O Tempora, O Mores! (July, 2002)

Feds Raid Nuwaub Nation

The United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors sits on 473 acres of central Georgia not far from the town of Eatonton. It is a colony of some 100 to 150 black followers of a man they call “the master teacher,” and who once described himself as “the Supreme Being of This Day and Time, God in Flesh.” He has gone by such exciting names as Isa Muhammud and Abd Allh Idn Abu Bakr but his real name is Dwight York. The Nuwaubian Nation may now be about to crumble; on May 8, police arrested Mr. York and four followers on charges of child molestation and transportation of children across state lines for illegal purposes.

Mr. York has had a colorful, energetic career. Born in 1945, he got his first criminal conviction — for raping a 13-year-old — at age 19. In 1965 he went to jail on other charges, but got out in 1967 and joined the Black Panthers. He left the Panthers, and in 1970 started a Muslim sect in Brooklyn called the Ansaru Allah Community, whose members dressed in white robes. The sect went through several changes in both name and theology, and was known variously as Ansaar Pure Sufi and the Nubian Islamic Hebrews. Mr. York got in trouble with other New York black Muslim groups and decided to leave town.

In 1993 the master teacher paid $975,000 for a former game ranch in Georgia, and moved the group south. At first, he and his followers wore cowboy hats and boots, and more or less blended in with other rurals, but then Mr. York decided his people were Nuwaubian or Moorish, and they started dressing up like ancient Egyptians. Mr. York attracted further attention by claiming to be a native of the planet Rizq in the galaxy of Illyuwn, and promising that in the year 2003 a spaceship would arrive and gather up 144,000 followers for rebirth in another galaxy. Mr. York sometimes says he is Chief Black Eagle, the reincarnated leader of a lost tribe of Yamassee Indians. Sometimes he is content with the name Malachi Z. York. Whatever name he uses, he teaches that white people are descended from the Biblical Canaanites, that they are inferior to blacks, and that their whiteness is a genetic defect.

Over the years, the Nuwaubians have turned parts of the ranch into a faux-Egyptian complex with pyramids and ceremonial gates, and have named it Tama-Re, which is supposed to mean “Egypt of the West.” Every year in late June, the Nuwaubs celebrate Savior’s Day, which happens to be Mr. York’s birthday. In the mid-1990s, when the cult was at its height, the event could attract as many as ten thousand admirers.

The arrests for child molestation are not the Nuwaubians first brush with the law. Putnam County authorities have cited the compound several times for building code violations. In 1998, Egypt of the West opened a nightclub called Ramses in a building that had permits for use only as a warehouse. The county sheriff shut down Ramses, prompting the arrival of out-of-town talent to lead the charges of “racism.” Christian ministers showed remarkable ecumenicism in their support of Tama-Re. Al Sharpton held a rally in Eatonton to denounce the “oppressors” who closed the night club, and Jesse Jackson arrived the next year to tell a crowd of whooping Moors that they were, oddly enough, “living the American dream.”

People learned about Tama-Re through its Internet site or from information in dozens of bookstores around the country. In Georgia, there were Nuwaub leaflets in bookstores in just about every good-sized town, and many offered classes in Nuwaubian thought and even Nuwaubic, a language invented by Mr. York. Nuwaubian beliefs are recorded in “the 39 scrolls,” which are a collection of 1,800 pages written by Mr. York — presumably in English. They are reportedly a mishmash of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Egyptian mythology.

The master teacher is said to have established all rules and dogmas himself, and to have enforced them strictly. He took charge of members’ bank accounts, and told them what they could eat and how much. Mr. York lived in a nice house of his own while the followers lived in a collection of 15 double-wide trailers. He resisted the view that he ran a cult, however, preferring to call it a fraternity, specifically Lodge 19 of the Ancient Mystic Order of Melchizedek.

Lodge 19 took special care of children. They were separated from their parents and home schooled, and allowed to see their parents only with Mr. York’s permission. No fewer than 15 witnesses have stepped forward to say the master teacher liked to copulate with children and under-age girls — some as young as four. Police have found videotapes and photographs of some of these encounters, which included sodomy and other kinds of abuse. Mr. York’s “main wife,” 33-year-old Kathy Johnson, reportedly helped supply the children, and taught them the sexual techniques Mr. York particularly liked. Miss Johnson and three other Nuwaub women are now in jail on the same charges as Mr. York. Rumors have long swept the area that teen-age Nuwaubs were having babies at local hospitals and refusing to name the father, but the current case does not touch on this.

Police moved in on Tama-Re with special care to avoid violence. They arrested Mr. York and Miss Johnson when the two were away from Tama-Re, and then moved in with 200 FBI agents and 80 sheriff’s deputies to secure the compound. Because the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors is so much the creation of one man, it may not survive his incarceration. [Robert Stacy McCain, Nuwaubian Nightmare, Washington Times, June 5, 2002. Bill Osinski, Leader of Sect Arrested in Raid, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 9, 2002, p. A1. Bill Osinski, FBI: Kids From 4 to 18 Were Abused in Group, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 14, 2002. Bill Osinski, Racial, Legal Issues Cloud ‘Egypt of the West,’ Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sept. 20, 1998.]

The Death of Britain

It takes a fertility rate of 2.1 to maintain a stable population but the fertility rate for British women sank to 1.64 in 2001 — the lowest level since the government began keeping track in 1924. Women are either delaying having children or having none at all. The average age for first-time mothers in Britain is 29, up from 25 in the early 1970s when the fertility rate was 2.4. At 20 percent, more women remain childless in Britain than in any other European country. [Simon Briscoe and Marianne Brun-Rovet, Fertility Rate Falls to Lowest Level For 78 Years, Financial Times (London), May 16, 2002.]

As the ranks of white children thin out, non-whites are taking their places, and British school principals now want to replace French and German courses with African and Asian languages like Somali and Urdu. The British National Association of Head Teachers is presenting a motion that calls on the government “to promote the status of Asian and African languages and to encourage their study as a qualification in addition to or instead of languages of European origin.” [Macer Hall, Drop French, Say Heads and Teach Urdu Instead, Telegraph (London), June 2, 2002.]

Driving While Black

For nearly a decade, the New Jersey State Police have been accused of “racial profiling” because they stop a higher proportion of blacks than whites. The officers have always said they make stops for cause — speeding, missing tags, reckless driving, etc. — but critics have brushed this aside with blanket charges of “racism.”

In 1999, the state decided to find out whether officers might actually be reacting to racial differences in driving rather than indulging prejudice. Fully expecting to find no racial differences, they hired researchers with radar guns and cameras to sit by the side of the road in unmarked vans, where they photographed every driver and clocked his speed. The results, which have never been officially released, show significant racial differences. Three percent of black drivers in 65-mile-an-hour zones drove at 80 miles-per-hour or higher, while only 1.5 percent of white drivers did. The racial disparities were even greater for drivers blazing along at 90 or more.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) did not like these results, which undermine its own pet theories of police “racism.” The department attacked the study’s methodology and is trying to suppress it. Robert B. Voas of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, one of the researchers who conducted the study, insists his work will pass any competent scientific review. “We looked solely at numbers, and that’s what the report shows,” he says. [Jerry Seper, Report Saying Blacks Speed More Held Up, Washington Times, March 22, 2002, p. A1] The DOJ should not have been surprised by the New Jersey study, since it paid researchers at North Carolina State University more than $400,000 to conduct a similar study — with similar results.

New figures released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reveal that blacks are less likely than whites to wear seatbelts — 69 versus 74 percent. In states with mandatory seatbelt laws, that means blacks are more likely to be pulled over. State Farm Insurance Company, the nation’s largest auto insurer, wants to find out why blacks do not wear seat belts as much as whites (they should read this month’s cover story). On May 31, the company announced it will spend $10 million over the next five years to study black attitudes towards seat belts and child safety seats. An estimated 125 lives would be saved and 2,500 injuries prevented every year if blacks buckled up at the rate of whites.

One way to increase seatbelt use is for every state to adopt tough seatbelt enforcement laws, but that would offend some black groups. “It’s just another excuse to stop us, and we think it can be used unfairly in terms of racial profiling,” said Mary Ann Lee, of the Detroit branch of the NAACP. [Nedra Pickler, Study Focuses on Why Blacks Don’t Buckle Up, AP, May 31, 2002.]

Lighting the Way

The INS says more than 300 illegal aliens die each year trying to sneak across the Mexican border into the US. The families of 14 illegals who died near Yuma, Arizona in 2001 are actually suing the US government for not having made it safer to break the law. INS Commissioner James Ziglar has now decided to build six 30-feet-tall safety beacons in the area. Topped off with a light that flashes every ten seconds, the solar-powered beacons are supposed to help illegal aliens who get lost. The towers also have an alarm button for calling the Border Patrol. The instructions for using the button are printed in Spanish and English, and explained in simple pictures for illegal illiterates. The Mexican government plans to construct similar 100-foot towers on its side of the border.

Mr. Ziglar says the government will also begin arming border agents with non-lethal pepperball guns, which use compressed air to fire plastic pellets that contain a chemical that irritates the eyes, nose and mouth. This way agents should be able to subdue dangerous illegals without hurting them. [INS Puts Beacons on US-Mexico Line, Las Vegas Sun, May 24, 2002.]

Run for the Border

In 1999, Juan Manuel Casillas killed two teenagers in Los Angeles and fled to Mexico. Mexican officials refused to extradite him because the murder charges he faced carried the death penalty. In 2000, LA County got a new District Attorney, Steve Cooley, who told the Mexican government he wouldn’t seek the death penalty. Mexicans then arrested Mr. Casillas, but a month later, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that people facing life sentences without parole couldn’t be extradited either.

Mr. Casillas is one of more than 60 Mexicans who have gone back to Mexico after killing people in the United States. “It’s becoming a haven for murderers,” says Mr. Cooley. Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano has noted the same thing. “It’s a total disaster,” she says. Miss Napolitano has joined the other 49 state attorneys general in writing to US Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin Powell to draw attention to the problem.

Mexico is indifferent to American concerns. “We have to understand that Mexico and the United States have two different legal systems,” says Jorge Garcia-Villalobos of the Mexican attorney general’s office. He says that if a Mexican citizen faces a harsher penalty elsewhere than he would at home there can be no extradition. [Mexico Increasingly Becoming a Haven for American Fugitives, AP, May 27, 2002.]

Fraudulent Foreigners

Non-English-speaking students who want to study at US colleges must demonstrate proficiency in English by taking the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) in order to get a student visa. The Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N. J., which administers the test, found that some Middle Eastern students were paying imposters to take the tests for them, and last May, the FBI arrested six test-takers and more than 50 Middle Eastern students on charges of conspiracy to commit visa fraud. Lawyers for three Saudi Arabian students arrested in Seattle say their clients are victims of racial profiling. Jennifer Shaw says her client, 20-year-old Amr Attallah, was just trying to get a better score on the exam. [Bobbi Nodell, ‘Zero Tolerance’ for Visa Fraud, Seattle Times, May 10, 2002.]

Try, Try Again

In the summer following last year’s bloody Mardi Gras riot, the city of Seattle held a unity festival, during which black activist Omari Tahir-Garrett smashed then-mayor Paul Schell in the face with a five-pound bullhorn. Mr. Schell got a broken nose and a crushed eye-socket, and still has vision problems. Mr. Garrett was arrested for assault.

At his trial in May, jurors heard five witnesses say they saw Mr. Garrett hit the mayor. Mr. Garrett, representing himself, denied he did it. Instead, he accused city officials of framing him because he wants to bring a black heritage museum to Seattle. Mr. Garrett said the witnesses all had ties — either official or unofficial — to the city, and could not be trusted. This convinced two jurors. After a day and a half of acrimonious deliberation, the jury split 10-2 in favor of conviction. One of the two was black. Jurors say the two who voted to acquit had had bad experiences with the police or the city (which they failed to disclose to prosecutors). At one point, a white juror suggested to Darren Wright, the black holdout, that he was on Mr. Garrett’s side because he was black. Another thought Mr. Wright and the other holdout were too stupid to understand the term “reasonable doubt.”

Mr. Garrett smiled after the hung jury was announced, and said the trial was a waste of money, but his victory may be short-lived. King County prosecutors will retry him. [Nancy Bartley, Squabbling Jury Declares Deadlock in Garrett Case, Seattle Times, May 10, 2002. Christine Clarridge, Why Jury Deadlocked on Garrett, Seattle Times, May 11, 2002. Lynn Thompson, New Trial Ordered in Schell Attack, Seattle Times, May 24, 2002.]

Human Freight Agents

It is a status symbol in China to have a relative working in the US. The money Chinese send back can make a family seem rich, and Chinese people smugglers, known as “snakeheads,” charge as much as $40,000 to get someone to America.

Chao Kang Lin was a human freight agent for two Chinese Triad crime groups operating in Seattle. In January 2000, he was expecting a shipment of 18 Chinese packed in a container aboard the freighter Cape May. Responding to a tip, US immigration officials intercepted the container, and found the illegals had been sealed in total darkness for the 10-day voyage, without enough food and drink. There was vomit and human waste everywhere, and three of the Chinese were dead. A fourth died later. On May 9, Mr. Lin, who was sneaked in from Mexico in 1997, was sentenced to nine years in federal prison for conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens. [Mike Carter, Smuggler Gets 9 Years for Deaths on Ship from China to Seattle, Seattle Times, May 10, 2002.]

Shortly afterwards, Richard Sung Kim, also living in Seattle, went to prison for 31/2 years for smuggling illegal Koreans into the US from Canada. Before his career ended, Mr. Kim, himself an illegal, had brought in at least 57 illegal Koreans. [Korean Sentenced for Smuggling Alien, Everett Herald (Washington), May 14, 2002.]

‘Bombingham’

Liberals like to associate Birmingham, Alabama with the 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls (for which 72-year-old former Klansman Frank Cherry was convicted in May), and have given the city the derisive nickname “Bombingham.” The Birmingham Chamber of Commerce wants to boost the allegedly flagging self-esteem of the city with a $1 million ad campaign using images of Martin Luther King. The ads encourage city residents to overcome the past by “living the dream” and “remembering the roots,” and show unrealistic scenes of whites and blacks working and playing together.

Lawyer Jim Rotch, who is white, thinks the city must stamp out racism. His solution is something called the Birmingham Pledge, which states, in part, “From this day forward I will strive daily to eliminate racial prejudice from my thoughts and actions. I will discourage racial prejudice in others at every opportunity.” City residents who sign pledges can mail them to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, which displays them in a permanent exhibit. [Janita Poe, Revisiting ‘Bombingham,’ Atlanta Constitution, May 11, 2002, p. A1.]

Galactic Grievance

George Lucas’s new movie, Attack of the Clones, is drawing the ire of Hispanics and Arabs because of the swarthy hue of the actor who plays the sinister bounty hunter Jango Fett. Fett serves as the genetic template for an army of clones, engineered by aliens to be docile and obedient. Hispanics say the bounty hunter looks like a Mexican, lives on the planet Kamino (camino is Spanish for road) and that the clone army is a metaphor for the hordes of illegal Mexican immigrants invading America. Not to be left out of the ethnic grievance game, Arabs say Jango Fett is an insult to them. “I frankly think the bounty hunter is Arab,” says college counselor Imad Nouri. “He’s basically a terrorist, and ‘baba’ is Arabic for father.” Jango Fett’s cloned “son” calls him “Baba.” The actor who plays Jango Fett is neither Mexican nor Arab; Temuera Morrison is a New Zealand Maori. [Michael H. Hodges, Critics Say ‘Clones’ Has Racial Stereotypes, Detroit News, May 18, 2002, p.1D.]

Denmark for the Danes

Denmark has just passed a sensible new law on asylum seekers. Dismissing charges of “racism,” the Danes have decided that anyone coming into the country must support himself, and should not go on welfare for seven years. Refugees will no longer have the automatic right to bring in spouses, and no one under the age of 24 can bring in a spouse under any circumstances. Applicants for Danish citizenship must pass a culture and language test that corresponds to the knowledge of a Danish 14-year-old. To keep foreigners from bringing in their parents, there is a blanket prohibition on admission of anyone over age 60. Finally, the Danes have done away with the old 15-day grace period, and will require all rejected asylum-seekers to leave the country immediately. No asylum-seeker who goes underground will ever get consideration no matter how good his claim.

Sixty percent of Danes are said to favor the new law. They say foreigners, who already make up seven percent of the country, soak up public benefits and threaten the famed Danish welfare state. The Danish People’s Party has been the main force behind the new laws, and its leader, Pia Kjaersgaard, is forthright in her views of foreigners. “Asylum-seekers are often under-educated and illiterate,” she says. “I don’t need them.” “Muslims,” she adds, “have a taste for committing mass rape.”

There has been predictable anguish among other Europeans, most comically in Sweden. Swedish immigration minister Mona Sahin calls the Danish law “dangerous,” and complains Denmark’s policy pushes the problem onto other countries. Indeed, during the first three months of 2002, the number of asylum seekers arriving in Denmark dropped 38 percent in anticipation of the new law, and increased 68 percent in Sweden.

The solution, of course, is for all Europeans to pass sensible laws. They will have an excellent opportunity to consider this at a forthcoming meeting in Seville to debate “harmonization” of immigration law. The Danes take over the European Union’s rotating presidency on July 1, so will be in a good position to lead the discussions in a fruitful direction. [Denmark Passes Tough Migrant Laws, CNN.com, May 31, 2002. Toby Helm, Denmark Calls Halt to Soft Line on Asylum, Electronic Telegraph, June 1, 2002. Christian Weinberg, New Laws Erode Denmark’s Image, AP, June 1, 2002.]

Rewarding the White-Haters

On June 2, blacks shot and killed a white Zimbabwe farm manager. Charles Anderson, 40, ran a farm 50 miles north of Harare, which was scheduled to be expropriated and turned over to an official in the agriculture ministry. No “war veterans” had been camping on the farm, and the killing may have been only the finishing touch to a robbery. The murder brings to 11 the number of white farmers killed since Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe started encouraging dispossession of whites. [Michael Hartnack, White Farmer Killed in Zimbabwe, AP, June 2, 2002.]

Meanwhile the American government has announced another $5 million in food aid to starving Zimbabweans. A State Department spokesman says the money will buy 7,500 metric tons of corn meal and 1,000 metric tons of corn-soy milk. The World Food Program reports that this year’s corn crop will be 67 percent lower than the previous year, mainly because of the mayhem on occupied farms. A reported six million Zimbabweans face starvation. [Loughty Dube, US Offers More Food Aid to Zim, The Independent (London), May 31, 2002.]

The Black Cat

MGM Studios plans to remake the 1963 comedy classic, The Pink Panther, which starred Peter Sellers as the bumbling French Inspector Clouseau. This time, the role of the Sûreté’s finest will be played by foul-mouthed, jive-talking black comedian Chris Tucker, who appears with kung-fu Chinaman Jackie Chan in the Rush Hour films. It isn’t yet known if Mr. Tucker will attempt a French accent. [Black Actor to Play Starring Role in Pink Panther Remake, Telegraph (London), May 29, 2002.]

Whose Fault Is It?

Seattle is fretting over a wide-spread problem that might be better understood in light of the thesis of this month’s cover story: Teachers suspend and expel black students more often than white students. One city newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has done a study to see if things like poverty, absent fathers, etc. account for the differences. The paper did find that these things are correlated with discipline problems. And, indeed, blacks are more likely to be poor, to be reared by single mothers (only 30 percent of black students in Seattle live with two parents), and more likely to be in special education, but even when these factors are held constant, blacks are still twice as likely as whites to be disciplined.

The newspaper had no trouble finding people who claim this remaining difference is due to “racism.” Others, though, insist that blacks are simply more disruptive. “We, as a people, are loud,” concedes Jacob Ellis, a black counselor at Nathan Hale High School. David Fisher, a white teacher at Cleveland High School, says this causes problems:

[Y]ou ask them to pipe down, tone it down, and it escalates up. Then when you ask again, you’re picking on them. Then they confront you. Then it gets to the point where you can’t teach your class, where they’re so confrontational [you] have to ask them to go out.

One white administrator says it is all very well to try for racial balance in discipline rates, but the only way to do that is to ignore unacceptable behavior. “If they get in the face of a teacher and say, ‘You f*in’ bitch, I’m not going to do that,’ what are we supposed to do?” asks Karma Torklep, principal of Denny Middle School.

One white teacher says he has a class in remedial geometry that is largely black. One day he was having students make geometrical shapes out of drinking straws, the kind of hands-on activity blacks generally like. One girl arrived ten minutes late, and swore loudly when she tripped over a chair. As the teacher spoke to the class she kept repeating “I don’t understand, I don’t understand.” When he offered to help, she ignored him. He finally took her outside the classroom for a talk, and she started screaming at him that it was his fault she couldn’t learn. He finally had to take her to the principal’s office. He argues that in situations like this, there is no choice but to discipline a student.

Other teachers point out that white children are more likely to submit quietly when they are caught in a minor infraction, while blacks react defensively and aggressively. This quickly escalates to an unacceptable level of insubordination.

The Seattle school authorities have foolishly promised that by 2005 they will eliminate the racial gap not only in discipline rates but in test scores. [Rebekah Denn, Blacks are Disciplined at Far Higher Rates Than Other Students, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, March 15, 2002.]