O Tempora, O Mores! (June, 2010)
American Renaissance, June 2010
Arizona v. Aztlan
If Americans ever get their country back, future historians may write that the counterrevolution began in Arizona. The state set off a national uproar when Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law allowing state and local police officers to enforce federal immigration laws. As leftwing commentators and Hispanic activists continue to talk nonsense about what they call a “Nazi” law, it is worth taking a look at what it actually does.
It simply makes violations of federal immigration law a state crime as well. Thus, since federal law requires that immigrants carry their green cards with them at all times, so does Arizona’s. Police in Arizona can ask about a person’s immigration status only during the course of “lawful contact,” such as a routine traffic stop or arrest. Before asking about immigration status, however, an officer must have a “reasonable suspicion” that someone is an illegal alien. Examples of reasonable suspicion include: Pulling over a driver who has no license or other form of official ID; seeing someone buying fake IDs or sneaking across the border; arresting a previously deported gang member. The law says police “may not solely consider race, color or national origin.” [Mark Krikorian, Fact Sheet on the New Arizona Immigration Law, Center for Immigration Studies, April 29, 2010.]
A different bill sent to the governor four days after the immigration-control measure may be as important as the immigration law. It bans ethnic-studies courses that advocate separatism and racial resentment. It makes it illegal for any school to teach a course that advocates the overthrow of the US government, promotes class or racial resentment against any group of people, is intended for any particular ethnic group, or advocates “ethnic solidarity.” The chief target of the bill is the ethnic studies program used by the Tucson Unified School District, which promotes the radical Aztlan agenda that calls for the “reconquest” of the Southwest by Hispanics and its forceful separation from the United States. [Arizona Legislature Passes Bill to Curb ‘Chauvanism’ in Ethnic Studies Programs, Fox News, April 30, 2010.]
Mass immigration has driven the number of foreign-born US residents to record levels, and while immigration is beginning to change areas such as Iowa and the rural South, most immigrants continue to live in the so-called gateway states that have customarily been home to large numbers of foreigners. According to the Census Bureau’s most recent American Community Survey (2008), California tops the list with 9,859,027 foreign-born residents, followed by New York (4,236,768), Texas (3,887,224) Florida (3,391,511), and Illinois (1,782,423). The states with the most foreigners are generally the most populous. Arizona is the 14th overall in population, but eighth in terms of the number of foreign-born residents, which may explain why so many Arizonans are angry about lax border enforcement. By 2008, there were more than 38 million immigrants living in the US. From 1990 to 2008, 14 states saw their rate of immigrant influx increase by 200 percent or more. [Stuart Fox, Which US State Has the Most Immigrants?, LiveScience.com, April 28, 2010.]
According to a recent poll taken during the media frenzy over the new Arizona immigration law, 49 percent of US voters say relations between whites and Hispanics are getting worse, up from 34 percent in December. Only 28 percent think relations are improving. Only 19 percent of respondents say relations between blacks and Hispanics are improving, while 37 percent believe they are getting worse.
When it comes to blacks and whites, 55 percent think relations are improving, which is down seven percent since December. Seventy-seven percent of voters surveyed think relations between whites and blacks are better than they were in the 1960s. The poll also found that despite the media outcry, 64 percent of Arizonans support the new immigration law, as do six out of ten US voters. [49% Say White-Hispanic Relations Getting Worse, Rasmussen Reports, April 28, 2010.]
The Obama Effect
A recent survey of American high school students by Hamilton College in New York found that blacks are more sanguine about the future than whites. Seventy percent of black students ages 15 to 18 thought they would be living better than their parents, compared with just 36 percent of white students. Experts say optimism among blacks appears to be related to enthusiasm for President Obama — the so-called Obama Effect. “Young African Americans have this serious afterglow that is not as strong with whites and Hispanics,” says John Della Volpe of the Harvard Institute of Politics. Two thirds of black students give Mr. Obama a “good” or “very good” rating, compared with just 23 percent of white students.
DeQuan Foster, a high school sophomore from Newark, says having someone that looks like him in the White House has strongly influenced his belief in the future. “You’re always told anything is possible — but when you see it, you believe it. It makes me want to try twice as hard.” [Martha Irvine, Poll: Black Teens More Optimistic Than Peers, AP, April 29, 2010.]
Tian Sheng Yu was a 59-year-old Chinese immigrant who ran a painting and remodeling business in San Francisco. In April, he took his son Jin Cheng Yu on a shopping trip across the bay to Oakland. While the elder Yu was parking the car, two young black men attacked his son for no apparent reason, punching him in the face. Unwilling to let the incident pass, Yu tracked down his son’s assailants, and began scolding them in his native Mandarin Chinese. One of the blacks hit Yu in the face, knocking him to pavement. He hit his head when he fell, went into a coma, and died four days later.
The attack on the Yus was just the latest in a series of black-on-Asian assaults in the San Francisco area. In March, a 52-year-old woman identified only as Mrs. Cheng was waiting for her daughter at a bus stop when a 15-year-old black boy grabbed her from behind, choked her, and threw her off of the five-foot high platform into the path of an oncoming bus. Although the bus managed to stop, she was knocked out and shattered several of her teeth. In January, a gang of black teenagers beat 83-year-old Huan Chen to death as he left a San Francisco bus station.
Many Asians in San Francisco think blacks are deliberately targeting them. “It is San Francisco’s dirty little secret,” says community organizer Carol Mo. Miss Mo was one of hundreds of Asians who demonstrated at San Francisco City Hall in April, demanding that police and the Board of Supervisors do more to protect them from blacks. City and police officials are downplaying the importance of race. “We are seeing large kids or kids in large numbers taking advantage of people of smaller stature,” says Capt. Greg Suhr, adding, “We have Hispanics in the neighborhood who are targeted fairly frequently.”
Asians are losing patience. “This is a hate crime,” says Young Kong, a local talk radio show host for a Chinese-language station. “The supervisors don’t want to say it because they don’t want to exacerbate the tension. They are too chicken, too politically correct.” Even some blacks admit there is a problem. “Let’s face it, if older black men were being killed by marauding groups of kids, we’d be going crazy,” says Lynette Sweet, a black woman running for a seat on the Board of Supervisors. “We in the black community have to take responsibility for our kids.” [C.W. Nevius, Dirty Secret of Black-on-Asian Violence is Out, San Francisco Chronicle, May 2, 2010. C.W. Nevius, Asian American Attacks Focus at City Hall, San Francisco Chronicle, April 29, 2010. Henry K. Lee, S. F. Man Beaten in Oakland Dies — Suspects Held, San Francisco Chronicle, April 21, 2010. Chip Johnson, Attack Shows Common Decency in Downward Spiral, San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 2010.]
Tensions are also high in New York City. In early April, police arrested a 15-year-old black girl, a 12-year-old black girl, and a 15-year-old black boy on hate crimes charges for a series of attacks on older Asian women on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Officers are still looking for another boy and, both teenagers. Police say the group attacked the Asian women over a ten-day period in late March and early April. With the boys acting as lookouts, the three girls would approach lone, Asian women in their fifties to seventies, and hit them. They didn’t rob the women; they just beat them up. Because of their ages, the suspects will be tried in juvenile court. [Pablo Guzman, Teen Suspects to Appear in Family Court Saturday, WCBS-TV, April 10, 2010.]
Blacks and Asians don’t get along in Philadelphia, either. Last December, black students at South Philadelphia High School chased more than 30 Asians through the halls and beat them. Thirteen Asians ended up in the hospital. In January, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a complaint with the US Department of Justice, accusing the school district of “deliberate indifference” to frequent attacks on Asians, both before and after the December incident. Cecilia Chen, an AALDEF lawyer, says that if the school had listened to the students’ complaints it could have prevented the attacks. The school district says it is “working diligently to address racial tensions and reduce violence in our schools” and has started “diversity training” for staff and students. [Dafney Tales, Asian Group Seeks Federal Help, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 20, 2010.]
Joseph Littles-Nguzo Saba Charter School is one of 30 charter schools in Palm Beach County, Florida, and the only one with an “African-centered” curriculum. Its lesson plans are organized around the seven principles of Kwanzaa, which include such things as unity (umoja), self-determination (kujichagulia), purpose (nia) and creativity (kuumba). The school, which opened in 1999, serves “at risk” black students.
For the past five years, however, the school itself has been at risk. It consistently ranks at the bottom of Palm Beach schools, earning overall “D” ratings. District administrators accuse the school principal, Amefika D. Geuka, of misusing public money, hiring uncertified teachers and not running background checks on them, and of hostility to their recommendations for improvement. They want the school board to shut the school down.
In April, the Palm Beach County School Board considered that recommendation, but put off a decision for another month to give the school more time to prepare a response. School board member Frank Barbieri says he wants to keep the school going, if at all possible, because of its “unique” curriculum. “Forty percent of African-American students don’t graduate,” he says. “We’ve got to do something to help those children get through the system.” [Cara Fitzpatrick, Afrocentric Charter School in West Palm Beach Gets One-Month Reprieve from Proposed Shutdown, Palm Beach Post, April 7, 2010. Cara Fitzpatrick, Palm Beach County Proposes Shutting Down Troubled Charter School with Afrocentric Curriculum, Palm Beach Post, April 2, 2010.]
