Posted on February 25, 2008

Protest at a Conference on Race

Eric M. Weiss, Washington Post, February 24, 2008

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Inside the Crowne Plaza Dulles Airport Hotel in Herndon were more than 100 attendees, most of them white men, of the American Renaissance Conference. Among the seminars were “Understanding the African Mind” and “Mexico From the Inside: Who the Mexicans Are and Why They Do What They Do.” For sale outside conference rooms were neckties decorated with Confederate emblems and books such as “Race Differences in Intelligence” and “Zoological Subspecies of Man.”

On the sidewalk outside—just off the Dulles Toll Road—stood a young, racially mixed group of three dozen protesters with megaphones and drums. They carried posters decrying Nazism, racism and fascism as they tried in vain to pass a police phalanx and enter the hotel to disrupt the conference.

Police firmly but gently pushed the protesters off hotel property and into an area marked with orange cones and yellow tape in a lane of the street in front of the hotel.

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The conference was sponsored by the New Century Foundation, which was launched by Jared Taylor, who calls himself a “race realist.” Taylor spoke with a reporter about the conference in the hotel. Taylor, who lives in the Oakton section of Fairfax County, has been described by civil rights organizations as a “white nationalist” who espouses racism.

Taylor said a theme of the conference was the intersection of immigration and race, which he said is reflected in the presidential campaign. “The country is catching up with us,” he said.

Taylor decried the attempt to disrupt the conference.

“And they call us Nazis?” he said.

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