O Tempora, O Mores! (May, 2004)
American Renaissance, May 2004
The Gangsta Vote
Democrats have come a long way since the early 1990s, when Tipper Gore lobbied to have rap albums marked with parental guidance stickers. In this year’s presidential primaries, all of the Democrats courted the rap vote. Howard Dean expressed a taste for rapper Wyclef Jeanne. In a campaign ad, Wesley Clark proved his knowledge of hip-hop by commenting on the future of the rap duo OutKast. Later, he quoted an OutKast line on his campaign trail, saying the rappers “make you shake it like a Polaroid picture,” whatever that means. This group, as well as “Ginuwine,” Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, and “Q-tip,” gave a concert at a Democratic fundraiser attended by major Democratic figures such as William Clinton, Albert Gore, and John Kerry.
In an interview on MTV, John Kerry defended gangsta rap. “I’m fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there’s a lot of poetry in it. There’s a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you’d better listen to it pretty carefully, ‘cause it’s important.” He did concede, however, “When you start talking about killing cops or something like that, it bothers me.”
To illustrate the values the Democrats are sanctioning, here are some lyrics from OutKast, which seems to be the party’s favorite group:
Breakin’ knees and elbows like I used to break my curfew
My mama used to tell me if a nigga ever hit me
Just to pick up the closest thing and knock the living s**t out of he.
(“Bowtie”)
Well it is I, the pimp playin’ nigga that you heard about
Yeah, I got the money and a half a million dope houses
I got the hookers on the go and playa rhymes that I f**k with.
(“Claimin’ True”)
Some rappers are trying to start their own social and political movement. Former rapper Russell Simmons has founded the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, which, according to its website, “is dedicated to harnessing the cultural relevance of hip-hop music to serve as a catalyst for education advocacy and other societal concerns fundamental to the well-being of at-risk youth throughout the United States.” Hip-hop commentator “Davey D” has edited a book called How to Get Stupid White Men out of Power. This June will see a “National Hip Hop Political Convention” in Chicago.
One of the central issues of the hip-hop political movement is the Florida presidential vote of 2000. There has never been any proof of fraud in this election, but it strongly colors the rap outlook. As Kaine, of the Ying Yang Twins says, “It’s like ‘Why should I vote if it don’t count,’ because Florida was way against Bush. But that’s where Bush’s folks are at. How is it that the only state that had to get recalculated was where Bush’s folks are at?” [James McNally, Rappers Unite for Political Power, BBC News, March 3l, 2004. Gun-Toting Outkast Rapper Featured at Democratic Event, WorldNetDaily, March. 26, 2004. Rich Rock, “I’m Fascinated by Hip-Hop,” says Prez Candidate John Kerry, SOHH.com, March 31, 2004. Chuck Creekmur, “To Vote or Not to Vote: Hip Hop Artists and Activists Weigh In, BET.com, Jan. 28, 2004.]
On March 18, the Census Bureau released preliminary population projections, based on the 2000 Census, predicting that by 2050, whites will make up just 50.1 percent of the population. As late as 1990, whites were 75 percent of the population; in1960 they were 90 percent. If the census projections turn out to be accurate — and if anything, the bureau tends to underestimate — America will have ceased to be a white nation less than a century after opening the floodgates to mass Third-World immigration with the 1965 Immigration Act.
Between now and mid-century, the Census Bureau forecasts the US population will increase by no less than 48.8 percent to 419,854,000. Of the 137,729,000 new people, fewer than 15 million will be white. The largest gain will be among Hispanics. The Census Bureau expects their number nearly to triple — from 35,662,000 in 2000 to 102,560,000, and to make up close to a quarter of the population. The number of Asians, currently 3.8 percent, will also triple, increasing from 10,684,000 to 33,430,000, and will make up eight percent of the overall 2050 population. The Census Bureau predicts a 71.3 percent increase in the black population, or an additional 25,543,000. Blacks will therefore be14.6 percent of the population in 2050, up from 12.7 percent in 2000.
The bureau predicts that the overall population growth rate will begin to slow around 2030, as white baby-boomers die off, but non-white growth rates will continue to be strong. Between 2030 and 2040, the Hispanic population will grow by an additional 19.9 percent; the black, by 10.8 percent; and the Asian, by 24 percent. The white population will barely increase at all between 2030 and 2040, and will actually decrease (for the first time in American history) between 2040 and 2050. Demographically speaking, by 2050, whites in America will be a dying race.
Before releasing the new projections, the Census Bureau was officially forecasting the end of white America at around 2060, using numbers from the 1990 Census. After analyzing the results from 2000, they shaved off a decade. The actual 2000 count of 281,421,906 surprised census takers, who were expecting 275,816,000 at most. The projections based on the 1990 Census were so far off — 5.6 million people is the equivalent of nearly two Chicagos — because they did not anticipate the immigration boom of the 1990s, during which legal immigration averaged 700,000 to 900,000 per year, and occasionally topped one million. Researchers estimate that anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 illegal aliens settled in the US each year during the decade.
Since the 1970s, immigration has been driving US population growth. More than 30 million immigrants have settled here since then, 90 percent of whom are non-white, and they and their children account for more than 70 percent of the overall population increase. It is uncontrolled Third-World immigration — both illegal and legal — that is condemning whites to minority status in their own country.
Because the immigration invasion shows no sign of slowing (President Bush’s amnesty proposal has already prompted an increase in border crossings), whites could well become a minority even earlier than 2050. As we have seen, the actual census count in 2000 exceeded the highest projection based on the 1990 census — and that was only a ten year forecast. The only certainly is that we are facing a non-white tidal wave. Ten years from now, barring a dramatic reversal in immigration, the Census Bureau could be issuing a press release announcing that projections based on the 2010 census show whites becoming a majority sometime around 2040 — if not sooner. [Mike Bergman, Diversity, Slower Growth, Census Bureau Press Release, March 18, 2004.]
Hating the ‘Haters’
During an exchange in an English class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) last February, a student told his instructor he opposed homosexuality. The next day, the instructor, Elyse Crystall, sent email to all the students in the class, saying, “What we heard Thursday at the end of class constitutes ‘hate speech’ and is completely unacceptable. It has created a hostile environment.” She referred to the student by name, calling him “a white, heterosexual, Christian male,” who “can feel entitled to make violent, heterosexist comments and not feel marked or threatened or vulnerable.” The following Monday, Miss Crystal apologized to the class with a second email message, writing that her earlier message had “crossed a line and inhibited free speech.”
In March, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights told UNC it was launching an investigation to determine if Miss Crystall were guilty of harassing the student, and whether the university reacted appropriately. The feds will also be checking to see if harassment of conservative students who express their views is common on the UNC campus, which claims to uphold principles “of intellectual independence . . . free speech and expression.” [Feds Investigate ‘Hate Speech’ Incident at UNC-Chapel Hill, AP, March 27, 2004.]
Textbook Horrors
Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) has introduced the “Recognizing the Importance of Western Civilization Resolution” in the House of Representatives, to combat the anti-Western bias of schools. He recently delivered a long speech to Congress in which he described the bias in school textbooks. One now in use in an Arizona district is called 500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures and was, in the author’s words, written “in response to the bicentennial celebration of the 1776 American Revolution and its lies.” Its purpose is to “celebrate our resistance” to American colonization. Chapter headings include “U.S. Conquest and Betrayal,” “We Are Now a U.S. Colony in America,” and “They Stole the Land.” The book also calls Davey Crockett a cannibal, and describes the defenders of the Alamo as slave owners and Indian killers.
New Jersey’s 2002 guidelines for teaching history in the public schools contained no mention of the Founding Fathers, the Pilgrims, or the Mayflower. The first five pages of the section on World War II in a textbook used by Palm Beach County are exclusively about such fashionable topics as sex roles in the armed forces, racial segregation and the war, women and the war effort, and the relocation camps for Japanese.
A popular textbook published by McDougal Littell says US soldiers killed women and children at the battle of Sand Creek, but fails to mention that Indians killed white women and children the summer before the battle. This book contains a 107-line discussion of the relocation of the Japanese, but never mentions the Bataan death march. It contrasts Mao Tse Tung’s benevolence towards peasants favorably with Chiang Kai-Shek’s treatment of them; the death of 65 million Chinese after Mao came to power is unrecorded. It calls the immigration reformers of the 1920s racists, as it does all others who oppose unlimited immigration.
Holt Rinehart Winston’s American Nation in the Modern Era contains exercises for students to criticize, but never to defend 19th century immigration restrictions. Such “radical multiculturalist philosophy” is, Mr. Tancredo states, “the norm.” [Tom Tancredo, Rewriting American History, Speech to House of Representatives, March 3, 2004.]
Racial Indecency
On Satuday, March 20, a black weekend radio DJ, Raqiyah Mays, told her audience she opposed interracial dating. The following Monday, her bosses at New York’s WWPR-FM fired her because of “inappropriate remarks.” They said the station got complaints from listeners “who were displeased and felt alienated as a result of her actions.”
Miss Mays says she is shocked. “I said I was concerned about interracial relationships when the African-American community has our own inner work and healing to do. If I see a white woman dating an African-American man, I feel, as do many African-American women, that there is one less black man available to us. I wasn’t speaking against anybody,” she explains, “I was just being honest . . . I am being censored not for sexual indecency, but racial indecency.” [David Hinckley, DJ Fired for Race Remark, New York Daily News, March 23, 2004.]
Bad Chemistry
New York City pays high school chemistry teacher Elihu McMahon $77,000 a year to do nothing. Because of his history of insubordination, incompetent teaching, improper grading, sexual harassment, and racist remarks to students, administrators won’t let the 69-year-old black man near a classroom, but union rules make it nearly impossible to fire him. During the past 15 years, the city has paid $600,000 for his non-services. [Chuck Shepherd, He Gets a Buck for Doing a Nothing Job, News of the Weird (Syndicated Feature), Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 18, 2004, p. E7.]
Mexicans often cross the border into the United States to get free, high-quality medical care unavailable in Mexico. Sometimes the cost to us is considerably greater than the cost of treatment. On March 21, a medical helicopter crashed en route to a hospital in Lubbock, Texas, killing the pilot, a paramedic, the three-month-old patient, and his mother, Ana Lillia Urias. Mrs. Urias had brought her baby across the border for treatment. [Medical Helicopter Crash Kills 4 in Texas, USA Today, March 22, 2004, p. 3A.]
Elite Betrayal
Many of Britain’s top landowners, celebrities, and children of establishment figures are reportedly disillusioned with Christianity and are converting to Islam. According to a study by Yahya (formerly Jonathan) Birt, the son of Lord Birt, former director-general of the BBC, more than 14,000 mostly elite white Britons have converted.
Many British converts have been inspired by the writings of Charles Le Gai Eaton, a former diplomat and author of Islam and the Destiny of Man, who says, “I have received letters from people who are put off by the wishy-washy standards of contemporary Christianity and they are looking for a religion which does not compromise too much with the modern world.” “We’re all the rage,” says Emma Clark, the great-granddaughter of former British prime minister Herbert Asquith. “I hope it’s not a passing fashion.” Miss Clark recently helped design an “Islamic” garden for Prince Charles at his Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire.
Yahya Birt says it was “the overall profundity, balance and coherence and spirituality of the Muslim way of life which convinced me [to convert].” He hopes an inspirational figure like Malcolm X will emerge in Britain and encourage mass conversion of whites. “You need great transitional figures to translate something alien (like Islam) into the vernacular,” he explains. [Thousands of British Elite Embrace Islam, Al-Jazeerah News, March 12, 2004.]
Rent-a-Negro
A black Portland, Oregon “artist” named damali ayo (she prefers all lower-case, like black author bell hooks) has put up a satirical website (rent-a-negro.com) offering to rent blacks to people who need diversity for career or leisure. As she explains:
As we all know, the purchase of African Americans was outlawed many years ago. As times have changed the need for black people in your life has changed but not diminished. The presence of black people in your life can advance business and social reputation. These days those who claim black friends and colleagues are on the cutting edge of social and political trends. As our country strives to incorporate the faces of African Americans, you have to keep up. Rent-a-negro offers you the chance to capitalize on your connection with a black person.
The rate for a Negro is a steep $350 per hour for businesses and $200 for individuals, and the renter must pay extra to hear a Negro opinion, to touch the Negro’s hair, or to call the Negro “sista” or “girlfriend.” The website quotes satisfied customers: “After seeing me with her, people wanted to know more about ME!” “I’ve never gotten so much attention!” “I introduced her to my mother — family conversations haven’t been boring since!” Most visitors to the site get the joke, but Miss ayo says she has had dozens of serious requests. [Negroes for Rent, Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Summer 2003.]
Russian-Korean Americans
Of all the strange people to wash up on American shores, Russian Koreans are among the strangest. Thousands of Koreans left their homeland for the Russian Far East in the latter half of the 19th century to escape famine and Japanese imperialism. In the 1930s Stalin sent them to what is now Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia on the suspicion that they might spy for Japan. After Uzbeks and Kazakhs gained independence, they started discriminating against the uninvited Koreans, so the US let in many as refugees. They speak Russian rather than Korean, do not practice Korean customs, and often have strange, hybrid names like “Lubov Nyu” and “Irina Tyan,” so they find themselves isolated from their co-ethnics in California, where they have settled. “There’s a strong strand of hyper-nationalism among Korean Americans,” says John Lie, a professor of Korean studies, so it is naturally difficult for “non-standard” Koreans to find acceptance.
Russian-Korean Elsa Rafikova, née Choi, is determined to make America a more welcoming place for non-standard Koreans, and has established a church for them in Los Angeles. “I am trying to build a Russian-Korean-American community,” she says. “I want to unite our people.” In order to gain the friendship of her co-ethnics, Mrs. Rafikova has learned Korean, which she speaks with a Russian accent. [Ann M. Simmons, Minority Within a Minority, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 21, 2003.]
A Good Idea
Edwin Rubenstein, an economic consultant in Indianapolis, has come up with a novel solution to the illegal immigration problem. Noting that economists have long held that you get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax, he suggests taxing illegal aliens — or at least the remittances they send home. There were $32 billion in remittances to Latin America in 2002, a third of which went to Mexico. Six million Hispanics regularly send money home, using banks and wire service companies, resulting in at least 70 million such transactions a year. Taxing them could be as simple as collecting a sales tax. The money collected could then be used to offset the cost of providing medical services and education to illegals and their children. But more importantly, a tax on remittances would discourage immigrants. As Mr. Rubenstein says, “Tax them and they will go away.” [Edwin S. Rubenstein, A Supply-Side Solution For Illegal Immigration, VDare.com, Jan.26, 2004.]
Grade Inflation
In 1995, an assistant registrar at Southern University, the nation’s largest black college, started taking bribes from students who wanted better grades. For $75 a grade, he would change the computer records and improve transcripts. More than 540 current and former students, both graduate and undergraduate, appear to have availed themselves of his services. Some students paid to have as many as 20 grades changed, and may lose their degrees. [Adam Nossiter, Southern U. Charges 541 Students in Grades Scandal, AP, April 1, 2004.]
Tales from the Congo
There is confused and cruel fighting on Congo’s lawless northeastern region, but the main conflict is between the Hema, tall herdsmen similar to the Tutsis of Rwanda, and the shorter Lendu. The Hema took over the plantations the Belgians left behind when they fled in 1960, while the Lendu are subsistence farmers who originally occupied the land. For some time, rumors of atrocities — especially of cannibalism — have trickled back to civilization, and there have now been enough reports to leave little doubt that some Congolese are eating each other (See AR, March 2003, July 2003, Dec. 2003).
Petronille Vaweka, president of the Special Assembly in nearby Ituri province, believes both tribes use cannibalism as a psychological weapon to terrify their enemies. “You can’t hide it, the Lendu kill. So do the Hema, but they kill in secret. Now in this war, [stimulated] with drugs, they cook people and eat them. No one can lie — both sides have eaten each other,” she says.
Most of the accounts appear to be from Hemas, who claim to have suffered at the hands of Lendu. Vivienne Nyamutale says that while the Lendu held her captive, she saw them cooking and eating people. She also says they set up camps where they held Hema women for systematic rape.
Chantal Tsesi, also a Hema, tells of waking up to the sound of gunfire as Lendu tribesmen burst into her house in August 2002. “They cut of my arm. They cooked it while they were drinking our mandro [homemade beer], and ate it with the rest of the beans and rice,” she says. “They told me they were going to find my husband and eat his heart.” She spent four months in a hospital recovering from her amputation, but says that later, armed Lendu went from bed to bed, killing the patients. Her husband, who managed to avoid being eaten, left her because he could not get much work out of a one-armed wife.
Mrs. Tsesi’s mother, Eliza Dz’da, says Lendu attacked her home, where she lived with her other daughter Georgette, and her four children. The Lendu killed her family, and then tore down a shed to get wood for a fire. “They took our food and cooked pieces of Georgette and the children,” she says.
The most famous claim of cannibalism is that of Amuzati Nzoli, a Congolese pygmy, whose report was the first to get worldwide attention. He is now something of a celebrity, and has left the forest for the capital Kinshasa. There he finds comfort in the arms of local prostitutes, whom he calls his “girlfriends,” and runs a brisk trade, demanding gifts from reporters in exchange for telling his story. He used to claim that after armed men attacked his village in the fall of 2002, he watched from the bushes while they cooked and ate his family. “They even sprinkled salt on the flesh as they ate, as if cannibalism was all very natural to them,” he said at the time. Now, he says only that he saw his family butchered. “They were cutting them the way they cut meat,” he recalls, but says he did not stay for the meal. [Eliza Griswold, The Truth Behind the Cannibals of Congo, The Independent (London), March 26, 2004.]
Wisdom of the Aged
Interracial marriage was still illegal in more than a dozen states, including Virginia and North Carolina, when the US Supreme Court unanimously declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional in its 1967 decision, Loving v. Virginia. Richard P. Loving, a Virginia white man, married a black woman in Washington, DC, in 1958. When the couple returned to Virginia, state authorities charged them with interracial marriage. They were tried, convicted, and sentenced to a year in prison. The presiding judge suspended the sentence on condition that the Lovings leave the state. They moved back to DC, and eventually filed the suit challenging the constitutionality of the law.
North Carolina’s 1855 law banning interracial marriages read as follows: “All marriages, since the eighth day of January, eighteen hundred and thirty-nine, and all marriages in the future, between a white person and a free negro, or free person of color, to the third generation, shall be void.”
A revised law banning interracial marriage was still on the books in North Carolina as late as 1976; one state legislator said they had kept it “as a sentimental gesture.” It read: “All marriages between a white person and a negro or between a white person and person of negro descent to the third generation, inclusive, or between a Cherokee Indian of Robeson County and a negro, or between a Cherokee Indian of Robeson County and a person of negro descent to the third generation, inclusive . . . shall be void.” [“To the third generation, inclusive” sounds as though one black grandparent disqualified someone from marriage but that one black great-grandparent did not. We invite informed readers to shed light on this question. — Ed.] It appears that later legislators thought mixing with blacks was bad for Indians, too. In 1977 the North Carolina legislature officially lifted the ban, and validated all marriages voided by earlier state laws and court rulings.
In the years since Loving, Americans — whites in particular — have softened toward miscegenation. As late as 1983, only 43 percent approved of black-white intermarriage, and for whites the figure was a low 38 percent. Blacks, at 71 percent, were far more liberal. By 1997, white acceptance of miscegenation had risen to 61 percent, and that of blacks to 77 percent. The national figure was 64 percent, but no fewer than 83 percent of young people, aged 13 to 17, approved of interracial marriage. A 2002 survey found that the overall approval rate remained much the same, at 65 percent. Older people, who are likely to be grandparents, are the least likely, at 30 percent, to be keen on interracial marriage. Among 50- to 64-year olds, 53 percent approved, while three fourths of 30- to 49-year-olds and 86 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds did not object to miscegenation. [Kelly Starling-Lyons and Brooke Cain, Laws on Interracial Marriage, News and Observer (Raleigh), Jan 13, 2004, p. 3E.]
