Posted on August 1, 2010

O Tempora, O Mores! (August 2010)

American Renaissance, August 2010

When Dreams Go Bad

From the end of the Second World War until just about the end of the last century, California was the American dream for many whites. Whites moved there for aerospace or defense jobs, to pursue their dreams of movie-stardom, or for a refuge from dreary East Coast weather. They made California not only the most populous American state, but also created an ideal of what America was to become. Not any more. The whites who created California are now fleeing in the face of Hispanics and other non-white immigrants. Between 2000 and 2008, while the overall population grew by four million to 38.1 million, the white population decreased by 500,000. Whites made up nearly 80 percent of the population in 1970, and 57 percent as recently as 1990. That number fell to 47 percent by 2000, and in 2008, whites were down to just 40 percent. They are not only leaving; the ones who stay behind are not replacing themselves.

california-flag

Hispanics continue to pour in. In 1940, there were only 415,000 Hispanics in the entire state; in 2008, there were more than 14 million, or 37 percent of the population. Hispanics are on track to surpass whites as the state’s largest racial group in 2016, and will become an absolute majority in California by 2042 at the latest. [Justin Berton, Whites in State ‘Below the Replacement’ Level, San Francisco Chronicle, June 5, 2010.]

In 1970, California ranked seventh in the nation in the educational level of its workers. Now it ranks last, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies. One in six workers is a high-school dropout. Thanks to mass immigration, each year adds another 91,000 unskilled workers to the state’s ranks, and the income divide is becoming that of a Third-World country. [Steven Camarota, California Now the Least Educated State, Center for Immigration Studies, June 10, 2010.]

The Great White Way

Times are tough on Broadway, with ticket sales declining every year. Producers hoping to reverse their fortunes are focusing on a group not known for theater attendance: blacks. Four current Broadway productions feature blacks as central characters, and producers hope to put on three more this fall, including a two-man play about Martin Luther King called “The Mountaintop.”

One current production is a musical called “Memphis,” which tells the story of a black woman R&B singer in segregated 1950s Memphis, Tennessee, and her “turbulent romance” with a white disk jockey. Advertisements originally featured the tagline, “The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” but when that didn’t bring in enough blacks, the advertising was changed to “His Vision, Her Voice. The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” and posters now prominently feature the black singer. “Memphis” producers also began marketing the show to black ministers, choir directors, and black women. They spent $75,000 to promote it in black schools, sending cast members to discuss it in classrooms and bringing students — more than 1,000 so far — to see the show for free.

“Memphis” won a Tony award as Broadway’s top musical, but many critics aren’t impressed, dismissing it as “conventional” and deriding its message of “racial reconciliation” as “simplistic.” Lead producer Sue Frost says that doesn’t matter because the show is having a big impact “on a wide cross section of people who feel that Broadway isn’t usually for them.” She is proud to note that Michelle Obama and her two daughters saw the show.

Despite the Tony and unprecedented efforts to get blacks to shell out $94 a ticket, “Memphis” continues to struggle at the box office and is a long way from turning a profit. [Patrick Healy, Broadway Sees Benefits of Building Black Audience, New York Times, June 27, 2010.]

Africans in Minnesota

Africans, most from Somalia, Kenya, and Liberia, now account for half of the immigrants to Minnesota. They say they are attracted to Minnesota for the usual reasons — quality of life, good schools — but also because Minnesota has a growing reputation in parts of Africa as receptive to immigrants. “Minnesota holds a very prominent place in the minds of Liberians,” says Ahmed Sirleaf of something called Advocates for Human Rights. “I’ve heard people there say that Minnesota is one of the very few states where an immigrant with an accent can be hired to work in his chosen profession. In other places, most people have to stay in odd jobs.”

Barbara Ronningen, an analyst for the Minnesota State Demographic Center, agrees: “Once you have a certain number here, they just keep coming.” Like the Somalis in Lewiston, Maine, an African refugee living in St. Paul sends out word that Minnesota is a nice place and soon the rush is on. “No one is sitting in Africa suddenly thinking, ‘I’m going to Minnesota,’” says James Sanigular, a Liberian immigrant who arrived as a child. “It happens through personal connections.” As in Lewiston, no one knows just how many live in Minnesota. State officials put the number of Somalis at a few thousand, for example, but Somali community leaders claim more than 50,000. What is known is that of the 18,020 legal immigrants to Minnesota last year, 9,579 were African.

Many Minnesotans hope the influx will reverse the depopulation trend in 25 of the state’s 87 counties. Minnesota schools, for example, enroll 70,000 fewer students from native, English-speaking homes than they did ten years ago. Many people leave Minnesota because of the harsh winters. “No one comes here to bask in the snow,” says demographics consultant Hazel Reinhardt. “We either must attract whites the way we did in the ’70s and ’80s — or attract a large number of minorities.” [David Peterson, African Influx Reshapes Immigration to Minnesota, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 15, 2010.]

AZ Democrats Squirm

Polls continue to show overwhelming national support for Arizona’s SB 1070, which allows state and local policeman to enforce federal immigration laws, and several states are considering passing similar laws. The Obama administration is still dithering over whether to sue Arizona, although all indications are that it will — much to the dismay of the state’s three Democratic congressmen, all of whom are facing tough reelection fights. “I believe your administration’s time, efforts and resources would be much better spent securing the border and fixing our broken immigration system,” Rep. Harry Mitchell wrote to President Obama in June.

“Congresswoman [Gabrielle] Giffords wants more federal agents on the Arizona border, not federal lawyers in court arguing with state lawyers,” says a spokesman. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick agrees: “I am calling on the president and the attorney general to abandon preparations for a lawsuit against Arizona, and to recommit to finding a national solution to fixing this national problem,” she says. [Sean J. Miller, Arizona Democrats Urge Obama Not to Sue Over Controversial Immigration Law, The Hill (Washington, DC), June 23, 2010.]

Meanwhile, the lawmakers responsible for SB 1070 aren’t resting on their laurels. This fall, Republicans plan to introduce a bill to deny US citizenship to children of illegals born in the state. Arizona state senator Russell Pearce, the driving force behind SB 1070, says illegal immigrants have “hijacked” the 14th Amendment, which was written to grant citizenship to former slaves. Sen. Pearce is undeterred by arguments that any attempt to undo birthright citizenship would be unconstitutional, saying, “We will write it right.” He says the idea is to make the citizenship process so onerous that illegal immigrants will give up and go home. A recent poll found that 58 percent of Americans are opposed to birthright citizenship.

Some Arizonans, however, want to undo Mr. Pearce’s good work. Susan Vie, a naturalized citizen from Argentina, leads a group that is hoping to collect enough signatures to put an initiative on the ballot that would repeal SB 1070 and put a three-year moratorium on all state laws on immigration. She wants to give the Obama administration enough time to get amnesty for illegals. [Adam Klawonn, Arizona’s Next Immigration Target: Children of Illegals, Time, June 11, 2010.]

Loving Day

On June 12, 1967, the US Supreme Court — in a unanimous decision — struck down Virginia’s 305-year-old law banning miscegenation. The case was Loving v. Virginia, and for several years now, mixed-race couples and families have been quietly celebrating June 12 as “Loving Day.” Time magazine considers the day the perfect occasion to throw “an awesome, inclusive party.”

Richard and Mildred Loving

Richard and Mildred Loving

Loving Day was started by Ken Tanabe, a half-white, half-Asian graphic design student who made it part of his senior thesis. Mr. Tanabe had never heard of the Lovings — the couple who brought the case — when he was growing up, so he started a website to teach the history of mixed-race marriage in America and to encourage miscegenation. In 2004, there were two large “Loving Day” celebrations, one in New York City and one in Seattle. The idea caught on and now Loving Day is supposedly “the biggest multiracial celebration” in the US, with public events in most large cities. Since 2007, Washington, DC sponsors Loving Day celebrations but it is not a holiday.

In 1958, Richard Loving, who was white, made Mildred Jeter, who was black and Indian, pregnant. Since it was illegal for the couple to marry in Virginia — and in 21 other states — they got married in Washington, DC. A few weeks later, back in Virginia, they were arrested for “cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.” A judge sentenced them each to one year in prison, but told them they could avoid prison if they moved to Washington and did not return for 25 years. The couple became homesick after a few years and brought the case that ultimately overturned all state laws banning interracial marriages. In 1975, the Lovings were in a car crash that killed Richard Loving and left his wife severely injured. She never completely recovered, and died in poverty in 2008, despite earning some money from a 1996 cable television movie about her marriage. [Christopher Shay, Loving Day, Time, June 11, 2010. Neely Tucker, Mildred Loving Followed Her Heart and Made History, Washington Post, May 6, 2008.]

In 1961, the year Barack Obama’s parents married in Hawaii, 96 percent of Americans opposed interracial marriage. By 1987, most Americans still opposed it, but just four years later, opposition had slipped into the minority. More recent polls have found that large majorities accept intermarriage — or at least tell pollsters they do. The numbers are skewed by age. According to the Pew Research Center, 80 percent or more of people in their 20s approve of miscegenation, but only about one-third of those 65 or older do. [Meredith Moss, Younger People Least Likely to Object to Interracial Marriage, Dayton Daily News, June 12, 2010.]

Road to Recovery?

The US Census Bureau estimates 230,000 Haitians died in the earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince in January, but the bureau expects Haiti to surpass its pre-quake population of 9.5 million in 2012. By 2050, it projects a population of 13.4 million. Haiti is already overcrowded; one of the reasons the January earthquake killed so many people is that there is so little space for building that Haitians stack ramshackle concrete homes on top of each other. During the quake these homes collapsed, crushing the occupants.

While there will be more Haitians in the world in the year 2050, there will be fewer Swedes and Belarusians. Both countries currently have about the same number of people as Haiti, but the population of Sweden is expected to fall slightly by mid-century, while that of Belarus will plunge by nearly 2 million, or 20 percent. Many white countries will see their populations fall, most notably Russia, which will go from 139,390,000 to 109,187,000. In contrast, while the US population will increase from 310 million to 439 million, virtually all of the growth will come from non-white births and immigration. Non-whites are a third of the population, and are expected to be the majority in just over thirty years. [US Census: Haiti Population Booming After Quake, AP, June 28, 2010. US Census Bureau, International Data Base.]

No Truth, Please

Last year, Thilo Sarrazin, a board member of Germany’s central bank, gave an interview with a German financial newsletter in which he described Muslims as an “underclass” not fit for much more than “fruit and vegetable selling.” “I don’t have to accept someone who lives off a state they reject, doesn’t properly take care of the education of their children — and keeps producing more little girls in head scarves,” he added. “That goes for 70 percent of the Turkish and 90 percent of the Arabic population of Berlin.” Although he is a Socialist, the German left denounced him as a “right-winger” and a “Nazi,” and the Berlin public prosecutor considered charging him with Volksverhetzung or “racial hatred.”

Thilo Sarrazin

Thilo Sarrazin

Amazingly, Mr. Sarrazin managed to hang onto his job with the Bundesbank. He may not be so lucky this time. In June, the 65-year-old banker expressed dismay at the dysgenic effect of immigration on Germany.

“There’s a difference in the reproduction of population groups with varying intelligence,” he said, singling out immigrants from “Turkey, the Middle East and Africa.” Unlike Germans, who have the lowest birth rate in Europe, these immigrants have many children, which causes “a different propagation of population groups with different intelligence because parents pass their intelligence on to their children.” Germans are therefore “becoming dumber.”

Critics are, of course, demanding Mr. Sarrazin’s head. A spokesman for a Berlin Muslim group calls him “a tired old white Christian male full of prejudice and few ideas.” So far, he is refusing to apologize and many Germans agree with him. [Allan Hall, Migrants ‘Make Germany Dumb’ Says Central Banker in Astonishing Outburst, Daily Mail, June 12, 2010.]

Rent-a-White

Indian companies that want to project an image of success have taken to hiring Europeans to pose as employees or foreign partners. Having white people around is supposed to make Indian businesses look “international” and impress clients. A Polish woman, for example, picks up money on the side, working as window dressing for an advertising company. She accompanies the manager to meetings as his “Polish business partner” and shakes hands with potential customers. The company gives her fake business cards and tells her to keep the chit chat to a minimum, lest she be exposed.

Indians like their white women blonde and attractive. Angie Silva, an olive-skinned Australian of Portuguese descent, got an actual job working for a real estate company. It didn’t last long. “I felt like the other employees and my boss were a bit disappointed with the look of me, saying that I looked Indian,” she says. “My boss actually told me he would pay me to dye my hair blonde.” He told her that a pale, blonde Czech had been a better investment. [Pallavi Polanki, Whites Only Please, Open Magazine (New Delhi), May 29, 2010.]

In China, they call the practice of hiring whites to pose as company employees “white guy window dressing,” “a white guy in a tie,” or just “a face job.” It’s been going on for years, and Chinese companies do it for the same reasons as the Indians: It makes the firm look international. Jonathan Zatkin is an American actor who lives in Peking and occasionally works as a “rental foreigner.” Last year he posed as the vice president of an Italian jewelry company that had supposedly been in business with a Chinese jewelry firm for a decade. The company paid him $300 to attend the grand opening of one of its stores. “I was up on stage with the mayor of the town, and I made a speech about how wonderful it was to work with the company for 10 years and how we were so proud of all of the work they had done for us in China,” he says.

There are simple rules for a rent-a-white: 1. Be white. 2. Do not speak any Chinese, or preferably, don’t speak at all, unless asked. 3. Pretend you just got off of an airplane yesterday. [Lara Farrar, Chinese Companies ‘Rent’ White Foreigners, CNN, June 29, 2010.]

Black and Bleu

When the French national soccer team, known as “Les Bleus” because of its blue uniforms, won the World Cup in 1998, it was heralded as a shining example of “diversity” because many of its star players were non-whites. National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen earned the ire of French lefties for complaining that the team was “insufficiently French.” The 2010 team is even less French — 13 of the 22 players on the squad are non-white, including eight of the 11 starters — but it is still a model of diversity. Only now it is showcasing diversity’s disadvantages.

French soccer team

The “French” soccer team.

French fans had high hopes for this year’s World Cup. Instead, the team exited the tournament without winning a single game. After a lackluster performance in their opening game with Uruguay, players began grumbling about the way coach Raymond Domenech was running the team. Things came to a head after an embarrassing loss to Mexico, when star player Nicolas Anelka cursed the coach, who then cut him from the squad and sent him back to France. The rest of the players went on strike, refusing to train for a day, and there were rumors some members would refuse to play. Les Bleus lost their next game to South Africa and were eliminated.

France was horrified. The media highlighted the “selfishness, indifference, and indiscipline” of the players, and accused them of humiliating the nation. Because the coach is white, and the most troublesome players are black, the criticism soon turned racial. Philosopher Alain Finkielkraut compared the players to Parisian ghetto rioters, telling a radio interviewer, “We now have proof that the French team is not a team at all, but a gang of hooligans that knows only the morals of the mafia.” Politicians called the players “scum,” “little troublemakers” and “guys with chickpeas in their heads instead of a brain.” Marine Le Pen, vice president of the National Front and daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, speculated that many of the players failed to play hard for France because “they are a part of another nation or have another nationality in their heart.”

Fadela Amara, a daughter of Algerian immigrants and a junior minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, worries that all the “racially-charged” criticism is “building a highway for the National Front.” [Steven Erlanger, Racial Tinge Stains World Cup Exit in France, New York Times, June 23, 2010.]