O Tempora, O Mores! (August, 2006)
American Renaissance, August 2006
Disunited
Vinculo Hispano is a Hispanic uplift agency that caters to the burgeoning Hispanic population around Siler City, North Carolina. On April 1, 2006, it organized a pro-illegal immigration protest and encouraged local Hispanic schoolchildren to skip school to attend. Shortly thereafter the United Way, which helps fund the group, said it would reduce its annual contribution by $27,000.
Dina Reynolds, a United Way spokesman, says it cut the grant partly because Vinculo Hispano went over its operating budget by 10 percent, but added that United Way doesn’t like people telling children to skip school. Vinculo Hispano (vinculo means “tie” or “bond” in Spanish) says the cut is “racist and discriminatory,” and meant to intimidate. Director Ilana Dubester says the April 1 march was important to her people’s pride, and that the money helped recruit new members. Local Hispanic activist Nolo Martinez says Miss Reynolds is anti-Hispanic, and that he expects the United Way will restore the money when it meets in mid-July to review the decision. [Jose Cusicanqui, Guerra Politica Contra Organismo Hispano, QuePasaMedia. com, June 28, 2006.]
Nuevo England
New England prides itself on education. Nearly half of all young workers in Massachusetts have college degrees, as do more than a third in Connecticut, but immigration is likely to change that. According to a new report commissioned by the Nellie May Education Foundation — ”New England 2020” — the number of college graduates in Massachusetts will fall to 40 percent by 2020, to 30 percent in Connecticut, and to 9.5 percent in Maine — less than half of the current level. “Should these losses materialize, the vaunted educational advantages of New England will have evaporated in the space of three decades,” says the study’s co-author, Stephen Coelen of the University of Connecticut. The silver lining, he says, is that the newcomers will help offset a drop in the white working-age population. [Mark Jewell, Study Sees Decline of Young, Educated Workers in N.E., AP, June 29, 2006.]
Refugees — overwhelmingly non-white — are a big part of the problem. Lewiston, Maine, has been particularly hard hit. Nearly ten percent of its current population of 36,000 are Somalis. Refugees are also pouring into Manchester, New Hampshire. Although its 107,000 people are just 8.4 percent of the state’s population, it gets over 80 percent of New Hampshire’s refugees.
Two agencies resettle refugees in New Hampshire, Lutheran Social Services (LSS) and the International Institute of New Hampshire (IINH), a subsidiary of the US Committee for Refugees. They like to put people in Manchester because it is the state’s largest city. Another reason the IINH likes Manchester is that director Anne Sanderson wants refugees within walking distance of her office. She says she doesn’t like them too far away because “those refugees will not get the service and the close, careful watch that they get here.”
LSS brought so many Somalis to Manchester in 2004 that the city announced a three-month moratorium. The influx has since stayed below 2004 levels, but Public Health Director Fred Rusczek, says refugees are draining the city’s budget. He points out that in 2004, Manchester accepted more refugees than 23 states, and doesn’t think the city needs more. Miss Sanderson is bewildered: “I just don’t understand it. It’s really discriminatory against the refugees,” she says.
If Manchester manages to reduce the flow, it will be at the expense of other cities in the state. LSS is now putting 90 percent of its refugee allotment in Concord (approximately 95 percent white) and Laconia (nearly 97 percent white). [Scott Brooks, City Works to Adapt after Decade-Long Boom in Refugees, Manchester Union-Leader, July 2, 2006. Scott Brooks, As a Refugee Destination, Manchester Isn’t Alone, Manchester Union-Leader, July 2, 2006.]
One Step Closer
The state of Kansas has not executed anyone in 40 years (among the last were Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, the 1950s killers Truman Capote made famous when he wrote In Cold Blood). There are just eight people on death row, two of whom should be as notorious as Smith and Hickock. In 2000, black brothers Jonathan and Reginald Carr went on a week-long crime spree that culminated in the brutal sexual torture and murder of four young white people that has since been known as the Wichita Massacre. A jury sentenced the Carrs to death in Nov. 2002, but in Dec. 2004, the Kansas Supreme Court declared the state’s death penalty statute unconstitutional because it said that when there were equally balanced arguments for the death sentence and for life in prison, juries should choose death. This supposedly violated the 8th Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
On June 26, the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, overturned the Kansas Supreme Court and reinstated the state’s death penalty. Some years will probably pass before the Carr brothers get what they deserve, but this decision brings that day a little closer. [Gina Holland, Splintered High Court Backs Death Penalty, AP, June 26, 2006.]
A group calling itself Choose Black America is trying to gin up black support for the House enforcement-only approach to immigration reform. Choose Black America opposes amnesty and any form of guest worker program. Its chairman, Frank Morris, explains: “Mass illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. There are real people who lose their jobs or the chance to earn a better living. There are real children who are stuck in schools that cannot educate because they are overwhelmed by the children of illegal aliens. All too often, those victims are black.” Mr. Morris supports the House field hearings this summer. “We hope that they will come to black communities around the country so that they can hear the voices of black citizens,” he says. [Choose Black America Applauds House Leadership for Choosing to Listen to Americans on Immigration, PRNewswire, June 23, 2006.]
On June 28, federal prosecutors opened their case against four Hispanic gang members accused of a six-year campaign of terror and murder in Highland Park, California, to keep blacks out. Over defense objections that the federal government had no power to prosecute street crime, Asst. US Attorney Alex Bustamante brought hate crime charges based on the 13th Amendment. In his opening statement he noted: “They wanted all blacks out of that neighborhood, not just African American men, not just African American gang members but all African American women and children. Kenneth Wilson [one of the victims] was killed because he was black, because he was in Highland Park and because the Avenues gang members had promised each other, had agreed that they would drive African Americans out of the neighborhood, by threats, by force, by murder.” [John Spano, U.S. Accuses 4 Gang Members of Hate Crime in Black’s Killing, Los Angeles Times, June 29, 2006.]
Prof. Fraser Fights Back
Australian law professor and 2006 AR conference speaker Andrew Fraser has been under attack for nearly a year from his employer, Macquarie University, for pointing out in a letter to his local newspaper, the Parramatta Sun, that black African immigration to Australia could “lead to increasing levels of crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems” (see “Adventures of an Academic Pariah,” AR, Nov. 2005). Vice-chancellor Di Yerbury first tried to buy out Prof. Fraser’s remaining contract, and when that failed, canceled his classes and suspended him from teaching. The dean of Prof. Fraser’s department assured him he could resume teaching in Feb. 2006, but the university again barred him. At the end of June, Prof. Fraser finally retired from Macquarie, but unlike other former professors will not get library privileges. Prof. Fraser had planned to use the Macquarie library to do research for his next book, Anglophobia: Its Causes and Cures.
On June 26, Prof. Fraser filed a complaint with the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, accusing Macquarie University of political discrimination. He also filed a complaint against the Parramatta Sun for anti-white racial vilification for writing, in response to his letter, that whites had a notorious record of committing “murder and mayhem on a great scale.”
In a statement, Prof. Fraser says, “I look forward to finding out whether the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is, as advertised, a neutral and impartial investigative body. I hope that a double standard will not be applied by the Commission allowing white Europeans to be subjected to wholesale ‘racial vilification’ while suffering blatant political discrimination whenever they protest the loss of their freedoms and their ancestral homelands.” He adds, “I am, however, not at all confident that my hope will be fulfilled.” [Andrew Fraser, Macquarie Professor Lodges HREOC Complaints Alleging Political Discrimination and Anti-White Racial Vilification, Press Release, June 26, 2006.]
Kosovo Today, Texas Tomorrow?
Those who think the Reconquista movement is a joke should pay attention to Serbia, where the United Nations — with the support of the US — is working to grant autonomy or even full independence to the Serbian province of Kosovo, on the grounds that it has an ethnic Albanian majority.
According to the UN, “Independence and autonomy are among the options that have been mentioned for the province, where Albanians outnumber Serbs and others by 9 to 1.” William Dorich of Accuracy in Media notes, however, that while the Albanians are a majority, “40 percent are illegal aliens who cross the border into Serbia as easily as Mexicans cross our borders each night in San Diego.” Serbs were the majority population in 1939. If Kosovo can be transferred to Albanians because illegal immigration has swelled their ranks, what is to prevent a Mexican claim on Texas or New Mexico? [Cliff Kincaid, Kosovo in America, AIM Media Monitor, May 8, 2006.]
‘She Had to Die’
On June 29, 2005, Philip Grant, who is black, stabbed Concetta Russo-Carriero to death in a mall parking lot in White Plains, New York. In a video-taped confession, the convicted triple-rapist, who spent 23 years in prison, explained why he murdered the 56-year-old woman. “I never saw her before, and I didn’t care,” he said. “All I knew was she had blond hair and blue eyes and she had to die. If I’d have had a gun [that day], there’d be a lot dead white people on the streets of White Plains.” Mr.Grant continued: “I was thinking that the first person I see this morning that looks white, I’m killing them. I wanted to kill someone who lived a lily-white lifestyle and was a closet bigot.” He added: “I have no remorse whatsoever because she was white.” He said he was fighting a race war, and explained that he hates whites because, he claims, whites raped his mother when he was a child, and that all of his white friends have turned out to be “racists.”
Mr. Grant is on trial in New York on hate-crime murder charges, but is unlikely to get what he wants: “I want the death penalty. I want to die. But I wanted to kill somebody white first.” [Jennifer Fermino and Andy Geller, Mall Killer ‘fessed Up Quick: Cop, New York Post, June 15, 2006. Suspect Killed Because She Was White, WorldNetDaily.com, July 6, 2005.]
Unity in Hatred
On June 14, Professor Leonard Jeffries of the City University of New York spoke at a “Unity in Diversity” forum at New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). Wearing his hallmark African dress, and with a picture of Congressman Cynthia McKinney pinned to his robe, Prof. Jeffries told the 100 or so mostly black city workers that blacks have absorbed too much white thinking: “If every white person in the world dropped dead, the system [that oppresses you] would continue to go on, because it’s in you now.” To roars of approval, he explained how blacks should purge themselves of white thinking: “My basic rule of thumb is to stay away from things white. Take the whiteness out of your minds, or at least neutralize it with blackness.” Prof. Jeffries says blacks should avoid white milk, white bread and white sugar, and that coffee-drinkers should “take it black.” For more than an hour, he mocked and ridiculed whites, accusing them of all sorts of wickedness.
The Jeffries speech was the talk of the office, but annoyed many whites. “This has created some tensions,” says Evan Edwards, a white clerk. “This [black] person with whom you might have been getting along nicely, now they see you in a whole different light. This is creating a hostile work environment.” Another white says there are already anti-white feelings at HPD, and that allowing Prof. Jefrries to speak suggests HPD agrees with him. Others complained about the obvious double standard: If a white man railed against blacks on city property, he would be bounced.
After complaints to the mayor’s office, spokesman Stu Loeser explained that “the mayor vehemently disagrees with Professor Jeffries . . . but since independent and outside groups . . . have addressed these lunchtime sessions in the past, it’s not clear that the government can just pick and choose.” When asked if the Klan could speak, Mr. Loeser, seemed to suggest it could: “If you let one outside group in that legally has the right to exist, then the government can’t just pick and choose, no matter how reprehensible their viewpoint.” [Andrea Peyser, Spewing Racism on the City Dime, New York Post, June 15, 2006, p. 5. Andrea Peyser, Crackpot Has Staff in Fear & Loathing, New York Post, June 15, 2006, p. 5. Stephanie Gaskill, Hater a Hot Potato, New York Post, June 15, 2006, p. 5.]
Jungle Fever
French president Jacques Chirac fancies himself an expert on non-Western art. Since his election in 1995, he has been fluffing up his legacy by pushing for a museum of Third-World art. The Museum of the Quai Branley duly opened in June on prime real estate near the Eiffel Tower. “We want to show that this type of art is equivalent to European art,” says curator Patrice Junuel. “We want to place it on the same level.” Third World boosters say housing the collection separately from European art reinforces racist stereotypes of “exoticism.” They say the Vegetation Wall — an 800 square-meter garden of 15,000 Third World plants — is patronizing. It reinforces the idea that non-Western art is close to nature and therefore “primitive.” [Marina Bradbury, Chirac’s Museum of Exotic Art Panned for Being ‘Racist,’ The Independent, London, June 16, 2006.]
The Tragic Mulatto
Researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of Washington have found that mixed-race adolescents are more likely to smoke and drink than whites, blacks, or Asians who do not think of themselves as mixed. They are also more likely to be violent — though not by much more than blacks. The study published in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry cited “perceived racial discrimination” in schools and neighborhoods as a possible cause, and suggested that a “a strong, positive ethnic identity” could help. [Multiracial Youth More Prone to Violence, UPI, May 1, 2006.]
Togo No-Go
Dodzi Kpesse, a refugee from the African nation of Togo, came to Barre, Vermont, as a child five years ago with his family. In high school, classmates and teachers found him polite and hard-working. However, after graduation, Mr. Kpesse was still struggling with English and could get a job only as a dishwasher. In August, he walked out in the middle of his shift, went to the police station and announced, “I want to go back to Africa.” The police gave him the number for Immigration Control and Enforcement. Mr. Kpesse went home, drank five beers, and thought of a simple way to go home. He stuck up a local gas station with a pellet gun, sat down in the Burger King across the street, and waited for the police.
A felony had, indeed, put Mr. Kpesse on the path to deportation, but his friends would have none of it. Dozens of former teachers and employers lobbied the prosecutor to dismiss the case. He was depressed, explained his defense lawyer, Richard Rubin, and the felony was merely “a cry for help.” Mr. Rubin told the judge that courts all over America where allowing creative plea bargains to circumvent “draconian immigration standards.”
Mr. Rubin won over the judge, who gave Mr. Kpesse a nine-month suspended sentence after a plea of unlawful mischief, trespassing, and disorderly conduct. His friends gave the young African a place to stay, and the restaurant has even offered him his old job back. [Community Rallies Around African Refugee, AP, May 3, 2006.]
The Dragon’s Revenge
As recently as 1940, St. George, England’s patron saint, was invoked by King George VI to inspire patriotism, but he has fallen out of favor with the ruling class. The Church of England is considering a replacement for the legendary dragon-slayer, said to have been killed in the fourth century by Roman Emperor Diocletian because he professed Christianity. The clergy think St. George could offend Muslims because he became a hero to the English during the Crusades, when his spirit is said to have appeared to the army in 1098 at the Battle of Antioch. The church wants to replace him with St. Alban, a British Christian whom the Romans martyred in 304 AD. Another reason the church is keen on Alban is that there is no doubt he existed, whereas there is no historical evidence for George.
The replacement campaign comes at a time when St. George is making a comeback. His flag — which is the flag of England (Scotland, Wales, and Ireland also have flags) — was until recently associated mainly with “far-right” politics, but is back in the mainstream. Supporters of the England team at the World Cup flew oceans of St. George flags. [Steve Doughty, Will George be Slayed as England’s Patron Saint? Daily Mail, July 2, 2006.]
Inscrutable Asians
A new study claims native speakers of English and Chinese use different parts of the brain when they do simple math. Researchers at the Dalian University of Technology in China used a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scanner on subjects solving math puzzles. Both English- and Chinese-speakers used the parietal cortex, which is associated with quantitative reasoning, but the English-speakers also used part of the brain that processes language, and the Chinese-speakers used a part that processes visual information.
Robert Nisbett, co-director of the University of Michigan’s Culture and Cognition Program, says the research “indicates that the reasoning differences that we find between Asians and Westerners are really quite deep.” Prof. Nisbett reported last year on differences in eye movements between Chinese and whites when they look at pictures. Chinese tended to study the background and take in the picture as a whole, while whites focus more on the foreground. Prof. Nisbett says his results show that the two groups “literally see the world differently.”
Reports on the math study dodged any racial implications by suggesting cultural differences, differences in teaching methods and writing systems, or the use of the abacus in Asian schools. New Scientist, however, mentioned in passing that “different teaching methods across cultures, or genes, may also have primed the brains of Chinese and English speakers to solve equations differently.” [Randolph E. Schmid, Chinese, English Speakers Vary at Math, AP, June 26, 2006.]
In London, blacks are just 11 percent of the population but make up half the homicide suspects. In the first few months of 2006, of the 279 people wanted for homicide, 140 were black, 77 were white, and 23 were Asian. This means blacks are over 12 times more likely to be suspects than whites. Asians — in Britain this means Indians and Pakistanis — were 2.6 times more likely to be suspects than whites. The differences in likelihood of being a murder victim were not as great. Blacks were four times more likely than whites to be murder victims, and Asians twice as likely. Half of the 142 homicide victims during the period were whites. [Jason Bennetto, Black People are Four Times More Likely to be Murdered, Independent (London), April 27, 2006.]
‘Too Controversial’
Last fall, AR published an article by Chris Brand about new research on the evolution of brain development that may partially account for racial differences in intelligence. The research by Prof. Bruce Lahn of the University of Chicago was reported in the prestigious journal Science, and announced to great fanfare at a press conference. Prof. Lahn did his best to play down the racial angle, but Dr. Brand was not tricked. He described the findings as “the moment the anti-racists and egalitarians have dreaded” (see “Race Realism Takes a Step Forward,” AR, Dec. 2005). A recent Wall Street Journal article about Prof. Lahn quoted Dr. Brand but not by name, saying only that the lines had appeared in a “magazine that blames black and Hispanic people for social ills.”
Prof. Lahn, who grew up in China, seems not have realized that the United States does not encourage all forms of free inquiry. The anti-”racists” went right to work to set him straight. Pilar Ossorio, medical ethics and law professor at the University of Wisconsin, scolded Prof. Lahn for reaching conclusions like those in The Bell Curve. “It’s exactly what they were getting at . . . People said [Prof. Lahn] is doing damage to the whole field of genetics.” Troy Duster, a black sociologist at New York University, believes scientists who study race bring their own prejudices to the field: “Science doesn’t transcend the social milieu.”
Others maintain that any research into racial differences in intelligence simply lends credence to “racists.” Spencer Wells, head of a National Geographic project to catalogue DNA samples of 100,000 indigenous people around the world, thinks it’s okay to study physical differences between peoples in order to explain why Danes are tall and Pygmies short, but not intelligence. “I think there is very little evidence of IQ differences between races,” he says. Even one of Prof. Lahn’s co-authors, Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Maryland, says she was disturbed by his suggestion that one particular genetic mutation in the brain occurred at about the time civilizations appeared, calling the idea “very simplistic.” She would not sign the letter Prof. Lahn sent to Science in response to the many critical letters it published.
His own university offered only tepid support for Prof. Lahn’s work. John Easton, head of Chicago’s media department says Prof. Lahn “makes us nervous.” When he was up for full tenure review last fall, his work and views on race became a subject of discussion. His department voted unanimously for promotion to full professor, but another tenure committee was split, with only a majority voting in favor. The university filed a patent application last year for a DNA-based intelligence test on the strength of Prof. Lahn’s work, but has since dropped the application. “We really don’t want to end up on the front page . . . for doing eugenics,” says Alan Thomas, director of the university’s patent office.
The attacks have taken their toll on Prof. Lahn. While he believes that genes give some population groups higher levels of intelligence, and that “society will have to grapple with some very difficult facts” as research bears that out, he has decided to drop the subject. “It’s getting too controversial,” he says. Prof. Lahn also says he is warming to the idea, suggested by one of his students, that some knowledge may not be worth having. [Antonio Regalado, Head Examined: Scientist’s Study of Brain Genes Sparks a Backlash, Wall Street Journal (New York), June 16, 2006.)
According to a recent study by Public Agenda, a non-partisan education think-tank, people of different races have quite different experiences in school. Thirty percent of blacks, for example, say teachers spend more time trying to keep order than teaching, compared to 14 percent of whites, and more than 50 percent of black students say lack of respect for teachers and use of bad language is a serious problem, versus fewer than a third of white students. Nearly 60 percent of black students believe they could try harder in schools, along with 53 percent of Hispanics and 46 percent of whites. Black and Hispanic parents are more than twice as likely as white parents to describe weapons and fighting as very serious problems in their children’s schools. Non-white students also say their schools suffer from low academic standards, high dropout rates, and lack of funding. Overall, the nation’s public schools are 59 percent white, 19 percent Hispanic, and 17 percent black. [Ben Feller, Black, Hispanic Pupils See School as Tough, AP, May 30, 2006.]
Paying for the Past
In 1898, majority-black Wilmington was the largest city in North Carolina. White Democrats were angry that even after Reconstruction ended, a coalition of blacks and Republicans still ran the city. They took matters into their own hands and burned the printing press of a black newspaper publisher, Alexander Manly. During the violence that followed, at least 60 people were killed and more than 2,100 blacks fled the city, which then became majority white. The riots were a catalyst for Democrats statewide, who regained control of the legislature and began restricting the black vote. Some historians say Wilmington marked the beginning of the Jim Crow era.
Now a state-appointed commission, led by state Rep. Thomas Wright — who is black — wants North Carolina to pay reparations to the descendants of the blacks who fled Wilmington in what he calls the nation’s only coup d’état. Besides reparations, which one expert says would “probably be in the billions of dollars,” the commission wants help for non-white businesses and home-owners. It also wants the incident taught in public schools. [Mike Baker, Panel: N.C. Should Pay for 1898 Race Riot, AP, June 1, 2006.]
Hawaiians-Only School
For 118 years, the private Kamehameha schools in Hawaii have been run exclusively on money that Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop set aside in her estate before the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. The schools have admitted only native Hawaiians, though they sometimes fill vacant places with non-Hawaiians. A white who was denied admission in 2003 has filed a discrimination lawsuit but federal district judge Alan Kay upheld the schools’ admissions policy. He said it was necessary as compensation for past injustices, to preserve Hawaiian culture, and to remedy “current manifest imbalances resulting from the influx of Western civilization.” A three-judge panel of the Ninth US Court of Appeals has now overruled this opinion, but on June 20 the full court heard arguments. Whatever the outcome, the case is likely to go to the Supreme Court.
Critics of the Kamehameha schools say they are like the private, segregated academies that have been banned. One of the most famous was set up by Steven Girard of Philadelphia, who left most of his wealth in trust to establish a school for “poor, white orphan boys.” The school followed his instruction for 125 years before the Supreme Court struck down the racial criteria for admissions in 1957. The difference, say Kamehameha supporters, is that private schools for whites serve no “remedial” purpose. [Mark Niesse, Hawaiian School Admissions Questioned, AP, June 20, 2006.]
Pay Up
Eddie Jordan became New Orleans’ first black district attorney in 2003. In one of his first actions on the job, he fired 43 white support staff and replaced them with blacks. The whites sued, and last year a jury found Mr. Jordan violated their civil rights. On June 29, US District Court Judge Stanford Duval ordered the DA’s office to pay the white workers $3.58 million to cover lost wages, benefits, emotional damages and legal fees. Mr. Harris denies any racial motivation, and has appealed to the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who have reviewed the financial condition of Mr. Harris’ office, doubt anyone will be paid soon. [Gwen Filosa, D.A. Ordered to Pay $3.58 Million to Former Workers, New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 6, 2006.]
