O Tempora, O Mores! (October, 1997)

Doctoring the Primitives

Miami has a constant problem with quack doctors. People just hang out a shingle and start practicing. Some claim to have been trained in Haiti or Guatemala but many just claim to be gifted. Miami is good for entrepreneurial medicine because many third-worlders don’t know the difference between a doctor and a fraud. Recently, Elsa Palenzuela was arrested for doing dentistry in her house without a medical license or an instrument sterilizer or radiation shielding for the X-ray machine or any means of disposing of infectious wastes. She cooked instruments in a toaster oven before she hacked at patients, of whom she saw some 400 or 500 a year. (Peggy Rogers, Police Shut Down Dental Practice Filled With Hazards, Miami Herald, July 23, 1997, p. 1B.)

Doctoring the Books

Medicare fraud costs the country billions of dollars every year, with an estimated 14 to 17 percent of Medicare money going into the pockets of thieves. The heavily Hispanic south Florida area, where approximately one fifth of the spending is fraudulent, has the highest concentration of bandits. The government hardly checks bills before paying up, so greedy medical people can make millions by overcharging, double charging, taking kickbacks, and billing for imaginary services and patients. One Miami Lakes agency collected $26 million for home visits it never made. Medical agencies routinely charge the government as much as $10 or $12 for a one-dollar catheter. Medicare fraud is so easy and profitable in south Florida that organized crime is reported to be joining the fun. (Peggy Rogers, Medicare Fraud: 20% in S. Florida, Miami Herald, June 28, 1997, p. 1B.)

. . . and the Earth is Flat

Decision No. B 4-0045/97 of the European Parliament:

The European Parliament takes the view that the concept of race has absolutely no scientific basis, neither genetically nor anthropologically. (quoted in Nation und Europa (Coburg, Germany), June 1997, p. 38.)

Only a Matter of Time

In the 1978 Bakke case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the University of California at Davis had the right to consider race as one of its criteria for admission to medical school. Allen Bakke (and other whites) were rejected so that less qualified blacks could become doctors. One of these was Patrick Chavis.

Dr. Chavis has since been lauded as one of the great success stories of racial preferences. Senator Edward Kennedy calls him “a perfect example” of a supposedly less qualified non-white going on to serve his people with distinction. During the campaign in California over Proposition 209, which eliminated racial preferences, Dr. Chavis was repeatedly cited as one of the wonders affirmative action has wrought.

In June, the Medical Board of California suspended Dr. Chavis license, noting his “inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician.” The board found him guilty of “gross negligence” in the case of three patients, one of whom died because of his incompetence. He has been sued at least 21 times for malpractice. He has failed to pay child support, and in March he declared bankruptcy in order to escape debtors.

Incompetence should be no surprise. In most years, the blacks admitted to medical school have average Medical College Aptitude Test scores lower than the whites who are rejected. Eighty-eight percent of white doctors pass their medical board exams but only 49 percent of blacks do.

What does Dr. Chavis say about the medical board’s findings? “That’s racism, I don’t care what you say. They wouldn’t do that to a white guy.” (Jeff Jacoby, A Case of Medical School Affirmative Action that Backfired, Boston Globe, Aug. 15, 1997. Scott Lindlaw, Doctor Was Once Affirmative Action Success Story, Now In Trouble, Associated Press, Sept. 2, 1997.)

We’re All Americans Now

Mohammed Aidid was the Somalian gangster the U.S. lost three helicopters and 18 men trying to catch in 1993. Aidid’s men dragged one of the American bodies through the streets of Mogadishu, where women and children beat and spat on it. Mr. Aidid died three years later in a gun battle, and his son, Hussein Aidid, was named leader of the clan.

As it happens, the younger Aidid is a U.S. citizen. When Somalia fell apart, his war lord father sent him to America, where he studied engineering at Cal State Long Beach. He also joined the Marine Corps and fought Iraqis in Desert Storm. He has a Somali wife whom he met in California and who still lives there. The self-proclaimed president of the essentially non-existent country of Somalia is of the same nationality as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. (Bob Reiss, “I am a Product of the U.S.’ Washington Post, Parade Magazine, Aug. 31, 1997 p. 16.)

Celebrating Dispossession

The headline and sub-headline of the cover story of the travel section of the Sunday Washington Post for August 17 was: “Forget the Alamo! Today’s San Antonio has little to do with that symbol of doomed Anglo imperialism. It’s a thriving capital of Hispanic culture, and a magnet for multicultural tourism.”

The sub-headline of a June 12 Chicago Tribune story about Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party reads: “A new, anti-immigrant party appeals to some Australians who still harbor notions of remaining a Caucasian society.”

Headline of a June 3, 1997 Christian Science Monitor article about non-whites moving into Utah: “Adding Spice in a State the Melting Pot Missed.”

Rev. Butt Naked

One of the more colorful figures in the Liberian civil war was “General Butt Naked,” who used to lead his men into combat dressed only in jack boots. He has since resumed his birth name of Joshua Milton Blahyi and become an evangelical minister, roaming the streets of Monrovia with a microphone, preaching peace and reconciliation.

The 25-year-old now explains that when he was eleven he joined a satanic society that required regular human sacrifice and battlefield nudity to ensure protection against the enemy. Mr. Blahyi explains how he got fresh human blood to ward off bullets:

Sometimes I would enter under the water where children were playing. I would dive under the water, grab one, carry him under and break his neck. Sometimes I’d cause accidents. Sometimes I’d just slaughter them.

What accounts for Mr. Blahyi’s change of profession? He was on the front lines, in his usual attire, when God appeared to him and told him he was a slave of Satan and not the hero he took himself to be. (Tina Susman, Gen. Butt Naked Now Bares Only His Soul, Washington Times, National Weekly Edition, Aug. 17, 1997, p. 22.)

Mixed Up Mississippians

Mission Mississippi is an organization of Christian businessmen that is urging the people of Jackson, Mississippi to fight racism. As one of its good works, it has persuaded a number of restaurants in the area to offer discounted meals to mixed-race couples. Mission Mississippi also sponsors rallies and picnics that encourage racial mixing. (Charlotte Graham, Black, White Couples Dining Together Offered Discount, Clarion-ledger (Jackson, Miss.) June 21, 1997, p. 13.)

A Forgiving Flock

Henry Lyons, head of the largest black church denomination, had a brush with scandal but the 8.5 million-member National Baptist Convention seems to have forgiven him. Rev. Lyons’ troubles began in July. His wife told police that while the reverend was off in Nigeria she discovered the deed of a $700,000 house he had bought in Boca Ciega Bay, Florida. Listed on the deed as co-owner was Bernice Edwards, a 40-year-old convicted embezzler whom Rev. Lyons had hired to work for the church. Mrs. Lyons visited what she thought was a love nest, found some of her husband’s suits in the closet, and tried to set the place on fire. She then drove her Mercedes into a palm tree.

Later, Rev. Lyons denied having an affair, and offered esoteric explanations for co-owning a mansion with his employee. Mrs. Lyons now denies everything she told the police, and claims that the fire started when she dropped a match. Curiously, the fire started in several different places and Mrs. Lyons did not call the fire department. It has also come to light that Rev. Lyons bought a $27,000 Lexus for a lady who is a former church employee.

Rev. Lyons does not care for the publicity, nor for questions as to how he can afford fancy homes and a collection of cars that includes three Mercedes and a Rolls-Royce. “What are you trying to imply?” he asked reporters. “That blacks in this country can’t be successful?” He has vowed to take his story to the black press. “They understand the truth,” explains an advisor.

At the end of August, the denomination held a convention in Denver. The 200-member board of directors voted without dissent to drop “the whole matter.” It found no misappropriation of funds, nor did it quiz the preacher about what he and Miss Edwards got up to in that $700,000 house. The denomination seems to have chalked the whole thing up to racism. As Rev. Lyons told God in an emotional prayer during the convention, “Don’t let white America tell us how to do Your will.” (Trials and Tribulations, Newsweek, July 21, 1997, p. 35. Black Baptist Group Drops Probe of Embattled Leader, Washington Post, Sept. 2, 1997, p. A2.)

Chicago Schools

One quarter of Chicago’s public school eighth graders were held back this year and will not be entering high school. This is the second year the city has started using a standardized test that must be passed in order to graduate from junior high school. The passing grade for eighth graders is the level of achievement that should be reached by someone who has completed the sixth grade.

Last year, the city eased the pain for non-performing eighth graders by letting them take part in graduation ceremonies, but they got an empty envelope rather than a diploma. This year they weren’t allowed to take part in the ceremony at all.

Pass rates by race have not been released, but different figures at different schools tell the story. At ten inner-city schools more than two-thirds of the students failed to make the grade, and at Mount Vernon School 98 percent failed. By contrast, the test has not been much of a problem in the suburbs. In Schaumberg Township, for example, every one of 1,688 eighth graders passed the test. In Cicero, only eight of 1,000 students failed.

An objective evaluation can be a shock for black students who do not realize how diluted their course work is. Sandra Jennings-Smith was an eighth-grader who got straight As in “honors” courses but still could not score at the sixth-grade level. (Rosalind Rossi, 8th-graders Held Back, Chicago Sun-Times, June 4, 1997, p. 1. John Carpenter, Suburbs Making the Grade, Chicago Sun-Times, June 4, 1997, p. 2.)

Moving on to the ninth grade is not necessarily a reward. The city has announced that seven high schools — every one of them 95 percent or more black — are to be “reconstituted.” On the basis of test scores, attendance, graduation rates, and other factors, every employee, from the janitor to the principal, will be fired and must reapply for his job. In effect, the schools are to be shut down in the hope that they will reopen under improved management. In fact, 80 percent of the current employees are likely to get their jobs back. (Rosalind Rossi, Shakeup Planned at 7 Schools, Chicago Sun-Times, June 12, 1997, p. 16.)

Meanwhile, a black 17-year-old girl who was attending the graduation ceremony at Bremen Township High School just south of Chicago ended up with a criminal record rather than a diploma. Despite repeated requests for silence she kept yelling and whooping as her friends graduated. She refused to leave the auditorium and attacked police, who had to subdue her with pepper gas. They hauled her away handcuffed and screaming. “I was super mad,” she explained later. “I wanted to graduate.” (Art Golab & Phillip O’Connor, Cops Arrest Girl Who Cheered at Graduation, Chicago Sun-Times, June 5, 1997, p. 4.)

Dr. Cattell Attacked

Raymond Cattell, one of the world’s great living psychologists, is the author of many of the standard personality and intelligence tests in use today. The American Psychological Association planned to honor him for lifetime achievement but decided to postpone the award because of allegations that Dr. Cattell is a “racist.”

Barry Mehler of Ferris State University in Michigan, a hyperactive opponent of “racism,” led the charge, saying Dr. Cattell has “a lifetime commitment to fascist and eugenics causes.” He added that “right-wing extremists” try to lend an air of scientific authority to their views by quoting Dr. Cattell. Perhaps he had AR in mind. We published an interview with Dr. Cattell in the Oct. 1995 issue.

The charge of fascism is, of course, absurd, but Dr. Cattell has been long interested in eugenics. His 1978 book Beyondism: A New Religion From Science, is a full exposition of his views and was reviewed by Thomas Jackson for AR. The American Psychological Association has appointed a blue-ribbon panel of experts to review Dr. Cattell’s work before making a final decision about the award. (Philip Hilts, Award to Accused Racist is Delayed, New York Times, Aug. 15, 1997, p. A24.)

Hoaxers Again

An interracial couple living in Georgia, Freeman Berry and Sandra Benson, have been arrested for insurance fraud in connection with a self-administered hate crime. In August, their home burned to the ground and the couple complained of hate calls and spray-painted swastikas. There was wide, sympathetic coverage. Miss Benson wept in the backyard of her burned-out house, telling reporters and investigators she was being punished for loving a black man. The FBI came to solve the hate crime and discovered that the couple had burned down their own house. Expensive computer equipment they claimed had been destroyed in the fire was later found in a rented storage locker. Nationwide Insurance rejected their $301,000 damage claim.

This is not the first time Miss Benson and Mr. Berry have played this game. They made off with $244,000 from State Farm Insurance when their house in Goshen, N.Y. burned mysteriously. Miss Benson has also falsely claimed she was injured in a car wreck, though she managed to bilk three different insurance companies out of a total of $200,000 in the incident. She also claimed she was blinded when a photocopier fell on her as she was applying for a job, but it turned out she was “applying” for a job with the company that she and Mr. Berry run at home. She also has sued a doctor for “disabling” her by bungling an operation for breast reduction and fat removal. Mr. Berry has falsely claimed to have been injured falling down a flight of stairs. The two have been indicted on 23 counts of mail and insurance fraud. (Chelsea Carter, FBI Probes Georgia Insurance Scam, Associated Press, Aug. 24, 1997.)

Our Fault, of Course

A liberal group reports that 50 percent of black men between the ages of 18 and 35 living in the District of Columbia are either in jail, on parole, on probation, or have warrants out for their arrest. DC blacks are 36 times more likely to be in custody than DC whites, whereas in the rest of the country blacks are only seven times more likely to be in jail. During the 1980s, the district increased spending on corrections at a rate almost seven times faster than it did on higher education. In fiscal 1996, it spent $842 million on criminal justice — $47 million more than on public education. In the nation as a whole, 80 percent of black men are reported to have spent at least one night behind bars, usually before they turn 40. (Eric Lotke, Hobbling a Generation, National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, August, 1997.)

The authors of the report bemoan the misguided priorities of our racist society, but the figures they report will not produce the socialist response they are hoping for. Washington, DC, including its police force, is run by blacks, not whites. Today, most whites who hear that 80 percent of black men have been in jail by their 40th birthday will assume they deserved to be. Far from voting to raise taxes for midnight basketball and other silliness, they will quietly organize their lives so as to stay as far from blacks as possible.

The One-Slave Rule

The borough of Queens, New York, is named for Catherine of Braganza, the 17th-century Portuguese princess who married Charles II of Britain. The Portuguese have decided to commemorate this fact by paying for most of the costs of a one-million-dollar, 35-foot bronze statue of the queen, which is to be erected next year on the Queens side of the East River. Rev. Al Sharpton, candidate for mayor of New York, is now leading a band of blacks who oppose the statue. He says Queen Catherine is “a racist symbol of slavery” because Britain and Portugal were involved in the slave trade and because the queen’s family reportedly owned slaves. (Merle English, Group Protests Statue as Racist, Newsday (New York), Aug. 26, 1997.)

Just Can’t Get Along

Rodney King, millionaire, is finally in jail. He is serving a 90-day sentence for trying to push his estranged wife out of a moving car. In addition to his most famous drunk-driving incident in 1991, in which he was beaten but not otherwise punished, he has also been caught for soliciting prostitutes, trying to run over a policeman with a car, and yet more drunk driving. This is the first time since his nation-wide notoriety that he has actually gone to jail. Mr. King received $3.4 million in damages from the city of Los Angeles on account of the 1991 beating. (Rodney King in Jail for Spouse Abuse, Associated Press, Aug. 21, 1997.)

Kiwis on the March

An anti-immigration party has been established in New Zealand. Inspired by the success of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party in Australia, John Lehmann has decided to turn his Government Accountability League into a full-fledged political party and fight the 1999 elections.

Mr. Lehmann has already been accused of “racism.” An Auckland college refused to let him use one of its buildings for a meeting when he advertised it as open to “bona fide New Zealanders only.” Last October, the New Zealand Race Relations Conciliator, a man named Rajen Prasad, stopped the league’s “Dob-a-wog” (turn in a non-white) campaign, which encouraged New Zealanders to report overstaying visitors to the authorities. Mr. Prasad found public use of the word “wog” illegal under the New Zealand Human Rights Act. (David Barber and Stephanie Peatling, Hanson Inspires Like-minded NZ Party, Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald, Aug. 14, 1997.)

Meanwhile, a recent poll finds that up to half the Asian immigrants to New Zealand are thinking of leaving. They complain of bad job prospects and a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment. Even the government, which had previously courted Asians, has instituted an English-language test that has cut Taiwanese immigration from 12,325 in 1996 to 659 in the first half of 1997. Where would the dissatisfied Asians like to go? Australia or the United States. (David Barber, Migrants Feel Cold Shoulder, Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 16, 1997.)

Nothing Seems to Work

A company called Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. has just announced the almost complete failure of an attempt to improve the lot of Detroit welfare mothers. Over a period of 18 months between 1989 and 1991, it spent approximately $9,000 on each of 2,300 mothers to teach them family planning, child care, job training, etc. After a 3-1/2-year follow-up period, the women are virtually indistinguishable from controls who did not get the training. Seventy-five percent of both groups are still on welfare. The only difference is that program participants were slightly more likely than controls to get a GED.

“I think I was surprised by the number of challenges these women have in their lives and how difficult it is for them to stay in jobs in the labor market,” observes Robert Granger, director of the program. (Tim Whitmire, Associated Press, July 2, 1997.)

Multicultural Bliss

For years, California resident Judy Ann Petty has had her initials, JAP, on her purse, check book, and other personal items. Since her husband’s name is Robin Arnett Petty, she has vanity license plates that say RAPNJAP. Now the California Department of Motor Vehicles says her plates have to go because of the letters JAP, which offend Japanese. Harvey Horikawa, the Japanese-American lawyer who prodded the department into action, says “I would think it would be sufficient to go with “JP and RP.’” Mr. and Mrs. Petty have vowed to fight the ruling. (Minerva Canto, “JAP’ Initials on License Plate Called a Racial Affront, Associated Press, Aug. 27, 1997.)

Try Anything

LaTonya Green of Detroit is a black lady bank robber. Her May, 1996, conviction was upheld despite a complaint that there were not enough blacks on the jury. Now, it has come to light that the Detroit jury pool in federal cases has been juggled for years to keep it majority black. So many blacks are in jail, fail to appear, or are unqualified as jurors that the courts were discarding the names of many whites to ensure “appropriate” black representation. What did Miss Green’s lawyers decide to do when this practice became known? Ask for a retrial because whites had been improperly kept off the jury. The appeal failed. (David Josar, Whites’ Exclusion From Juries Questioned, The Detroit News, Aug. 3, 1997, p. 5B.)

Blind Deer Hunters

Michigan has become the sixth state to allow the blind to go deer hunting. They may hunt with otherwise illegal laser sights, which throw a dot of light on the target. Blind hunters will be accompanied by someone who can see, who will quietly whisper instructions like, “Up a little, a bit to the right. Now fire.” (Eric Sharp, Blind Deer Hunters to Take Aim This Fall, Detroit Free Press, May 9, 1997, p. A1.)

Just Making Ends Meet

Antonio Ortiz used to live in Trenton, New Jersey. In June, his neighbors heard “a gunshot and a thump” in his apartment but found his door locked. When police arrived they found Mr. Ortiz, a drug dealer, still alive but with a mortal gunshot wound to the head. Since there were no weapons in the disordered apartment, police thought they had a murder on their hands. They changed the report to suicide and burglary when other witnesses explained that two black teenagers had jumped over Mr. Ortiz’s second-floor balcony immediately after he shot himself. They ransacked the apartment, stole Mr. Ortiz drugs and weapons, and escaped before the police arrived. (Chris Dolmetsch, Street Scavengers, The Trentoninan, June 22, 1997, p. 5.)

Christian Universalism

Pope John Paul II has denounced Western nations for cutting back on immigration, saying they have a moral duty to care for the needy — including the duty to let them in. “Who is my neighbor?” he asked. “The neighbor is every human being, without exception. It is not necessary to ask his nationality, or to which social or religious group he belongs. If he is in need, he must be helped.” (Frances D’Emilio, Associated Press, Aug. 22, 1997.)