May 13, 1997.)
A Michigan County Circuit Court Judge has found that the Michigan State Police have discriminated against whites and men. In Lewis v Michigan State, he awarded $305,000 in damages to a white man who had been on the force for 24 years. Recently, the same court awarded another white trooper $850,000. The court found that the Michigan State Police have routinely inflated the test scores of blacks and women, and that it made a number of appointments strictly on the basis of race and sex. (Michigan Court Deals Another Severe Blow to Michigan State Police, PRNewswire, May 15, 1997.)
