O Tempora, O Mores! (June, 2007)
American Renaissance, June 2007
On April 9, at the invitation of the Clemson Conservatives, American Renaissance editor Jared Taylor gave a talk on the subject of racial diversity to an audience of 125 at Clemson University. He spoke for about 40 minutes, and then spent nearly an hour answering questions. Students were clearly fascinated by a point of view they rarely hear. The audience, which was polite and even favorable, wrote questions on note cards, so there was no “anti-racist” filibustering. There were a few hostile questions, including one that referred to Mr. Taylor as an “arrogant, racist white man.” When Mr. Taylor replied that to call him a “racist” was mere name-calling and that name calling is the most pathetic way someone can admit he has lost the argument, there was a brisk round of applause.
The Campus Conservatives wanted to hold a debate on racial diversity, but even with the help of at least one other campus group they were unable to find anyone willing to defend the orthodox view. The local NAACP was one of the organizations that declined to debate, but this did not stop it from later complaining that the mere fact of giving Mr. Taylor an opportunity to speak was a disturbing example of “campus racism.”
In the school district of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, blacks are suspended at six times the white rate (45.9 per hundred students vs. 7.4 per hundred) and Hispanics are suspended at twice the white rate (17.2 per hundred). In North Carolina as a whole, the suspension rates for blacks and whites are 44 per 100, and 12 per 100.
For once, the difference isn’t being blamed on discrimination or “institutional racism.” Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools have “zero-tolerance” for violence, and Ralph Taylor, the district’s safety director (who is black) says blacks get most of the suspensions because they do most of the fighting. “We have a lot of kids who are involved in gang activity, and they bring that stuff to school and they get in trouble for it,” he explains. “I don’t think by any means that it’s somebody singling black kids out.”
Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools hand out a lot of suspensions but very few expulsions. Last year, the district threw out just six students — five were black — out of nearly 124,000, and some officials want more. A mere six is “too low a number, I’ll tell you that,” says school board member Larry Gauvereau. [Ann Doss Helms, CMS Discipline Gap Widens, Charlotte Observer, April 5, 2007.]
Words of Wisdom
This is from a speech by Booker T. Washington after he received an honorary degree from Harvard in 1896:
In the economy of God, there is but one standard by which an individual can succeed [and] there is but one for a race. This country demands that every race measure itself by the American standard. By it a race must rise or fall, succeed or fail, and in the last analysis mere sentiment counts for little. During the next half century and more, my race must continue passing through the severe American crucible. We are to be tested in our patience, our forbearance, our perseverance, our power to endure wrong, to withstand temptations, to economize, to acquire and use skill; our ability to compete, to succeed in commerce, to disregard the superficial for the real, the appearance for the substance, to be great and yet small, learned and yet simple, high and yet the servant of all. This, this is the passport to all that is best in the life of our Republic, and the Negro must possess it or be debarred.
Rodney Jean-Jacques is a Philadelphia fireman and aspiring “rapper.” In 2005, he came up with a rap on fire safety. The fire department liked it, and it was broadcast during a Philadelphia-Dallas football game. Mr. Jean-Jacques’ latest effort is less civic-minded. “I gotta surprise for them cops,” he chants to the sound of gunfire. “I hope the news is taping this, cause I’m gonna turn pigs into bacon bits.”
Bob Eddis of the Philadelphia branch of the Fraternal Order of Police calls the song a “disgrace” and says Mr. Jean-Jacques must apologize or be fired: “He is a city employee and he should be held accountable for making these statements.” The city put Mr. Jean-Jacques on administrative leave while it investigates. [Philadelphia Police Outraged Over Firefighter Rappers Lyrics, AP, April 17, 2007. Robert Moran, Firefighter Who Called Police ‘Pigs’ in Rap is Put on Leave, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 20, 2007.]
Injustice
Sue Carol Browning is a judge in western Kentucky who takes illegal immigration seriously, once ordering illegal immigrants appearing before her to leave Kentucky within 72 hours as a condition of probation. Last summer, Judge Browning ordered police to arrest Hispanics pulled over in traffic stops who failed to present any identification. She then ordered them held without bail while federal authorities investigated their status. This led to a complaint against her by Paul Witte, a pastoral associate for St. Susan Catholic Church in Elkton, Kentucky, who works with the “undocumented” community. “She was being very harsh in her treatment of them,” he says.
On April 19, the state Judicial Conduct Commission found Judge Browning guilty of violating judicial ethics by denying bail, and suspended her without pay for 15 days. Although the commission found no evidence of “racism,” it said she “created an impression” that she had “a racial prejudice or bias” against Hispanics.
Judge Browning is not fighting the suspension but says she locked the Hispanics up because she didn’t know their legal status or criminal history, and had seen them in her courtroom again and again, under different names. [Brett Barrouquere, Judge Suspended for Jailing Immigrants Without Bail, AP, April 19, 2007.]
Since the beginning of 2006, 41 National Football League (NFL) players have been arrested — some several times — for anything from drunk driving to aggravated assault. Chicago Bears defensive tackle Tank Jones is serving a four-month sentence on weapons charges and had to get special permission from a judge to play in the Super Bowl. Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones has been arrested five times and questioned by police five more times since joining the league in 2005. He faces a felony charge for starting a brawl at a Las Vegas strip club in February that led to a triple shooting. He is also charged with obstruction of justice in Georgia. His college roommate, Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry, has been arrested four times in three states in 14 months. The most serious charge is aggravated assault with a firearm.
The NFL’s former policy outlawed criminal behavior but did not permit fines or suspension until a player was convicted. The team itself can always fire a trouble-maker, as the New England Patriots did when tackle Kenyatta Jones poured scalding water on a teammate, but managers don’t want to release a star player with a multi-year, multi-million dollar guaranteed contract.
Recent high-profile NFL arrests prompted Commissioner Roger Goodell to change the rules. There are now larger fines and longer suspensions, and players who are arrested repeatedly may be punished without a conviction. Teams themselves can be punished if they have repeat offenders on their rosters. Mr. Goodell applied the rules right away, suspending Chris Henry for eight games and “Pacman” Jones for the entire season. [Jarrett Bell, NFL Will Confront Discipline Issue, Unveil New Policy Within Days, USA Today, April 9, 2007. Tom Weir, New NFL Policy Has Teams Trying to Avoid ‘Bad Apple,’ USA Today, April 19, 2007.]
Defending the Faith
In Malaysia there is so much interest in the supernatural that a museum in the southern state of Negeri Sembilan put on an exhibit of ghosts, ghouls, and creatures from local legends. The display included a vampire carcass and a phoenix, and drew more than 25,000 visitors since opening on March 10, but the state government will now close it down. The reason? It offends Muslims. The National Fatwa Council ruled that the exhibit could “undermine” Muslim faith. Council Chairman Abdul Shukor Husin says, “We don’t want to promote a belief in tahyul (supernatural) and khurafat (superstition) which we do not know about.”
About 60 percent of Malaysia’s 26 million people are Muslims, and are subject to all Fatwa Council edicts whether or not they are within national law. [Ghost Museum Closes After Muslims Complain It’s Detrimental to Faith, AP, April 14, 2007.]
Swapping Refugees
Australia and the United States have agreed on a particularly stupid way to discourage Third-World refugees from arriving by boat: They will exchange them. Any Haitians who manage to get to the United States will be sent Down Under and any Iraqis who make it to Australia will get to come here. Bureaucrats in both countries seem to think that the prospect of ending up in a different hemisphere will make people stay home. The plan covers only legitimate refugees.
The Australian Labor Party’s immigration spokesman, Tony Burke, sees through this silliness: “If you are in one of the refugee camps around the world, there is no more attractive destination than to think you can get a ticket to the USA. What Prime Minister John Howard is doing is saying to the people around the world, if you want to get to the US, the way to it is to hop a boat and go to Christmas Island (a remote Australian territory).”
A better policy would be for the US to adopt Australia’s methods. It intercepts boat people at sea and plonks them on the Pacific Island of Nauru, where they may sit for years. Since it started doing this in 2001, Australia has had only a trickle of boat people. When word gets out about the new deal with the US, the trickle will become a torrent. The first people likely to be swapped are 83 Sri Lankan and eight Burmese who will have to say good by to their home in Nauru and come to the US. [Kathy Marks, Australia and US Sign Pact to Swap Refugees, Independent (London), April 19, 2007.]
Thousands of Hutu from Burundi have been living in camps in Tanzania since 1972, when the Tutsi drove them out of the country. Tutsi and Hutu went on to slaughter an estimated one million of each other in 1994. The US government now plans to invite up to 9,000 of these homeless Hutu to America. The first 3,000 should arrive by the end of September, with another 5,000 in fiscal 2008. “They will resettle all over the country,” says Deborah Stein, a program manager for New York-based Episcopal Migration Ministries. She says cities are chosen according to whether they can handle the refugees’ “needs,” which are considerable. The Burundians have been living in primitive camps for more than 30 years. Most have no more than a grade school education, and many are illiterate.
Chattanooga, Tennessee, is one of the lucky cities. It can count on at least 70 Burundians, according to Anne Curtis of Bridge Refugee and Sponsorship Services. Since 1996, her agency has resettled 600 refugees from Bosnia, Vietnam, Cuba, Liberia, Sudan, and other countries — all in Chattanooga. [Karina Gonzales, Help Sought to Resettle Refugees Here, Chattanooga Times-Free Press, April 16, 2007.]
Maybe the Aussies would like a few Burundians.
Cop Quotas
Two years ago, the British government announced that police forces in England and Wales must be four percent non-white, but the police have fallen short: they are only 3.7 percent non-white. This year the government has raised the goal for 2009 to seven percent, a figure it says is “demanding but realistic.” The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) says that under current employment law that goal cannot be met until 2020 at the earliest. The solution? Police chiefs want to change the law to allow quotas and blatant anti-white discrimination. As Peter Fahy, Chief Constable of Cheshire explains, “If there is no change in the law, politicians, media and the public will have to accept that the goal of a representative workforce will take many more years than they might wish.”
Trevor Phillips, the inveterately anti-white head of the Commission for Racial Equality, opposes quotas but only because, as a spokesman says, “these forms of reverse discrimination could actually increase community tensions, rather than ease them.” The anti-racism sleuths claim quotas and preferences are not needed; if the police would only overcome their racism they could attract plenty of non-white officers.
The Conservative Party sounds just like the Commission for Racial Equality. Nick Herbert, shadow police minister, agrees that “greater efforts need to be made to encourage black and ethnic minorities to join the police,” but that preferences are not the answer, since they would be “divisive and counter-productive, potentially increasing racial tension.” Not even the conservatives are prepared to say that racial preferences are unfair to whites. [Nigel Morris, Row Over Quotas for Black and Asian Police Officers, Independent (London), April 20, 2007.]
Death in Haiti
Thousands of people die of AIDS and murder every year in Haiti, and the number of corpses is driving up the cost of funerals. The average burial now costs $540, more than most Haitians earn in a year. Deforestation makes wooden coffins unaffordable for most families, and has led to a market for second-hand coffins. Grave robbers are only too happy to supply them. Many bereaved now smash coffins to keep them from being plundered and recycled. Others make coffins out of papier-mâché.
If someone does not die at home but ends up at a morgue, relatives have to pay to pick up the body. The cost runs from $27 for bodies the police or hospital staff dropped off to $47 for bodies morgue workers had to pick up off the street. This is too much for the average family, so most bodies go unclaimed and are dumped in mass graves.
The free market works even in Haiti. A professional funeral now costs so much that a new industry has sprung up — freelance undertaking. “Sometimes you can see the economic situation of the person and you can negotiate a lower price,” says self-styled “undertaker” Carl Fanfan. “I’m human, too, so it affects me when people want to bury a relative but can’t pay.” [Stevenson Jacobs, In Haiti, Burying the Dead is a Luxury, AP, April 19, 2007.]
