O Tempora, O Mores! (September, 1999)
American Renaissance, September 1999
The Stupidity of Power
A recent cover story in the Washington Post details the expulsion of Serbs from Kosovo. Albanians have murdered at least 200 Serbs since the NATO occupation began, and driven three quarters of the rest out of the province. For their safety, Serbs must leave the country in convoy, escorted by NATO troops. The few Serbs who remain say they dare not appear in public. Many are afraid to shop in stores, and depend on food deliveries from NATO troops and humanitarian organizations. Formerly Serb-owned businesses are now run by Albanians who only smile when asked how they came into possession. More Serbs are leaving all the time, and no one will be surprised if they all go. “It looks like it’s over for the Serbs,” says an American officer. To which the Post adds: “The ideal of a multi-ethnic Kosovo — a place in which Serbs, ethnic Albanians and Gypsies can live together, an ideal NATO went to war to achieve — is on the verge of collapse.” (Peter Finn, NATO Losing Kosovo Battle, Washington Post, Aug. 4, 1999, p. A1.)
If NATO went to war to build a peaceful, multi-ethnic Kosovo, this was one of the most fantastically stupid wars in history. Only the most crazed liberal could have imagined such an outcome. Only politicians and generals who have learned nothing from history and who think they can rewrite human nature could have failed to foresee the expulsion of Serbs and the establishment of an Albanian ethnostate. And this, of course, is happening despite the presence of NATO occupiers specifically charged with preventing it.
This is a huge, unearned victory for the Kosovo Liberation Army and for the Albanian nationalists. And unless Serbia invades Kosovo some day, it is also a victory for peace and stability, since ethnostates are more stable than ethnic mixes. The immediate losers are the Serbs, of course, but the real, long-term losers are the people of the NATO countries. It is they who must live under rulers who love multi-ethnicity so much they are prepared to kill for it, and who are so blind they cannot understand that once the killing starts multi-ethnicity is the first casualty. There are clear, obvious lessons here for any country trying to force unlike peoples to live together, and we can be certain our rulers will not learn them.
California Voters Scorned
In 1994, California passed a voter initiative called Proposition 187 by a 60 to 40 percent margin. It would have barred illegal aliens from receiving welfare, free medical care, and instruction in public schools. It would have required teachers to turn in students they suspected were illegal and police to question people they arrest about their immigration status.
The American Civil Liberties Union and “civil rights” groups like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund sued to stop implementation of 187. They got what they wanted when U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfaelzer ruled in 1995 that the initiative conflicted with federal authority on immigration law. Former governor Pete Wilson, a Republican, was a supporter of Prop 187 and was planning to appeal the decision, but was forced out of office in 1998 by term limits. His successor, Democrat Gray Davis, opposed 187 and recently vowed, “I personally will never be a party to an effort to kick kids out of school.”
In April he dropped the appeal and instead submitted the question for mediation with the groups that originally challenged the initiative in court. This procedure called for lawyers representing the state of California and the opponents of 187 to work out a deal on implementation. A conservative group that supported Prop 187 called the Pacific Legal Foundation asked to be included in the talks but was refused. A liberal Democratic administration that was against the measure “negotiated” with groups that had taken it to court. On July 29 Gov. Davis announced the result of this sham. The “contending” parties decided to implement only one small provision of Prop 187 that established state penalties for the manufacture and use of false documents (this had been legal before that?). Otherwise, they flouted the will of the people.
According to immigration reform activist Glenn Spencer, “Davis sold his soul for the Hispanic vote and now he’s paying off. If he hadn’t done this they would have lynched him . . . The governor and the rest of these people are afraid to send this to the Supreme Court.” Immigration reform groups are circulating a petition to recall Gov. Davis (www.recalldavis.org) but the agreement means that Proposition 187 is dead. (Patrick McDonnell, Davis Won’t Appeal Prop. 187 Ruling, Ending Court Battles, Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1999. Patrick McDonnell, Prop 187 Talks Offered Davis Few Choices, Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1999.)
Cheap at Twice the Price
A privately-funded organization called CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity) offers drug-addicted mothers $200 to stop having children. They can have their tubes tied or use long-term birth control like Nor-plant, Depo Provera, or an IUD. Since indigent women get free medical care, CRACK doesn’t have to pay for the contraceptives or surgery; it just encourages the women. CRACK started in California and, so far, has paid 57 drug addicts $200 each to have no more children. Between them, they had already had 262.
The founder of CRACK is a white woman named Barbara Harris. She adopted four children from the same crack-smoking mother before she tried to get the California legislature to make it a crime to give birth to a drug-addicted baby. She says that between 1992 and 1996 12,338 addicted babies were born in Los Angeles alone, but she can’t get law makers to do anything about it.
The usual people are screaming the usual things. To charges of racism, Mrs. Harris notes that she is married to a black man and that almost half her clients have been white. To the charge that drug addicts can’t make rational choices when offered $200, she asks what sort of mothers they are likely to make. She offers the same amount to addicted men willing to get a vasectomy but has so far had no takers.
CRACK recently expanded into Chicago and has attracted attention in Minneapolis and Dallas. It gets the word out by putting up billboards in likely parts of town. Among its private donors is radio agony auntie, Laura Schlesinger, who gave the group $5,000. (William Claiborne, Chicago’s $200 Question, Washington Post, July 28, 1999, p. A3.)
‘Somebody to Hate’
The Southeastern Legal Foundation is a public interest law firm that takes anti-white discriminators to court. Located in Atlanta, Georgia, it has eliminated racial preference programs in Jacksonville, Florida, and in the two Georgia counties in the Atlanta area. It has stopped the school board in Nashville, Tennessee, from using race as a factor in admissions to magnet schools, and ended DeKalb County, Georgia’s, school busing program. Now it has taken aim at Atlanta’s minority set-aside program. This is supposed to reserve 35 percent of the city’s contracting work for minority-owned companies, but under a succession of black mayors it has become a patronage system for black fat cats.
Atlanta’s mayor, William Campbell, rages at the prospect of giving up set-asides. “We will fight to the death,” he says, explaining that “there will be no judge browbeating us into submission.” (It would be interesting to watch the mayor of Atlanta defy a federal court order.) And he has a low opinion of the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF): “Just because these right-wing hate groups dress themselves in suits instead of robes doesn’t mean it’s not still racism.” He has called for boycotts of the companies headed by men who serve on the board of the SLF, and two — poltroons — have obligingly resigned. The mayor has encouraged blacks to picket the homes of board members “so when they’re having their wonderful debutante balls, the participants will not be able to get by.”
A black state representative has called the SLF’s actions “hatemongering,” but has an interesting understanding of the word: “We have finally hit upon somebody to hate,” he explains. “Matt Glavin [SLF president] is someone that I hate.” (Carlos Campos, “Racist Tag Used in Fight Over Contracts,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, July 22, 1999, p. 1A.)
Even the slavishly liberal Atlanta Journal and Constitution thinks blacks have gone too far. A recent editorial reviewed some of the nasty things the mayor and his friends have been saying and asks, “Where, now, is President Clinton to denounce hate speech?” The editorial ends with a jab at Mayor William Campbell: “His world is divided into threes. There are those who agree with him. That’s one. There are whites who are racist. That’s two. And there are blacks who are Uncle Toms. That’s three.” (Jim Wooten, “Mayor’s Words Incite Racial Divide,” Atlanta J&C, July 23, 1999.)
Carry Me Back . . .
Ifeoma Udogwu, originally of Nigeria, worked as a child abuse investigator for New York City from 1989 to 1998, and was promoted last year to Child Evaluation Specialist. She did not, however, run an exemplary home. In 1989 she and her husband, Prosper Udogwu, walked into the American embassy in Nigeria with a 14-year-old girl whom they claimed was their daughter and got a visa for her. They told the girl, a family acquaintance, that they would take her to America where she could study to be a seamstress.
Instead, after they got her into the country, they took away her passport and made her a slave in their home in Jamestown, New York. They made her do the housework for no pay, beat her when she disobeyed, and told her that if she got cheeky they would strip her naked and send her back to Africa. They even showed her some clothes and said that was all that was left of the last girl they had had to send back. (There was some truth to that. In the 1980s, they brought a 10-year-old Nigerian girl to work in their house. They sent her back to Nigeria — clothed, presumably — after Mr. Udogwu’s brother raped her and she set fire to the house.)
The Udogwus kept their slave for nine years, at one time forcing her to work the night shift at McDonald’s and confiscating her paycheck. Last August when the girl, then 22 years old, demanded her freedom the Udogwus beat her so savagely the screaming roused the neighbors, who called the police. A friend of the family pressured her into not filing charges and she went to live with a friend. Four months ago, an unidentified source tipped off the FBI, which started an investigation. Mrs. Udogwu has now lost her job at the Administration of Child Services and the couple faces charges of immigration fraud and involuntary servitude. (David Rohde, Couple Charged With Holding Girl in Servitude, New York Times, July 15, 1999.)
Change of Heart
In 1996, a black former football star by the name of Daniel Colwell was depressed and suicidal. As he later testified, he didn’t have the courage to kill himself so he decided to have the government do it for him. He shot a white couple to death in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Americus, Georgia, and turned himself in for the death penalty. During the trial he taunted jurors, telling them he would come back and torture them if they did not give him the death penalty. They obliged.
Now, three years later, Mr. Colwell has decided he would rather live, and wants a new trial. As he explained in a death-row letter to his lawyer, “I very much want to go to a state mental hospital to get help to save my life. I am very sorry for killing those people. I don’t want to continue to be a murderer.” He drew a smiling face next to his signature. (AP, Ga. Killer Says He Wants to Live, July 15, 1999.)
Something called the Children’s Rights Council has ranked the fifty states in terms of which are best and worst for children. They studied such things as rates for immunization, abuse and neglect, poverty, teen-age pregnancy, divorce, and high-school graduation. Mostly, they needn’t have bothered. They could have gotten much the same results just by looking up racial demographics. Their top ten states (we have added the percentage of the population that is white) were are follows:
Maine (98%), Massachusetts (90%) Connecticut (88%), Vermont (98%), New Hampshire (98%), North Dakota (94%), Maryland (69%), Kansas (92%), Wisconsin (92%), Iowa (97%). The only real surprise is Maryland, which got into the top ten with a white percentage below the national average of 74.
The bottom ten states (starting at the bottom) were as follows: District of Columbia, Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, California, Oklahoma, Nevada, Arkansas, and Mississippi. All but one have something important in common: they have the highest percentages of either blacks or Hispanics. DC, Mississippi, and Louisiana (in that order) have the highest percentages of blacks. New Mexico, California, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada (in that order) have the highest percentages of Hispanics. At nine percent, New Mexico has the second highest percentage of Indians (9%) after Alaska (16%), which helped drag it down to third from the bottom. The only real curiosity here is Oklahoma, which is just seven percent black and four percent Hispanic — but it is eight percent Indian.
Needless to say, neither the report nor the news stories to which it gave rise seem to have noticed any of this. (Jennifer Markley, Arizona Ranks Low as Place to Raise Kids, Tribune (Phoenix), July 28, 1999, p. A1.)
According to a study by the United Nations Population Fund, Haiti is a demographic calamity and could eventually lose the capacity to sustain human life. Some of its findings:
- At the turn of the century, the country still had 50 percent of its original forest, but today it has only 1.5 percent. Twenty-five of it’s 30 watersheds are denuded.
- Population density is 740 people per square mile, second in the hemisphere only to Barbados.
- At least 70 percent of the people depend on firewood for fuel, which means they cut 15-20 million trees every year, resulting in the erosion of 15,000 acres of farmland.
- Average annual per capita income is $250 — lowest in the hemisphere.
- Sixty percent of the population is sexually active by age 12.
- The average number of births per woman is 4.8 — highest in the hemisphere and double the rate for Latin America.
- Forty-three percent of the population is under age 15.
- Population could double from eight million to 16 million in fewer than 30 years.
Population pressure would be even worse without emigration. Two million Haitians live in the United States, Canada and the Dominican Republic. Only the U.S. Coast Guard prevents hundreds of thousands of Haitian boat people from washing up on Florida’s shores. (Don Bohning, Haiti Struggles for Space, Miami Herald, June 21, 1999, p. 1A.)
Prepare for Brownout
It appears that television programs are too white, and “civil rights” groups are vowing to change that. Something called the National Hispanic Media Coalition has promised a “national brownout,” or boycott of programs, if ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox don’t cast more Hispanic actors. The NAACP says it is looking into “possible legal and regulatory action” to make programs less white, and the National Council of La Raza is mulling the same options. (Michael Fletcher, Latinos Plan Boycott of Network TV, Washington Post, July 28, 1999, p. C1.)
Visibly Loony
The London Metropolitan Police are in the midst of a £2 million anti-racism campaign. One of its goals is to get the police to talk about “visibly minority ethnic groups” rather than “blacks” or “Asians.” A spokesman for the police admits that the term may confuse the public but adds, “It is meant to avoid causing offense.” No one seems to recall a black or Asian asking to be referred to as “a member of a visibly minority ethnic group.” (Rajeev Syal, “Why ‘Visibly Ethnic’ is the New Black, Telegraph (London), June 6, 1999.)
War and Disease
The African country of Angola is suffering through what appears to be an interminable civil war. Thousands of refugees have fled their villages only to settle in vast squatter camps, with uncollected garbage, open sewers, and contaminated water. As a result, the country is in the grip of diseases many countries have conquered, such as polio, cholera, and leprosy. However, the fighting has spared Angolans one scourge that is common in its more peaceful neighbors: AIDS. As a UN health official living in the capital Luanda explains, Angola is more or less in quarantine:
The war has fractured Angola and isolated us. Because of the war, the sanitation of food and water has suffered, and that has made Angola an undesirable place for tourists or business people or people looking for work. And few Angolans can afford to leave. So while young, sexually active people go in and out of South Africa every day, that doesn’t happen very much here.
The AIDS infection rate in Angola is estimated at 3.8 percent compared to 22 percent in South Africa and 25 percent in Zimbabwe. (Jon Jeter, Civil War Inoculates Angola From AIDS Epidemic, Washington Post, July 17, 1999, p. A26.)
Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Britain from 1979 to 1990, appears to be moving our way. In a recent article denouncing attempts to build utopias she wrote:
The U.S. is moving toward a system in which the government presides over a number of different social groups, some of which have their own language and type of education. The approach undermines social unity and allows construction of a multicultural society, which is the very opposite of America’s previous practice. The government aims to supervise these different groups and keep the peace by redistributing income from one to another.
Thus the utopia of multiculturalism involves a bureaucratic class presiding over a nation divided into a variety of ethnic nationalities. That, of course, looks awfully like the old Soviet Union. Such a system cannot work, and its failure is likely to inflict great damage on the people, their traditions, and their liberties. (Margaret Thatcher, “Resisting the Utopian Impulse,” American Outlook (Hudson Institute), Spring, 1999.)
Quaint Tropical Customs
The former mayor of the Puerto Rican town of Toa Alta has been sentenced for corruption in connection with the cleanup after Hurricane Georges struck the island last September. He demanded $2.5 million from the Mississippi-based JESCO Construction company in exchange for a contract to collect debris. The American company alerted the FBI, which secretly recorded the mayor offering to inflate estimates of the damage so the company would be paid more by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The kickback was supposed to have come from padding the bill. The U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico has sentenced the former mayor, Angel Rodriguez, to nearly five years in jail and fined him $10,000. (Puerto Rican Ex-Mayor Sentenced, AP, July 6, 1999.)
Hispanic Speaks
A reader of a Berkeley, California, newspaper called the East Bay Express recently wrote a letter to the editor about an article by a Mr. Chris Thompson on the racial performance gap in Berkeley’s schools:
In their heart of hearts, everyone knows the primary reason why blacks do poorly and whites do well in school. The forbidden thought that neither Chris nor anyone in the article ever says is this: On average, black kids are not as intelligent as white or Asian kids. There. I said it. This great bogeyman of a truth lurks hidden in plain sight behind every quote in Thompson’s article, and practically every other article I’ve read on the subject.
I’m a long time liberal and Berkeley High graduate myself, and I resisted acknowledging this socially distasteful fact for a long time. But the mountain of evidence eventually became too large to ignore . . .
. . . [W]e should stop fretting that black students can’t match white students academically, because it will never happen.
The letter is signed Diego Palambayo — a real name or a pseudonym with which to tempt the editors? (Diego Palambayo, Color Coded, East Bay Express, June 18, 1999, p. 6.)
Not on the Net
Not all groups are equally likely to use computers. Asian families are most likely to own computers (55%) followed by white (47%), Hispanics (25.5%), and blacks (23%). Asian households, at 36 percent are most likely to have an Internet account. Money has a lot to do with computer ownership, and for families with incomes over $75,000 there is almost no black-white gap. But money doesn’t explain everything. Thirty-three percent of white families with incomes of $15,000 to $35,000 own computers, whereas the corresponding figure for blacks is only 19 percent. The gap has increased nearly 62 percent since 1994 despite falling computer prices. A child in a “low-income” white family is three times more likely to have Internet access at home than is a child in a comparable black family, and four times more likely than a Hispanic child.
Trevor Farrington, who directs a web site for blacks, says blacks have not yet understood the value of the net. They think it’s too technical, (but) it’s as easy to use as TV and it’s better. Once they understand that, it should grow.” (AP, ‘Racial Ravine’ Divides Net Users, July 8, 1999.)
Twenty-two percent of white women and 37 percent of black women are obese. Black men are fatter than white men. Why? An NIH study suggests it may be because blacks have slower metabolisms. In a controlled, laboratory setting, scientists recorded the sleeping metabolic activity, the 24-hour fat-oxidation rate, and physical energy expenditure of groups of blacks and whites. For both sexes, the metabolic rate for blacks was slower, especially during sleep. Given the same diet, people with slow metabolisms gain weight more easily. The findings are reported in the July issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. (E.J. Mundell, Metabolic Rate Linked to Obesity in Black Women, Reuters, July 16, 1999.)
The Catholic archdiocese of St. Louis has commissioned and erected a 14-foot high, 1,100-pound stainless steel “diversity” sculpture next to the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica. Called “Angel of Harmony,” it is a smiling black angel with arms stretched out to protect a Hispanic boy playing a flute, a black boy beating a drum, and an Asian girl ringing a bell. “All of our churches are covered with beautiful images of God, Jesus and Mary with European features,” says Bishop Edward Braxton. “If we’re going to look at ourselves as Catholics in diversity, it’s important that we see images that are diverse in backgrounds.” (Church Hopes Sculptor’s Work Inspires Diversity, Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 25, 1999, p. A16.)
Bet on the Taliban
Allan Carlson, of the Rockford Institute recently wrote:
There is an iron law in history: The future belongs to the fertile. Just as the clan-centered, child-rich barbarian tribes . . . swept away the sensuous and sterile Western Roman Empire, so shall new barbarians arise. Barring religious renewal . . . the fate of the European Community is already written: The heirs to the continent will be . . . the Muslims, the Asians, the Africans — who have been brought in to clean up after their hosts. With fertility levels three to four times that of their neighbors . . . what remains of the splendor and wealth of Europe will probably be theirs by the mid-21st century. In other words, forget the ‘new politics’ of the Tony Blairs; bet on the Taliban. (Allan Carlson, An Elegy for the Free Sexual World, Family in America, July 1999.)
Unity Only in Name
Unity is a 6,000-member organization of minority journalists. Associations of black, Hispanic, Indian, and Asian journalists formed the alliance in 1988 to promote non-white hiring and more coverage of non-whites.
The group is fracturing along racial lines. This year’s conference was held in Seattle, Washington, where voters recently decided to end most state- and local-government affirmative action. Sidmel Estes-Sumpter, former president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), did not attend the meeting because organizers refused to have it some place else. She blames, “the other races” for keeping the conference in Seattle. “I think it is an insult to NABJ and an insult to black folks for us to go to Washington,” she says. The black group is the oldest and largest of the four member associations, and the other three are wary of being dominated.
Previous Unity conferences have divided over the racial symbolism of the city chosen for the conference, the races of the vendors, and the racial balance of convention speakers. American Indians threatened to boycott a Unity conference in Atlanta because the baseball team is called the Braves and because the Georgia state government helped ship the Cherokees west in 1830. Some agreed to come only after a ceremony was arranged to honor those who died on the “trail of tears” and a panel was set up to discuss offensive names for sports teams.
According to black USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham, “What began as a survival mechanism has become an alliance of four organizations that have relatively little in common.” (Michael Fletcher, Unity’s Patchwork Network, Washington Post, July 7, 1999, p. C1.)
Importing More Problems
How could the number of Americans without health insurance increase from 36 million in 1990 to 43 million in 1997 despite a good economy? According to the National Coalition on Health Care there is a simple answer: immigration. The Census Bureau reports that in 1997, 34.3 percent of foreign-born residents had no medical insurance compared to 14.2 percent of natives. Places with a lot of immigration have a lot of people without insurance. Los Angeles has a 31 percent uninsured rate and a quarter of New Yorkers lack insurance. Almost 40 percent of El Paso, Texas, residents have no coverage. More than 20 percent of the people of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas have no insurance. Many argue that immigrants don’t earn enough to afford medical insurance, but the average Mexican immigrant sends $300 back to Mexico each month — more than enough to pay premiums.
James R. Edwards of the Hudson Institute says, “If we’re serious about curbing the problem of the uninsured, we must admit only individuals with the skills, education and capacity to make it in America’s skills-based economy . . . Otherwise, we should stop decrying the social ills of the uninsured, high dropout rates, unemployment and poverty among the foreign born.” (James R. Edwards, Uninsured Immigrants a Drag, Investors Business Daily, July 29, 1999, p. 22.)
The Mail & Guardian, one of South Africa’s leading newspapers, is a strong supporter of Nelson Mandela and the ANC. This is excerpted from the lead editorial in the June 11/17 issue:
A caller to a local radio station (has) suggested that the franchise be taken away from White people for a period so that the Black majority can get on with the business of political contestation free from the bogey of race. Her reasoning is that after ten years, once the playing fields have been leveled, Whites can have the vote back and spread their support among the Black parties that emerge. The caller was greeted with laughter and derision but . . . one wonders whether there is not a germ of a good idea in the suggestion . . .
. . . We have always believed, along with Nelson Mandela, in the ideal of a non-racial South Africa, but like a patient who needs to detoxify before he can be cured, we must beware of and acknowledge our diseased racial past in order to finally purge it from the political bloodstream. (Disenfranchising Whites?, Aida Parker Newsletter, June 1999, p. 8.)
Hero Criminals
In its typically idiotic way, the Immigration and Naturalization Service sends boat people back to Cuba if they are caught on the water but lets them stay if they make it to shore. This “wet foot, dry foot” policy leads to much distasteful drama when the Coast Guard catches boaters within sight of land. Recently a Cuban poured gasoline over his boat and its occupants and threatened to light it if the Coast Guard did not let him keep going. On another occasion, a woman said she would drown her baby if the Coast Guard wouldn’t let her through. Another man said he would throw himself onto a spinning propeller. Sometimes, even far from land, Cubans jump into the water, saying they would rather drown than be sent back. Coast Guard officers have to jump in and save them.
But even more distasteful is the behavior of Miami’s Cubans. On June 29, six Cubans on a small boat tried to come ashore just north of Miami Beach. Their fight with the Coast Guard was broadcast live by a news helicopter that hovered overhead. Miami television stations interrupted soap operas to show the Coast Guard blasting the boat with a water cannon and shooting pepper spray at a man who tried to swim to shore. Hundreds gathered on the beach and cheered as two of the men made it to the sand.
Later, as demonstrators blocked traffic and shouted “assassins,” the Coast Guard relented and brought the other four to land and let them apply for political asylum. On July fourth, Mayor Joe Carollo of Miami joined them for a seafood dinner. A few days later, an artist made a sculpture of a man diving onto the sand as two policemen close in, and set it up on the beach to mark the heroic event. (Rick Bragg, Cuba’s New Refugees: Rafts Are Out, Hiring Smugglers is In, New York Times, July 21, 1999, p. A1.)
Culture Takes a Beating
Third-World immigrants to the United States often find themselves accused of child abuse or wife beating for practices that are unexceptionable back home. In most Hispanic countries it is customary to leave bruises, cuts, or welts on a refractory child and to beat wives who are not sufficiently obedient.
Social workers find that Hispanic immigrants to the United States fall into a pattern of behavior. First the men come by themselves. After work and on weekends they drink. Once they have saved some money they bring their families to America, but they keep on drinking. When they are drunk they hit their wives and children, especially as the family becomes “Americanized” and challenges the father’s authority.
The man thinks he has done nothing wrong and is astonished when the social service department steps in — sometimes to comical effect. A Guatemalan family living in Boynton Beach, Florida, discovered the American system when the father smashed one of his three children in the face and left a large, swollen bruise. The authorities followed their usual procedures and devised a case plan: a domestic violence course and random drug testing for the father; parenting classes and psychological tests for both father and mother; counseling for better living arrangements for the family, all of whom sleep in the same ten-by-ten bedroom. The entire program is likely to be lost on both of them. The father speaks no English, and the authorities have only the spottiest funds for Spanish interpreters. The mother does not even speak Spanish. She speaks only a Mayan dialect for which there are no interpreters. (Mary McLachlin and William Cooper Jr., Immigrants Stunned by Culture Shock, Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, July 18, 1999.)
An estimated 11,100,000 black slaves were brought to the Americas. Their destinations were:
| Brazil | 4,000,000 |
| Spanish Empire | 2,500,000 |
| British West Indies | 2,000,000 |
| French West Indies | 1,600,000 |
| Dutch West Indies | 500,000 |
| North America & U.S. | 500,000 |
Many people talk casually about “millions” of slaves being brought to America as part of an “African Holocaust.” In fact, fewer than five percent of the Africans who made the “middle passage” came to what is now the United States and were better cared for than in any other part of the New World. (Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade, Oxford University Press, 1997.)
