O Tempora, O Mores! (March, 2003)

Our Mexican Future

South Gate, California, is a town of 98,000 about 12 miles southeast of Los Angeles. It is 92 percent Hispanic, and its politics have taken a distinctly Mexican turn. Until January 28, city treasurer Albert Robles was the real power in town, and he and his pals seemed intent on lining their pockets and doing favors for friends. Mr. Robles is a colorful figure who, last year, stood trial for telling a California state senator he would rape her and kill her husband, and also for threatening to blow the brains out of a state assemblyman. His lawyer argued that threats were just politics as usual in South Gate, and Mr. Robles got off with a hung jury. His cronies on the city council approved more than $1 million in city money for his defense, but he now faces new assault and weapons charges.

During Mr. Robles’s tenure, the city council voted itself a 2,000 percent raise, and stripped the elected city clerk of most of her duties when she refused to act as a rubber stamp. The council also hired a convicted embezzler as a litigation specialist, as well as a police officer who was once fired for tipping off drug dealers about raids. The FBI is looking into a shady deal whereby the city council tried to channel $4 million in federal money to a Robles crony, ostensibly to build a recycling plant. The Robles crew has managed to work its way through an $8 million city reserve fund, and the treasury is now empty.

The city’s two police unions, which call the current council a bunch of “kleptocrats,” arranged for a recall vote, which appeared likely to win. The four recall targets, Mayor Xochilt Ruvalcaba, Mr. Robles, a councilwoman, and the vice mayor, resorted to classic Mexican politics: giveaways. They announced free garbage pickup for a month, and anyone who registered to vote was entered in a city-sponsored raffle for a television set. Shortly before the vote, they approved $90-a-month rent subsidies to more than 400 low-income families for a year. In the biggest pre-election giveaway, the city raffled off a three-bedroom house. The drawing was a gala affair on city hall grounds, complete with rainbow-colored lights, thumping ranchera music, and crowds of eager residents. After announcing the winner, Mayor Ruvalcaba told the crowd, both in English and Spanish, “If God permits me, gives me life and I’m reelected, we’ll do this again.” She later claimed the raffle had nothing to do with buying votes; she meant to call attention to the high cost of housing in California.

No one was fooled. Julia Barraza said it was just like campaign season back home in Mexico, when politicians would roll up on flat-bed trucks, handing out blankets, food, and sombreros. “Igualito, igualito, (it’s the same)” she says; “It’s like I never left Mexico.” Councilman Henry Gonzalez, who has opposed Mr. Robles and who was not a recall target, says, “They’re trying to manipulate people by using old gimmicks from Mexico.”

The 37-year-old Mr. Robles modeled the city administration on the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which stayed in power in Mexico for decades. He and his friends seemed so likely to fight the recall with another favorite Mexican tactic — voter intimidation — that the state stepped in. “Election fraud investigators will be working . . . to ensure that the election is coordinated with integrity and the outcome reflects the wishes of the people of South Gate,” explained California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. He agreed this was an “extreme” measure, but explained that “the average voter in South Gate has felt somewhat intimidated.”

The recall won by a crushing 88 percent, but the lame-duck city council called a final meeting on Feb. 3 anyway to dish out last-minute pork. Despite a standing-room-only crowd of jeering citizens, they promoted 12 friends in city government, and tried to approve a $1 million low-interest federal loan to a Robles pal, even though a Superior Court judge had ordered the council not to award the money.

The highlight of the meeting was a shoving match between councilman Gonzalez and Mayor Ruvalcaba over a piece of paper, which ended when Mayor Ruvalcaba hit the councilman in the head with her purse, and then threw a solid right to the face. “Arrest the mayor, arrest the mayor,” chanted the crowd, as Miss Ruvalcaba raced into a back room. Several uniformed South Gate police officers jumped over the wooden railing separating spectators from councilmen, caught her, and cited her for misdemeanor battery. She now claims that in the middle of the shoving match, Mr. Gonzales made a grab for her breast, and she had to defend herself. She and the three other losers will not leave office quietly; they are on the ballot for new elections on March 4.

In the meantime, even the Los Angeles Times wants to know: “Have Third World politics come to South Gate?” The paper notes that threat-maker Robles and punch-thrower Ruvalcaba are not fresh over the border. They both grew up in America, graduated from UCLA, and took the traditional route into politics by working for established politicians. Their Third World antics appear to be an expression of something other than environment. [Richard Marosi, The Freebies Pile Up as South Gate Goes to Polls, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25, 2003. Richard Marosi, State to Monitor Recall Election, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2003. Richard Marosi and Megan Garvey, South Gate Mayor Slugs Councilman, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 4, 2003. Mayor Punches Councilman At Her Last Meeting, AP, Feb. 4, 2003.]

Third World politics is coming not just to South Gate but to the entire state. Some time in the late 1990s, whites ceased to be a majority, and in 2001 Hispanics accounted for an outright majority of births in California. Combined with the ones who immigrate legally and illegally, it will be only a matter of time before Hispanics are the undisputed majority. “The long-anticipated Latino majority has arrived,” says David Hayes-Bautista, director of UCLA’s Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture. “In 2003, it is learning how to walk and will shortly learn to talk.” Somehow, it is not difficult to imagine what it will say. “They will be defining the American dream,” says Mr. Hayes-Bautista; “It’s in their hands, basically.” [Study: Majority of State’s Newborns are Hispanic, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 5, 2003.]

Fighting Whities

In early January, black congressmen Charles Rangel (D-NY) and John Conyers (D-MI) introduced a bill to reinstate the draft, claiming the all-volunteer force does not have enough whites. Mr. Rangel says non-whites will bear the burden of a war with Iraq, as he says blacks did in Vietnam.

Reps. Rangel and Conyers are wrong. A report by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness says that while it is true blacks are overrepresented in the military (21 percent of enlisted ranks vs. 12 percent of the overall population), most are concentrated in administration and support. Blacks fill 36 percent of these positions, but only 15 percent of ground combat arms: infantry, armor and artillery. Only 10.6 percent of infantrymen are black. Blacks are especially rare in the elite units that see the most fighting. Only 4.5 percent of Green Berets are black, and just 2.5 percent of Navy and two percent of Air Force pilots are black.

“If anybody should be complaining about battlefield deaths, it is poor rural whites,” says Prof. Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University. During the 1991 Gulf War, whites accounted for 71 percent of the 550,000 soldiers deployed, and 76 percent of deaths. Blacks were 23 percent of US forces but only 17 percent of the dead. Hispanics accounted for four percent of the force and four percent of the deaths.

Despite myths to the contrary, blacks did not shoulder a disproportionate burden in Vietnam. According to the VFW, 88.4 percent of the men who served in Vietnam were white, and they suffered 86.8 percent of combat deaths. Blacks accounted for 12.1 percent of deaths, a figure almost exactly the same as their percentage of the population. [Bill Gertz, Defense Disputes Racial Imparity, Washington Times, Jan. 14, 2003. Dave Moniz and Tom Squitieri, Front-Line Troops Disproportionately White, Not Black, USA Today, Jan. 21, 2003.]

The black and white military populations are more similar to each other than the civilian populations, which may help explain claims for successful racial integration. The military gets richer-than-average blacks and poorer-than-average whites. The average white recruit comes from a household that earns $33,400 a year, which is 25 percent less than the white average of $44,400. Black soldiers come from households with incomes above the black average: $32,000 vs. $27,900. Black soldiers are also more likely than black civilians to come from two-parent families.

In the military, racial gaps in education levels and mental abilities are considerably narrower than in the country as a whole. Ninety-nine percent of blacks are high school graduates, as are 97 percent of the whites. In the national population, 61 percent of whites and 14 percent of blacks score above the 50th percentile on the armed forces mental aptitude test. In the military, the figures are 83 percent and 59 percent, which means blacks in uniform are considerably more capable than civilian blacks. [Steve Sailer, The Real Story About Minorities in the Military, UPI, Jan. 17, 2003.]

BNP Marches On

The British National Party (BNP) chalked up another election victory on Jan. 23, winning a town council by-election seat in Calderdale, West Yorkshire. BNP candidate Adrian Marsden won 679 votes, the Liberal Democrat candidate came in second with 651 votes, and the candidate of Tony Blair’s Labour Party finished third. Coupled with its victories in Blackburn, Lancashire, last November, the BNP now holds five council seats, all in northwest England. There was, of course, the usual hand-wringing, but the presence of the BNP candidate appears to have been a boost for democracy, with voter turnout rising to 37.2 percent from last May’s 24 percent. This was a ward record, and is especially significant because many voters ignore by-elections.

The BNP’s victory is due in part to increasing anger in Britain over non-white asylum-seekers, whom the government refuses to turf out. Events of just the last few weeks have infuriated Britons. Illegals from Algeria who were cooking up poison gas stabbed a policeman to death, and a raid on a mosque turned up hundreds of false passports, stolen credit cards, and a small arsenal of weapons. Britons also learned they are playing host to several former Taliban fighters from Afghanistan who claim the current Western-backed government is persecuting them. A doctor recently told an 88-year-old widow he could no longer look after her because the authorities were sending him so many sick asylum seekers. The government has run out of housing for them, too, and secretly bought the only hotel in a small town in Kent. Dozens of couples had to cancel their wedding plans, and the locals swore they would burn the place down rather than see it full of foreigners. About one in 20 Londoners, or 400,000 people, are asylum-seekers, and that doesn’t even include ordinary illegals. The Sun, in a recent series on asylum, told its four million readers to “read this and get angry.”

David Blunkett, Britain’s Home Secretary, as much as admits the patience of Britons has run out. On the very day of the BNP victory, he warned that society is “like a coiled spring,” that hostility could result in “the disintegration of community relations and social cohesion,” and that Britain could even “tip into a situation we could not control.” He is actually suggesting the country could descend into anarchy but this, of course, did not stop him from calling the BNP victory “very worrying indeed,” or from complaining that terrorism is causing people to scapegoat immigrants. Beverley Bernard, of the Commission for Racial Equality, says, “Political victory for the racists is a terrible price to pay for the present hysteria surrounding refugees and immigration.”

The BNP points out that it is the only party that proposes to put an end to the problem by refusing to admit any more asylum seekers and sending the current ones back. “People are fed up of not being asked what they want . . . This [election] result is a response to the way they have been treated,” says Richard Mulhall, Mr. Marsden’s campaign manager. [Anthony Browne, Britain On The Brink, London Times, January 28, 2003, Michael McDonough, Far Right BNP Wins Fifth Council Seat, AP, Jan. 24, 2003. BNP Take First Yorks Seat, Yorkshire Post, Jan. 24, 2003.]

Taki in the Dock

Taki Theodoracopulos, known simply as “Taki,” is a columnist who writes for The Spectator in England, and is co-editor with Patrick Buchanan of The American Conservative. Taki is in trouble with British authorities for a possible violation of the Pubic Order Act, which forbids “incitement of racial hatred.” In a Jan. 11 Spectator article called “Thoughts on Thuggery,” he praised Enoch Powell and wrote about the recent shooting of two black girls: “Only a moron would not surmise that what politically-correct newspapers refer to as ‘disaffected young people’ are black thugs, sons of black thugs and grandsons of black thugs . . . West Indians were allowed to immigrate after the war, multiply like flies, and then the great state apparatus took over the care of their multiplications. The ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech by Enoch was prophetic as well as true, and look what the bullshitters of the time did to the great man.”

Peter Herbert, a lawyer and member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, filed a complaint with Scotland Yard, and if Taki is found to have incited racial hatred he could spend two years in jail. Spectator editor Boris Johnson, a Conservative Member of Parliament, says the article was “a terrible thing” that “should never have gone in” the magazine.

Taki is known not to mince words:

On New York’s Puerto Ricans: “A bunch of semi-savages . . . fat, squat, ugly, dusky, dirty and unbelievably loud. They turned Manhattan into Palermo faster than you can say ‘spic.’”

On Africa: “Democracy is as likely to come to bongo-bongo land as I am to send a Concorde ticket to my children.”

On Mrs. Tony Blair: “Not that I’m calling Cherie Blair a whore. She couldn’t be one even if she wanted to; not good-looking enough.”

On himself: “I’m a family man, a provider, I pay my taxes, I’m white (although always sun-tanned) . . . I inherited from my old man . . . I employ people, I own a yacht . . . you name it, I’m guilty of it.”

On Bill Clinton and Tony Blair: “[They] are, of course, the masters of the direct lie, able to look straight into the camera and tell incredible whoppers that would make Mother Teresa blush.” [Sholto Byrnes, A Racist Rant Too Far? Police Investigate Taki the Playboy Pundit, Independent (London), Feb. 1, 2003.]

‘To Defend My People’

Former Italian Senator Enzo Erminio Boso is tired of Third-World immigrants “behaving like animals” on Italian trains, where “they sleep on the seats, taking off their shoes and boots, meaning that other passengers can’t sit there.” Mr. Boso is a senior member of Italy’s Northern League party, which is a coalition partner in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government, and says that if immigrants can’t learn to ride trains properly they should be put in separate cars. Mr. Boso is undaunted by the inevitable charges of racism, which he says are “hypocritical.” “There is back-to-front racism going on, lead by the left in Italy, by the unions and by the Church, which says that immigrants are always right,” he says. “People are afraid about being called a racist, but I’m not. If I have to defend my people, my culture, my traditions, my roots and they call me a racist, then I’ll say ‘you’re right.’” [Italian Politicians Suggest Segregation on Train, Reuters, Jan. 17, 2003.]

Suing The Bell Curve

A black student at East Tennessee State University has sued the school, claiming racial discrimination, embarrassment, and humiliation. Mack Scott says one of his professors, Paul Kamolnick used The Bell Curve as a textbook even though, he claims, it has been denounced as “racist” by scholars and civil rights leaders. According to the brief in the case, which Mr. Scott filed himself, “Scott objected to the use of the text and expressed that he was offended by such pronouncements to which Kamolnick arrogantly and hostilely dismissed [sic].” He says that on the first day of class, Prof. Kamolnick said blacks have “a genetic defect,” which makes them less intelligent than people of other races. He wants $1 million in compensatory and $2 million in punitive damages.

Edward Kelly, legal assistant to ETSU’s president, laughs at Mr. Scott’s suit: “There’s a history of meritless lawsuits that have been brought by Scott, and we have every confidence in Professor Kamolnick. He’s a very well-respected member of the college community, and we will aggressively defend this matter.” [Matthew Lane, ETSU Says Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Without Merit, Kingsport Times-News (Tenn.), Dec. 24, 2002.]

Baaad Idea

Gary Stone of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England, was surprised when his four-year old daughter came home from school singing “Baa, baa, white sheep.” He thinks the school, Paston Ridings Primary School, has taken political correctness too far, but head teacher Terry Snitch denies sanitizing nursery rhymes. He says the school teaches alternative versions of traditional rhymes to “encourage creativity and imagination.” [School Teaches Pupils ‘Baa, Baa White Sheep,’ Ananova.com, Nov. 11, 2002.]

Expensive ‘History’

In 2001, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, paid $492,000 at auction to buy an old, rusted, junker of a city bus. It was alleged to be the very bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on Dec. 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. After five months of restoration, the bus went on display in a Jan. 31 ceremony. Curator Bill Pretzer says, “When you realize that a simple, mundane city bus could be a place of such importance, there’s an immense wave of emotion.” [Sarah Freeman, Museum Restores Rosa Parks Bus, AP, Jan. 31, 2003.]

Haole Attack

Police in Maui, Hawaii, are looking for a gang of four or five native Hawaiians who attacked whites on two separate occasions on Dec. 4, 2002. They found their first victim on Hookipa Beach, and sent him to the hospital with broken bones in the face. Later that night, just a few miles away, they found a white couple parked in a car in a sugar cane field. While some of the gang held the woman — who was unharmed — others kicked, punched and used a radio to beat the man, giving him multiple fractures, a collapsed lung, and a torn bowel. The men told the victim it was their beach, and they were taking it back. Maui Assistant Police Chief Gary Yarbuta says the attacks may have been “racial” or “territorial or both.” [Gary T. Kubota, Maui Probes Possible Hate Crimes, Star-Bulletin (Honolulu), Jan. 17, 2003.]

Whites, known as “haoles,” make up 23 percent of Hawaii’s population.

Invasion USA

According to INS figures released on Jan. 31, more than 7 million illegal aliens were living in the United States in January 2000. This is almost as many people as the entire population of Virginia. During the 1990s, the number of illegals increased by 350,000 every year. Nearly 70 percent — 4.8 million — are Mexicans. Other countries that have sent more than 100,000 illegals include El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, China and Ecuador. The largest population of illegals — 2.2 million or 32 percent of the total — lives in California, down from 42 percent in 1990. This is a decrease only in proportions, not in numbers, and reflects huge increases elsewhere. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of illegals living in Georgia jumped from 34,000 to 228,000; North Carolina saw an increase from 26,000 to 206,000. Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, says the INS numbers are proof “that America has lost control of its borders.” [Suzanne Gamboa, INS: 7 Million Illegal Immigrants in US, AP, Jan. 31, 2003.]

Imposter

Back in 1997, a Ghanian woman calling herself Adelaide Abankwah arrived illegally at New York’s JFK International Airport, demanding political asylum. She claimed that back home she was the prospective “queen mother” of her tribe, and faced genital mutilation as punishment for having lost her virginity. The press picked up her story, and soon actress Julia Roberts and then-first lady Hillary Clinton were fawning over her. A federal appeals court duly granted Miss Abankwah asylum in 1999, but the INS smelled a rat and continued to investigate. Her story was a lie. Miss Abankwah’s real name is Regina Norman Danson, and while she is from Ghana, she was a hotel worker and not tribal royalty. She faced no persecution at home.

On Jan. 15, a federal district court in New York convicted Miss Danson of perjury and passport fraud. “This defendant’s lies duped the media, the courts and public servants and, in the process hurt the cause of all real victims of genital mutilation,” say US Attorney James B. Comey. Miss Danson faces 10 years in prison for passport fraud, and up to five years for each of eight counts of perjury and making false statements. Her lawyer will appeal. [Mary Beth Sheridan, Ghanian Woman Convicted of Fabricating Tale, Washington Post, Jan. 17, 2003.]

Vox Populi

A poll of a representative sample of 2,400 South Africans has found that 60 percent say the country was better run under white rule. Only one in three said the current government was more trustworthy than the apartheid regime and the figure for blacks was 38 percent. Only one in ten respondents said they thought the government was interested in their needs or concerns. Robert Mattes of Afrobarometer, which conducted the poll, tried to explain the findings:

“They are not looking to go back to apartheid, but as time passes you tend to forget the negative things and emphasize the things that you had then and don’t have now, such as law and order and jobs. Apartheid was a harsh, repressive, but seemingly efficient government which made the trains run on time.” [Rory Carroll, Nostalgia Grows for Apartheid System, The Guardian (London), Dec. 12, 2002.]

Valley of the Dolls

Joan Gioacchini, a black woman with a mulatto baby, says there are not enough dolls designed for her daughter. “There is definitely nothing out there if you aren’t dark-skinned or Caucasian. It would be nice to have dolls that reflect the world, dolls that come in different shades and nationalities, and an even bigger variety of white dolls that don’t only have blond hair and blue eyes.”

More and more companies are producing dolls that appeal to the miscegenist market. MGA Entertainment markets a line called Bratz, which features five dolls with a variety of ethnic features. Mattel, home of Barbie, puts out a line called friends of Barbie, one of whom is a mixed-race doll named Kayla. Mattel spokesman Julia Jensen says her company doesn’t “do” any dolls that are “exclusively Caucasian.” “It’s always been important to the Barbie brands to keep that different mix of dolls and ethnicities.” Pleasant Company features two doll lines: Bitty Baby, which comes in five skin tones with a variety of hair textures and eye colors, and American Girl Today, with 21 dolls in various skin, hair and eye colors. American Girl Today dolls also claim to reflect “diverse lifestyles.”

My Twinn Doll Co. in Colorado offers custom dolls made from photographs of children. One mother paid $169 to buy her daughter a My Twinn doll. “As a child of color in America,” she says, “it is hard to build positive self-image. And having a doll that resembles who they are encourages positive self-identity.” Psychologist Susan Wilson says little girls need dolls that look like them in order to be well-adjusted, because dolls are models of beauty. “If the only model you have to look at has blond hair and blue eyes, it causes problems evolving a positive self-esteem,” she explains. [Jenee Osterheldt, Doll Choices Limited for Girls of Color, Knight-Ridder News Service, Dec. 24, 2002.]

Future Statesmen

On Jan. 15, a United Nations investigation of atrocities in northeastern Congo confirmed that rebels have been methodically raping, torturing and killing since last October. They even have a name for their terror campaign: Operation Clean the Slate. “The operation was presented to the people almost like a vaccination campaign,” explains UN spokesman Patricia Tome, “envisioning the looting of each home and the rape of each woman.” Miss Tome says cannibalism is another terror tactic. “They cut out the hearts and other organs of their victims and forced families to eat them . . . One little girl was executed, cut into little pieces and then eaten.” Many of the victims are Pygmies.

One of the rebel groups that committed atrocities is Jean-Pierre Bemba’s Congolese Liberation Movement (CLM). Under a power-sharing agreement signed last December to end the civil war that has raged since 1998, the CLM is to have a leading role in government. Mr. Bemba, who hopes to become vice-president, says he has arrested those responsible for the atrocities. [UN Confirms Congo Atrocities, AP, Jan. 15, 2003. Mark Dummett, Congo Rebels Guilty of Cannibalism, Mass Rape — UN, Reuters, Jan. 15, 2003.]

Insanity

A Middle-Eastern immigrant, whose name has not been made public, is the subject of some unusual judicial reasoning in Norway. The man worked as a taxi driver, and heard other drivers boasting about the “easy sex” they got from women passengers. He picked up a Norwegian woman who suffers from Williams Syndrome, a rare disorder similar to Downs Syndrome, and decided it was his turn. People with Williams Syndrome are unusually friendly, but they do not look normal. The Middle Easterner, who assaulted her sexually, says he noticed nothing odd about her appearance. A court gave him 60 days in jail, but an appeals judge threw out the sentence, noting that he had not lived in Norway long enough to learn the language properly or recognize the woman’s condition. Given his age and cultural background he could not be held to normal Norwegian standards. The man is 22 years old, and has lived in Norway since age 10. [Sex Offense Excused by Inexperience, Aftenposten (Norway), Jan. 21, 2003.]

Sanity

In 1990, the Irish Supreme Court ruled that any child born to immigrants in Ireland had the right to “care, company and parentage.” This meant illegal aliens who had babies in Ireland could not be deported, and pregnant illegals were soon pouring in, many from Nigeria. Last year alone, the government granted residency to 4,000 mothers, who were often joined by relatives. More than 10,462 similar families are waiting for the paperwork to go through. On Jan. 23, in an unusual act of sanity, the court reversed itself, ruling 5-2 that the birth of a child “doesn’t fundamentally transform the rights of the parent,” who can now be deported along with her child. Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harney says this “will prevent others from coming to Ireland to abuse our asylum process on the basis that they are pregnant.”

The ruling means that the 10,462 families could be deported, and the usual people are howling: “It would be quite wrong if today’s decision of the Supreme Court were to be used by the government as an excuse to initiate any campaign of mass deportations,” says Joe Costello of the Labor Party. [Shawn Pogatchnik, Ireland Can Deport Immigrant Parents, AP, Jan. 23, 2003.]

More Mush

Three black social workers are pushing to have “post traumatic slavery disorder” (PTSD) listed as an official medical diagnosis. They say blacks are still suffering from slavery, and this explains crime, illegitimacy, drug-taking, and school failure. Sekou Mim, Omar Reid, and Larry Higginbottom explain that blacks don’t care whether they do well in school, because slaves were sometimes punished if they learned how to read. The three also say black men have children with many different women because slavery broke up the black family.

“Black people as a whole are suffering from PTSD,” says Mr. Mims. Mr. Reid runs support groups for black men who are filled with anger and anxiety despite the fact that there are no obvious white oppressors in their lives. The problem, he explains, is PTSD. The men are reportedly writing a book to explain their theories.

A few blacks recognize excuse-making when they see it. “Some people are just looking for reasons to fail,” says Ward Connerly, who campaigned against racial preferences in California. “There is great harm done with something like this. We don’t want young black kids to grow up thinking they are weak and can’t look after themselves.” [Marcella Bombardieri, Theory Links Slavery, Stress Disorder, Boston Globe, Nov. 12, 2002, p. B1.]

What theories of this kind never manage to explain is why the black failures said to be due to slavery are now so much worse than they were during the first 80 to 100 years after the end of slavery.

Mexican Monsters

On the evening of Dec. 19, a 42-year-old Cuban woman was walking with her boyfriend near the National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadow Park in Queens, New York, when Mexican bums spotted them. “Let’s rob them,” said Carlos Rodriguez, and he and three pals went to work. They beat the man unconscious and robbed him, and then dragged the woman across railroad tracks into the woods to a shantytown. There they beat and gang-raped her for two hours, while she begged them to stop, crying “I have children, I have children!”

While this was going on her boyfriend regained consciousness and called the police. Seventy-five officers arrived with search dogs, rescued the woman, and arrested four Mexicans between the ages of 18 and 22. All are bums, and their leader, Mr. Hernandez, is a member of the Los Angeles gang, Knights of Destruction. They showed no remorse in their video-taped confessions, and could face 25 years in prison for rape, robbery, sodomy, kidnapping, and assault. The woman, who had cuts and bruises from head to foot, said the men spoke openly of disposing of the evidence by killing her and dumping her body in the woods where it could not be found. [Murray Weiss, Georgett Roberts, Philip Messing and Adam Miller, ‘Gang Rape’ Pack Bares Evil Scheme, New York Post, Dec. 22, 2002. William J. Gorta and Philip Messing, Fifth Man Arrested in Vicious Park Rape, New York Post, Dec. 23, 2002.]

Lewiston Update

The rapid influx of Somali refugees into Lewiston, Maine, has slowed since Mayor Larry Raymond publicized his Oct. 1 letter asking them to stay away. The Somalis, who started coming after they combed the country for the area with the least crime and most generous welfare benefits, now say they no longer feel safe or even welcome in this overwhelmingly white city of 36,000.

“There’s not many people coming because they have seen the TV, and they think it’s not safe to come here,” complains Asha, a 23-year-old Somali woman who says she fears reprisals if she uses her full name. Asha says whites regularly curse and insult her. Other Somalis report feeling “besieged” and fear violent attacks, despite a large pro-Somali “diversity” rally held Jan. 11.

“There’s a lot of people who are really scared,” says Roda Abdi, another Somali. She blames the chill squarely on the mayor’s letter. “Everything was going really smoothly, and then the letter came out. There was really no problem before that.”

There may be no problems now; Somalis may have other reasons for not coming. Many people don’t like to move after the school year starts. Also, the city’s subsidized housing is full. Another reason may be the cold: Somalis don’t like winter in Maine. Warm weather will show whether Somalis are afraid of white Lewistonians or white snow. [Kevin Wack, Fewer Somalis Migrate to Lewiston in Letter’s Aftermath, Lewiston Sun-Journal, Feb. 3, 2003.]