O Tempora, O Mores! (November, 1999)

Didn’t Make the Evening News

On August 16th, Terrence McCray and Ledell Lawrence, both black, decided to attack the next white person they saw on their street in Jacksonville, Florida. A retarded man named Gregory Griffith was the hapless victim; the two beat and stomped him unconscious and he died ten days later. Both Mr. McCray and Mr. Lawrence admitted they beat the man “because he was white.” State attorneys have not decided whether to pursue the case as a hate crime. (Police: Murder of Handicapped White Man Racially Motivated, Tampa Tribune, September 4, 1999.)

Whites living in a largely Puerto Rican part of Chicago woke up one morning to find unfriendly mail. The letters contained, “strong racist messages, threatening them with violence unless they moved out of the neighborhood.” Police say they received about 20 complaints but believe that a great many more whites got the letters. A Chicago city councilman has announced a $1,000 reward for information on who sent the letters. (www.latnn.com, White Residents Threatened in Puerto Rican Neighborhood, September 2, 1999.)

In Boulder, Colorado, “Asian Crips” leader Sonny Lee decided to help his friend Kather Yang, who wanted to have sex with a white woman. Together with four other Asian men they found a white University of Colorado student walking alone early on the morning of August 29th. They dragged her into a minivan, where they raped her and forced her to have oral sex. At one point she jumped out naked and tried to escape, but her assailants caught her and dragged her back into the van where they continued to rape her. “They were all screaming at her, calling her names and hitting her,” said Detective Jane Harmer. “It was a free-for-all.” One man threatened to “cut and burn her,” and another put a gun to the back of her head when they released her. Five suspects — Kao Vang, 18, Chu Vang, 16, Steve Yang, 19, Johnny Lee, 17, and Sonny Lee, 23 — face charges of kidnapping and sexual assault. Kather Yang, whose desire for a white woman was the cause of it all, killed himself in a Green Bay, Wisconsin, motel room. (Kevin McCullen, Rape Suspects Were Seeking White Woman, Denver Rocky Mountain News, September 30, 1999.)

In San Francisco as many as ten black women decided to go “looking for Asian girls” to rob. They fell upon three sisters aged 17, 21, and 22, whom they beat and robbed. Two other victims were apparently able to fight them off and run away. Someone saw the thieves emptying a stolen purse and called the police, who managed to arrest three of them — two 15-year-olds and a 17-year-old — before the rest scattered. “Two of the three (said) that the plan was to go up to Japantown and look for Asian girls,” said Inspector Simon Silverman of the Night Investigations Unit. “They told me that they went deliberately looking for Chinese girls because they felt that they are more vulnerable and that they would carry more money.” (Jim Herron Zamora, 3 Girls Jailed in Racial Assault, San Francisco Examiner, September 14, 1999.)

Success in Austria

In the latest national elections the Freedom Party, led by nationalist Jörg Haider, stunned Europe with its success. With 27.7 percent of the vote it is second only to the governing Socialists, who won 33.4 percent. It pulled ahead of the conservative People’s Party and is poised to enter a coalition government.

Mr. Haider has won votes — and the usual obloquy — because of his opposition to immigration. During the campaign Vienna was festooned with posters that said “Stop Over-Foreignerization.” In the past, Mr. Haider has startled the bourgeoisie by arguing that Hitler had a good employment policy and that the men who fought in the Waffen SS were “loyal patriots.” The Freedom Party’s latest success has led to the usual self-righteous hand-wringing all across Europe as well as in the United States, where White House spokesman James Rubin warned arrogantly that Mr. Haider had better not bring his “xenophobic” views with him if he joins Austria’s next government. (Susan Ladika, Nationalists Score Big Electoral Gain, Washington Times, Oct. 4, 1999, p. A11. David Sands, U.S. Calls for Stifling of Pro-Nazi Viewpoints, Washington Times, Oct. 5, 1999, p. A15.)

Police Chief Fights Back

In April we reported that Carl Williams, the New Jersey State Police Superintendent was fired for pointing out in a Newark Star-Ledger interview that non-whites were more likely to run drugs than whites. Blacks shrieked about “racial profiling” and Superintendent Williams had to go. New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman has since replaced him with a black former FBI agent. Mr. Williams has now filed a law suit against the governor, claiming that she fired him because he is white and that she wanted to appoint a black to further her political career. (It is probably true that any black police official who had told the truth about who runs drugs would not have been fired.) In his $21 million suit, Mr. Williams says that in public statements Gov. Whitman herself “expressly admitted that she had no problem with the use of race as one of several proxies for potential criminality.”

The 2,700-member state police force is mostly white, and the majority of troopers have remained loyal to Mr. Williams. They are also annoyed that their new chief did not come up through the ranks as Mr. Williams did, but was hired from outside the force. Gov. Whitman says the case against her is baseless and that the suit will further weaken police morale. (Whitman: Williams’ Lawsuit is Baseless, The Press (Atlantic City), Oct. 5, 1999. p. C6. Wendy Ruderman, Whitman Fears Suit May Stir Tensions, Times (Trenton), Oct. 5, 1999.)

Is Honor Color-Blind?

The University of Virginia at Charlottesville has an honor code that requires expulsion for any student who lies, cheats or steals. The 157-year-old code is now under attack because non-whites are more likely than whites to violate it and be expelled. Last year, for example, Asian students were eight times more likely to get the boot, blacks were four times as likely, and Hispanics five times as likely. (The total number of students expelled was so low — 19 — that the small sample size makes these comparisons unreliable but blacks, at least, appear to have been overrepresented for many years.) Naturally blacks smell “racism.” Rick Turner, dean of African-American affairs, points out that 97 percent of the people who brought accusations of honor code violations were white and says this proves the “system is biased and needs monitoring.” It does not seem to have occurred to him that people who are, themselves, more likely to violate the code may not be zealous about enforcing it. (David Fallis, Questioning U-VA’s Honor, Washington Post, Oct. 3, 1999, p. C1.) If minorities have their way, the code will be abolished or denatured. One more institution built by whites for whites will have been set aside because non-whites could not meet its demands.

Zebra Killings

Sibusiso Madubela was a captain in the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army during the fight against apartheid in South Africa. In 1994, when the country was handed over to the ANC, he joined the South African Defense Force but his rank was reduced to lieutenant, a demotion he considered “racist.” Earlier this year, he was granted leave from the Tempe military base in Bloemfontein to bury his father, but he overstayed his leave by ten days and had his pay docked. On September 16th he asked to see the base commander to complain about the punishment but the commander was elsewhere. Lieutenant Madubela then checked out his weapon and went on a shooting rampage, killing six white officers and a white woman civilian. He is reported to have pushed blacks out of the way in order to get clear shots at whites. He also managed to wound five people — all white — before he was shot and killed by one of the whites he wounded. Siphiwe Nyanda, chief of the South African Defense Force, insisted that it would be a mistake to assume that the shootings were racially motivated.

Lieutenant Madubela’s funeral attracted an estimated 2,000 mourners. The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), which still lingers on from anti-apartheid days, was furious that the army did not give him a military burial and vowed it would fire its own 12-gun salute. As people arrived at the burial ground, police confiscated weapons while blacks chanted “one settler [one white], one bullet.” In the funeral oration a PAC official vowed that his group would carry on Mr. Madubela’s good work and that the lieutenant had gone on his heroic rampage in order to “teach whites a lesson.” PAC members then began to fire a salute but were stopped by police who fired their own weapons into the air. At least three people were hurt in the panic that followed.

The funerals of the white officers were calmer but not without tension. Some black soldiers reportedly refused to join the honor guard, and blacks from other units are said to have been rounded up to fill out the ranks.

The integration of black “liberation” fighters into the South African army has not gone smoothly. The Tempe base was one of the first at which it was attempted, and the result has been continuous racial tension in an army in which most of the high-ranking officers are still white. British experts called in to help with integration warned two years ago that there was much hostility, calling Tempe “a racial powder keg waiting to explode.” (AP, S. African Shooter Had Been AWOL, Sept. 17, 1999. Black Lieutenant Kills 6 White Officers, Civilian, Washington Times, Sept. 18, 1999, p. A5. Elise Mnyandu, Race Tension Mars Burial of White S. African Troops, Reuters, Sept. 22, 1999. Michel Muller, Police Shoot at S. African Funeral, AP, Oct. 2, 1999.)

Billboard Back Up

Last month AR reported on Craig Nelsen, who put up anti-immigration billboards in New York City. They caused a huge stink, and city officials ordered them down, claiming they violated zoning regulations. In September, Mr. Nelsen put up his largest billboard yet, near the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn. It reads, “Because of mass immigration, the U.S. population will exceed half a billion in my lifetime. Help us, Congress. — An American Kid, age 6.” An official for the Department of Buildings says it will investigate to see if the new billboard violates regulations.

Mr. Nelsen is renting the space for $6,500 a month and is not worried about harassment. “I hope they rip it down,” he says. “It will draw more attention. The more they squawk, the better we look. The average American just agrees with us on this. Every time the city rips down the billboard it just strengthens our position.” Mr. Nelsen has also notified the city that he intends to sue for damages. He says the city interfered with his contract for earlier billboards, abridged his freedom of speech, and defamed him. (Julian Barnes, Immigration Foe Puts Up Another Billboard; City to Investigate Legality, New York Times, September 8, 1999.)

Seenging Deexee

Hispanics are flooding into the South. In Dalton, Georgia, which has several carpet-making mills, one percent of the school children were Hispanic in 1987; now 42 percent are Hispanic. Schools all over the south are desperate for teachers who speak Spanish, and some are willing to hire them all the way from Mexico.

The newcomers are unfamiliar with the history and culture of the South. “Most of them don’t know what the Confederate flag is or that the South had a tradition of the KKK,” says Jacqueline Rosier of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “This is all new to them.” They have found no shortage of teachers.

Nelson B. Rivers, director of the NAACP in Atlanta, sees new comrades: “It’s a natural alliance. I can’t imagine why anyone would see it as a threat. We are already working together. We have both been suppressed and excluded, so we have a lot in common.” (Gil Klein, Hispanics Fueling Boom in Old South, Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 5, 1999, p. A1. Wes Allison, More Hispanics in Area, Census Shows, Richmond Times-Dispatch, September 5, 1999, p. A8.)

Housing Their Own

A federal housing study of the Los Angeles area has stumbled upon the obvious: blacks and Hispanics don’t like each other. In an experiment in which Hispanics posing as renters went to black-run buildings and blacks applied at Hispanic-run buildings, both groups were shown the door more than half the time. Applicants of the right race got offers of apartments even when their credit records were worse. One Hispanic manager said outright that he didn’t rent to blacks. A Korean pretended not to be the manager when he was approached by a non-Korean. Many buildings advertise only in Spanish or Korean, which makes it clear what tenants they want. In the stilted language of UCLA geographer William A.V. Clark, all this is “striking evidence of persisting own-race selectivity and avoidance of other races.” (Ted Rohrloch, 2 Studies Find Racial Bias in Rental Practices, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 27, 1999, p. B1.)

Hiring Their Own

A Los Angeles Times poll of minority-owned businesses in Los Angeles County found that non-white business owners overwhelmingly prefer to hire people of their own race or ethnic group. Nearly three quarters of Hispanic business owners described their work force as mostly Hispanic and 41 percent of black owners have a mostly black work force. About one-third of Asians and whites employ mostly other Asians or whites. No more than three percent of any minority group reported a mostly white work force.

When business owners hire outside their own racial group, they prefer Hispanics to blacks. Only one percent of Latinos reported a mostly black work force; only three percent of Asians and four percent of whites hired mostly blacks. At the same time, almost 30 percent of white owners reported a largely or partly Latino work force. The black-Hispanic difference is only partly explained by the fact that Hispanic workers outnumber black workers 41 percent to eight percent (Asians are 12 percent and whites are 39 percent). (Lee Romney, Minority-Owned Firms Tend to Hire Within Own Ethnic Group, Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1999.)

Same People, Same Problems

It has become fashionable to blame “inner-city” problems on high-rise housing projects. The new theory is that vertical concentration of poor people oppresses them, and that in dispersed, low-rise houses they will reform. All over the country, cities are boarding up (and sometimes blowing up) ancient high-rises. Two years ago the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) followed fashion by launching a huge project to move poor blacks into white-trimmed, turreted town houses. The first phase, which cost $80 million, was to replace the Henry Horner complex with 350 new houses and showcase CHA efforts to transform the entire area.

To the surprise of city officials, in just two years an entire block is now riddled with boarded up windows and burnt-out shells. The quick deterioration reportedly “raises perplexing questions about whether architecture or more stubborn cultural pathologies are at the heart of public housing woes.” Residents have a simpler answer. Shanika Ellis points out that the buildings may be different “but you still have the same people with the same mentality.” The CHA has a solution: It will pay a consulting firm one million dollars to assess the “housekeeping skills” of prospective tenants and to train residents in “housekeeping, parenting, financial management, and job readiness.” (Melita Marie Garza, Old Problems Plague New Low-Rises, Chicago Tribune, September 20, 1999, p.1.)

No one seems to remember that many high-rise projects were originally built for poor whites, who were somehow immune from the effects of vertical concentration. It was only when residents became largely non-white that the buildings’ architectural defects were discovered.

Save the Elephants

For nearly a year, South Africa has been in a tizzy over the fate of 30 or 40 elephants — at least part of South Africa has. In the summer of 1998, a company called African Game Services (AGS) rounded up elephants from overpopulated herds in neighboring Botswana and undertook to habituate them to humans before selling them to zoos and circuses. Long-simmering charges of cruelty to the animals came to a head with a widely-broadcast pirate video of an AGS trainer bludgeoning a chained baby elephant so brutally that the screaming animal urinated on itself. This has prompted an almost exclusively white animal welfare protest movement, with as many as 5,000 whites chanting and picketing at such remote locations as the AGS compound.

Naturally, South African blacks think any uplift movement should benefit them, not animals. “The animal kingdom clearly surpasses Africans when it comes to ‘rights,’” complains a typical black, and one black newspaper editor has suggested that “maybe we should dress our poor up as elephants.” Another black says whites “are in some sort of denial or [have] a heavy case of misdirected guilt.” (Paul Salopek, In S. Africa, a Mammoth Debate, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 1, 1999, p. 1.)

Whites are, indeed, misdirected. They are more willing to demonstrate by the thousands for the welfare of elephants than they are to work for the future of their own people.

Let the Groveling Begin

Albert Gore appears to be willing to go to any length to woo Hispanics, who accounted for five percent of the electorate in the 1996 presidential race. In September he spoke to the annual Congressional Hispanic Caucus dinner, where he told the audience that his first grandchild was born on July fourth. “My next one I hope will be born on Cinco de Mayo,” he said. (Ceci Connolly, Politicians Court Hispanic Vote, Washington Post, Sept. 16, 1999, p. A12.)

Pillory the Pilgrim

The town of Southampton on Long Island has something called the Anti-Bias Task Force, which his recently opened fire on the town seal. Adopted in 1929, the seal depicts a pilgrim, the date 1640, and the words: “First English settlement in the State of New York.” The task force has passed a unanimous resolution calling on the town to dump the seal because it “features an offensive representation of one gender, one race and one historical period.” To suggest that meaningful history began in 1640 is to ignore the contributions of the Shinnecock Indians. (Donna Giacontieri, Is Town Seal Offensive? Southampton Press, Sept., 24, 1999, p. 1.)

Fortunately, when the resolution was reported in the Southampton Press, residents swamped the town council with angry calls and letters, saving the seal — at least for now.

In a Vegetable State

The Florida Tomato Committee is a group of tomato growers that makes recommendations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture about federal tomato regulations. In September, the industry planned to ratify nominations for the committee at the 24th annual Joint Tomato Conference, which attracts hundreds of growers, shippers, and equipment suppliers. At the last minute, Kathleen Merrigan of USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service queered the do by refusing to accept this year’s nominations. In a letter to the committee she wrote, “I am concerned about the committee’s lack of significant effort and commitment to increase participation of women, minorities and persons with disabilities in the nomination process.”

At the beginning of the decade there were more than 800 tomato growers in the state but international competition has reduced the number to fewer than 100. Wayne Hawkins, manager of the committee, says he doesn’t know a single woman or non-white chief executive in the whole industry. As for “people with disabilities,” Dan McClure, president of West Coast Tomato, walks on crutches but has served on the committee for more than ten years. His renomination therefore did not increase the percentage of disabled.

Miss Merrigan of the USDA wants the committee to produce an outreach plan to recruit the right sort of people, adding that if she accepts the plan she “will ask the committee to conduct new nominations for my consideration.” (Jennifer Maddox and Laura Layden, Feds: Too Few Women, Minorities on State Tomato Panel, Naples (Florida) Daily News, Sept. 10, 1999.)