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 Vol. 2, No. 1  January, 1991

  C O N T E N T S 

Why Nations Fight
How Will America Fight Next Time
A French Look at America
The Rise of the European-American
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

  C O V E R    S T O R Y 

Why Nations Fight

 America is losing, without a struggle, the very thing that nations have always fought to protect.

by William Robertson Boggs

The history of every nation is marked by war. No events in a nation's past are memorialized as solemnly as its wars, for nations are built, smashed, enlarged or truncated through war. Virtually by definition, war is about the life and death of nations.

Single battles have changed the history of the world. If the Greeks had lost to the Persians at Marathon, Western Civilization might have been swept into the sea. If Charles Martel had not defeated the Moorish armies at Tours, Europe might have ceased to be Christian and European. If the battle of Gettysburg had gone to the Confederates, there might be two nations rather than one in what continued as the United States.

Even today, in all those parts of the world where large numbers of men are willing to fight, the birth of a nation is almost always at issue. The Sikhs fighting in the Punjab want to break away from India and create a nation of their own. The Tamils are fighting in Sri Lanka for the same reason. The Ethiopian provinces of Tigre and Eretria have been fighting for independence for decades. Jews and Palestinians are fighting over the same land.

In all these conflicts, past and present, the issue is who will occupy and control the land. At the very least, the victors consolidate or expand the area in which their culture, their religion, their language and their way of life are dominant. At most, they exterminate the defeated people. Always, the outcome of war determines who will occupy and control, which people will prevail. 

Ironically, the most powerful nation in the world is now losing a war of occupation and control—and without fighting even a minor skirmish. Slowly, many parts of the United States are being occupied and controlled by aliens who are doing what conquerors always do: They are imposing their culture, language, and way of life. 

This is most evident in the southwestern states and in southern Florida. Parts of these areas are now more or less as they would be if they had been invaded and conquered by a Latin American country. What would Mexico do if it conquered California? It would establish Spanish as the official language of school and government. It would expel much of the white population and replace it with Mexicans. It would abolish American holidays and replace them with Mexican ones. Music, food, education, work habits, and religion—all would become Mexican rather than American.

This is exactly what is happening in many parts of California. Everything American is being supplanted by everything Mexican. Ballot papers are printed in Spanish, people speak Spanish in school and watch Mexican television, towns celebrate Cinco de Mayo instead of the Fourth of July, and whites have been displaced by Mexicans. In many towns there are hardly any whites to be seen, and in a few years whites will be a minority in the entire state.

Southern Florida is being transformed in the same way by Central Americans. An "Anglo" tourist must punch half the buttons on his car radio before he finds a station that still broadcasts in English. In many supermarkets he will not find a single English-language offering at the magazine stand. And he will find Hispanics who are openly intent on remaking the United States in their own image. Maurice Ferre, former mayor of Miami has said, "Within ten years there will not be a word of English spoken—English is not Miami's official language—one day residents will have to learn Spanish or leave." In fact, the exodus began long ago.

This displacement of whites by Hispanics is due to an astonishing cultural and national capitulation by the government of the United States. It has let millions of Latin Americans enter the country legally and done little to stop further millions from entering illegally. It has spent billions of dollars to keep hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Europe to defend against a Soviet invasion, but claims to be unable to police its own southern border. Illegal immigrants scoff at our symbolic border patrols, and once they are in the United States, Mexicans and Guatemalans go about recreating Mexico and Guatemala. 

In the past, Americans used to insist that newcomers learn English and become Americanized. No longer. Part of the great capitulation has been the fashionable view that insisting on Americanization is a kind of chauvinism. As Arnold Torres, Executive Director of the largest Hispanic organization in America, the League of United Latin American Communities, says, “We cannot assimilate and we won't.” Newcomers are now welcome to occupy parts of what was once the United States and turn it into something else.

If Mexico were to launch a military invasion of the United States, there would be a war and Mexico would be crushed. However, there will never be a military invasion. Thanks to massive immigration and to American cultural, national and racial capitulation, Mexicans are enjoying the benefits of occupation and control without the bother of war. White Californians, their culture, and their way of life are being pushed aside. 

As non-whites continue to pour into California—450,000 more people are expected to have moved in by the end of 1990—whites are leaving. After decades during which people moved to California from other states, the balance for whites has reversed. Most of those leaving California head for Oregon and Washington, which still have solid racial and cultural majorities. So many have escaped to the Pacific Northwest that locals have come up with a new bumper sticker: Don't Californicate Oregon (or Washington). Recent polls show that for the first time in California's history a majority of the population has considered leaving.

Men fight because there is nothing more horrible than cultural and national obliteration
Invasion and conquest always produce refugees. No people is happy to see its homeland taken over by foreigners. If they can, displaced peoples move where they can live among their own kind again. What is happening in California and southern Florida is a large-scale repetition of the white flight to the suburbs that started when American cities began to look as though they had been conquered by Nigeria or Chad. 

Though little is written about it any more, this stream of refugees continues. New Yorkers grimly acknowledge that their state is the 47th least likely destination for Americans who move. Sixty percent of the moving van traffic that crosses the state line is out-bound. White New Yorkers are fleeing the occupation and control of New York City by aliens.

How long will white Americans continue to be refugees in their own land? We brought Africans to this continent by force, and their descendants have an ancient claim on us, but Mexicans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and Salvadorans have no claim on America at all. If we continue to let them crowd into our country, will there come a time when whites begin to escape back across the Atlantic?

A lost war may mean national obliteration. Men fight and die for their people and way of life because there is nothing more horrible than cultural and national obliteration. In the long term, obliteration is what the United States faces, but not through war. The United States is being conquered—street by street, block by block—as aliens extend their occupation and control. If this invasion is permitted to continue it will be the first time in history that a great people was defeated and dispossessed without firing a single shot to save itself. 

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  A R T I C L E 

How Will America Fight Next Time?

by Thomas Jackson

Several hundred thousand American troops are now stationed in Saudi Arabia. For the first time since Korea, there is talk of a war that no one can dismiss as a police action, of a real war with tanks, artillery, thousands of casualties, and perhaps even chemical or nuclear weapons. And though much is written—and rightly so—about the importance of oil, the ultimate casus belli is the obliteration of a nation.

 If the United States really does go to war with Iraq, and throws into combat the full force of the world's most powerful army, there can be no doubt that Iraq will be crushed and that American forces will be victorious. There will be much congratulation of our “superb” fighting men, who will be showered with medals and citations. If there is public criticism about how Americans performed under fire, it will be muted, page-seventeen stuff.

But how will Americans stand up in combat? Even the richest, best-armed, best-fed forces in the world are vulnerable to a host of internal enemies whose combined effects can sap morale. Throughout history, armies have confounded either their enemies or their commanders with unexpected behavior, but general conclusions can be drawn about what makes an army fight well. 

It was widely acknowledged during both world wars that the German armies fought better than any other. One of the reasons for this was the way in which they were organized. German commanders understood that a man's deepest loyalties are not to an abstraction, or even to a nation, but to a group. Men who fought alongside coworkers, school mates, and childhood friends fought with the cohesion and dedication of a creature with a single mind. To fight gallantly was to win the admiration of one's dearest friends; to fail was to earn their contempt.

To the extent that it was not possible to group men by town or village, the German army organized them by national group. Saxons fought shoulder to shoulder with Saxons, as did Swabians and Prussians. The bonds that held these men together permitted neither surrender nor desertion. As much as possible, these fiercely loyal units were deployed together, and the camaraderie they had built up through combat was not diluted by steady replacement with new recruits.

The Italian army, by contrast, was organized on entirely different lines. Manfredo Fanti, a commander in the Crimean War and Minister of War under Camillo Cavour, saw the army as a means of forging a national Italian identity out of diverse, provincial peoples. He deliberately assigned men to mixed units and stationed them far from home. By the time of the Second World War, nearly one hundred years later, this policy was still a failure. Units were riven by cultural discord and regional rivalries, and soldiers felt little compulsion to fight and die for men they scarcely thought of as comrades. Desertion and surrender rates were scandalous.

Some of the troops that fought in German uniforms fought just as badly. The Volksdeutch units, made up of non-Germans who had joined the cause of National Socialism, likewise served in fragmented, multinational units that could not be counted on. Their poor battle record shows how little cohesive effect mere ideology has when compared to ties of blood and soil. Even Joseph Stalin understood this. When the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany, he tossed ideology overboard and urged his soldiers to fight, not for Marx and Engles, but in the name of Mother Russia.

The best army of Americans that ever took the field fought for the Confederacy. The second best was the army that defeated it. Both were organized on state and regional lines that kept alive local loyalties just as the German army did. Men reared together in North Carolina held their ground against such withering fire that their “tarred heel” defense gave the state its nick name. The black-hatted Yankees of such regiments as the 19th Indiana and the 7th Wisconsin fought alongside boyhood friends with such distinction that they were known as the Iron Brigade. Only as the war dragged on, and northern units began to fill up with immigrants, bounty men, and conscripts from mixed backgrounds did shirking and desertion become serious problems.

How is the American army organized today? Men are grouped, not according to state or locale, but by function, as in the 82nd Airborne or the 1st Cavalry. Units are a helter-skelter mix of race, region, and even language. Today's army is more like the motley, unreliable legions of outlanders who lost the Roman empire than it is like the men who mounted—and defeated—Pickett's charge. 

This was one of the many reasons why the American army's morale was so low in Vietnam, where insubordination and even murder, or “fragging,” of officers were common. Battalion-level loyalty was low, and despite the length of the war and the number of men committed to it, no unit ever won significant national distinction. What success the army enjoyed was the result of overwhelming firepower and material superiority. 

It will be the same in Iraq if the issue is eventually settled by arms. Despite the speeches, decorations, and parades that would garnish a successful outcome, the dirty secret of the American army is likely to be that its men fought like Italians rather than Germans, that in anything like a fair fight they would have crumpled. 

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  A R T I C L E 

A French Look at America

The French can write more honestly about race in America than they can about race in France.

by Marian Evans

Among the many peoples who profess to despise the United States, the French are second to none. This does not, of course, keep them from copying some of the very faults they love to denounce. This paradox has rarely been so evident as it was last fall, when a leftist French magazine lambasted the deterioration of America only a few weeks after disturbances in a Lyons suburb that had a strangely “American” hue. The irony was not lost on thoughtful Frenchmen.

The French mass-circulation weekly, Nouvel Observateur, occasionally runs special reports on the United States. In its most recent, in the issue of November 22-28, 1990, the report is subtitled, “Has the Multi-racial Society Failed?” This is a question that none dares ask in the United States, for fear of getting an answer. 

Even Nouvel Observateur stopped short of answering the question with a resounding “yes,” but it called its lead story, “The End of the White Dream,” and introduced it with a series of questions:

“How will the greatest power in the universe stand up against the pressure of these [racial] communities that are bent on conquest, but that often fight amongst themselves? Against a back-drop of economic crisis and war in the Gulf, does this West Side Story on a continental scale have any chance of a happy ending? Is it possible to build a successful multi-racial society? This is the fundamental question that America today poses for Europe.”

In a series of articles and accompanying photographs, Nouvel Observateur goes on to chronicle the disintegration of America's racial and cultural core. It cites the usual indices—crime statistics, illegitimacy rates, test scores, dropout rates—and suggests causes by letting Americans speak for themselves. Blacks talk of their preference for the company of other blacks, Hispanics speak of the necessity of preserving their language and culture, and Asians rail against “white cultural imperialism.” There are profiles of film director Spike Lee, Washington Mayor Sharon Dixon, and General Colin Powell. 

The only white person Nouvel Observateur gives much space to is 37-year-old Joel Kotkin, of whom we had never heard, but who is introduced as one of America's foremost thinkers on multi-racialism. Mr. Kotkin, grandson of Jewish immigrants, sings the conventional praises of  "diversity" to a skeptical French reporter. Asked what he thinks of people who say that the United States would be better off if it closed its southern border, Mr. Kotkin replied, "That would be stupid—suicidal. I don't know what planet those people live on. What I say in reply is that we need these new immigrants . . ." 

There follows a series of articles that attempt to convey the texture of America's decaying society. One reporter writes that in Miami, a $100 bill is useless after dark; there is so much crime that no storekeeper dares keep on hand more than a few dollars in change. Another speculates that sexual promiscuity has become the last refuge in a society that has lost its structure; America is the only country in the world in which people think they suffer from a clinical addiction to sex. Yet another reporter wonders if Operation Desert Shield may not be the last gasp of an exhausted superpower that no longer has the strength to maintain either its own unity or identity.

Nouvel Observateur is known in France as a leftist publication, and it generally supports the Socialist Party. It is nevertheless willing to raise questions that not even American “conservatives” dare touch. No American of any political stripe questions the desirability of a multi-racial society, but Nouvel Observateur is profoundly skeptical. One of its articles concludes: “E pluribus unum: unity comes from diversity. That is the motto on American coins. In a society that is becoming more multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual than ever before, that will be the real gamble of the 21st century.”

Meanwhile, back in France, it is increasingly clear that Nouvel Observateur need not have sent its reporters all the way to America to study the frictions of multi-racialism. In mid-October in Vaulx-en-Velin, a suburb of Lyons, there was a perfect reenactment of a drama that has become drearily familiar in cities all across America.

The incident was touched off by a fatal encounter between white policemen and non-whites. Two young men on a 1000 cc motorcycle ran into a patrol car and one of the riders died. Non-whites claimed that the police had somehow deliberately caused the accident. The police said that the black rider, who was driving illegally without license or helmet, panicked when he saw the patrol car.

Whatever happened, hundreds of young non-whites spent the next several days smashing shop windows, looting stores, burning cars, and battling with police. The rioters were mostly blacks and Arabs who have been streaming into France from former colonies. France is discovering, first-hand, the costs of non-white immigration.

Like virtually every non-white enclave in a mainly-white nation, Vaulx-en-Velin is plagued with unemployment, crime, and resentment, but few people expected trouble there. The town has been proud of its efforts to spruce up the immigrant quarters: tree-lined streets, a brand new shopping center, and even a 150-foot practice wall for rock climbers. In the aftermath of the riots, blacks and Arabs predictably claimed that the city hadn't done enough for them and that the police are racist.

France can look forward to more headaches. Four and a half million inhabitants—about 7% of the population—are immigrants, of which blacks and Arabs form a large majority. These figures do not include the children of immigrants, since those who are born in France automatically qualify for citizenship and are counted as Frenchmen. Just as they do in America, non-whites clump together in neighborhoods that quickly go down hill. Racial friction is now as French as croissants.

France has nevertheless not been quite as soft-headed about immigration as the United States. In 1974 it theoretically closed the door to former colonials, and it has even offered Arabs cash as an incentive to go home. Even so, it is estimated that more than 100,000 new immigrants enter the country each year to join North African relatives already living in France.

Also unlike the United States, France has vocal and effective opponents of immigration. Jean-Marie LePen's National Front party, despite its recent origin and consistent hostility from the press, manages a solid 15% of the vote in national elections. Such a showing is enough to guarantee that the cultural and racial implications of immigration are discussed in France and not brushed aside with meaningless slogans about “tolerance” and “diversity.” Nevertheless, with that curious combination of blindness and perspicacity that permits us to detect the failures of others but not our own, magazines like Nouvel Observateur lead with Pavlovian shouts of “racism” whenever they write about Mr. LePen.

Racial friction is now as French as croissants.
Some European countries are waking up sooner than others. Austria has a very small non-Germanic population, but in last October's parliamentary elections the anti-immigration (and limited government/low taxes) Freedom Party went from 18 to 33 seats, and is now the third largest party in parliament. Support surged after its leader, Jorg Haider, coined the slogan, “Vienna must not become Chicago.” He could have chosen nearly any big American city to make the same point.

It was not so long ago that the United States was an attractive model for Europeans. Those who visit America today are shocked by the crime, poverty, and dilapidation of many cities. People who, a generation ago, might have wished their parents had emigrated to America, are now thankful they stayed home. 

It will soon dawn even on the socialist Frenchmen who write for Nouvel Observateur that America's immigration policy has been folly, not because America is a “capitalist society” intent on creating an underclass, but because the policy has ignored race. We welcome their trips to America if that is what it takes for them to understand what the anti-immigrationist Mr. LePen is saying—that an American-style immigration policy brings American-style problems. The sensible Austrians plan to avoid both the policy and the problems. 

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  B O O K   R E V I E W 

The Rise of European-American
 
Richard Alba, Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America, Yale University Press, 1990, 374 pp., $35.00

Reviewed by Thomas Jackson

In an era in which the ethnic demands of everyone but white people are the subject of such obligatory interest, it is a pleasant surprise to find a book about the ethnic identities of Americans of European descent. And if, as the flyleaf claims, the author goes on to explore the dawning consciousness of whites as “European-Americans,” the book would seem promising. Ethnic Identity is, in fact, a useful analysis of what white Americans think about their European origins, and the book is worth reading for that. As a reflection on rising white consciousness, it is no more than one would expect from a mainstream university press.

The author, Professor Richard Alba, has based his book not only on general sources but on a detailed survey of white ethnic identity that he carried out himself. His primary message is simple: The American melting pot has been a roaring success, so long as its ingredients have been white. With the exception of Jews, virtually every group of European immigrants has, within three generations, become largely indistinguishable from the others. The old English stock painlessly absorbed immigrants from northern Europe, and even digested the southern and eastern Europeans and the Irish without much more than a gurgle and a case of heartburn.

As Professor Alba points out, the ultimate test of assimilation is the ease and frequency of intermarriage. On this score, there is virtually no European group that has failed to mingle with the rest. Three quarters of the marriages of white people today cut across lines of European nationality. Indeed, as the author argues, at this rate the very notion of European ethnicity is blurring. 

Only Jews, with an intermarriage rate of only one quarter to one third, resist the final step to assimilation, and this resistance weakens only slightly in succeeding American-born generations. Jewish endogamy is even more remarkable, since a group that is no more than 2-1/2 percent of the population would normally have a very high rate of marriage outside the group, if only because of the scarcity of potential spouses. Jews also differ from other European immigrants in that their levels of education and income far outstrip those of any other ethnic group.

"An attraction of finding common ground as European-Americans is that it avoids the obvious pitfalls of a merely racial identity as 'whites'".
Professor Alba is candid enough to contrast the otherwise rapid and essentially uniform assimilation of Europeans with the very different experiences of other racial groups. Hispanic immigrants, for example, do not show anything like the same patterns of education, income, and intermarriage as Europeans, even after three generations and more, and blacks are even less a part of the American mainstream. To his credit, Prof. Alba refrains from the usual bromides about how these groups can be expected to be absorbed eventually, just as Poles and Italians have been.

The United States has lost the old conviction that all newcomers must be made over in the same Anglo-Saxon image. Were this ever even theoretically possible for non-European immigrants, the disrepute into which the very effort has now fallen guarantees that assimilation will not take place.

As for white ethnics, the findings of Prof. Alba’s own research are always interesting and sometimes surprising. The widespread notion of the third generation trying to reestablish the ethnic identity that the previous generation had tried so hard to leave behind is apparently a myth. Interest in one's European origins can reawaken in members of any generation, but European ethnic identity declines steadily over time. Italians and Irishmen cling to their Europeanness more firmly than others but they, too, eventually melt into the pot. 

Another finding that runs counter to popular belief is that an interest in European ethnicity increases with education. Despite the common view that “working-class ethnics” are the staunchest remnants of Europe-in-America, according to Professor Alba it is the best educated who cultivate an interest in their European origins. 

Professor Alba also reports that it is women who are the guardians of European ethnicity. Without their determination to cook the foods and observe the celebrations of their ancestors, an occasional outburst of European sentiment from the father is unlikely to have much effect on children. Nevertheless, Professor Alba finds that in the case of ethnic intermarriage, when the husband insists on keeping his own ethnicity, his wife is likely to oblige. Swedish wives learn to cook ravioli and English ladies learn Irish jigs to please their husbands. In mixed marriages, children are more likely to identify with only a single ethnicity, and this is likely to be that of the father.

Nevertheless, in all cases, Professor Alba's research demonstrates what everyone knows to be true—that European ethnicity is receding dramatically. Americans of European origin now tend to have what can be called “symbolic” or “voluntary” ethnicity. For the most part, their Europeanness is something that is more a decoration than an essence, and is something they may deny or claim entirely as it suits them. European ethnicity has become so symbolic and so voluntary that virtually any white person can appropriate most any part of it for himself. Professor Alba quotes a notice from an Albany newspaper that sums up what European ethnicity now means in America: “The German-American Club of Albany will observe St. Patrick's Day with a dinner-dance on March 19.”

Though Professor Alba does not explore this, a similar ethnic merging is taking place among Hispanics and, to a lesser degree, among Asians. Just as the musicians in a “German” band are as likely to be English, Irish, or even Czech as they are to be German, the members of a Salsa band may well be a mix of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Central Americans. Despite the current fashion of pooh poohing the melting pot, it has hardly gone out of business; there is simply a separate pot for each race.

It is in this context that Professor Alba hazards a few timid observations about a dawning pan-European ethnicity. As non-white immigrants pour into the country, and as old country identifications wane, whites increasingly see that the contours of the new melting-pot identity match those of the frontiers of Europe. Though Professor Alba anticipates a broad European-American ethnicity, he seems to be confused about what this means: “An attraction of finding common ground as European Americans is that it avoids the obvious pitfalls of a merely racial identity as ‘whites’.” Since the “pitfalls” of such an identity are so “obvious,” Professor Alba never explains what they might be. 

We are told that since a European-American identity is made up of the remnants of “symbolic” ethnicities, it is likely to be weak. Here again, in trying to distinguish between European-American identity and white consciousness, Professor Alba may be fashionable but he is mistaken. The racial fault lines in this country are only widening. As Poles, Hungarians, and old stock Dutchmen find that their interests are not those of blacks, Hispanics, or Filipinos, it will become increasingly clear that the culture uniting European-Americans cannot easily be separated from race. 

Professor Alba is right to acknowledge the decline of old-country ethnicity and has an inkling of what will replace it. But the European-American identity he describes will arrive with far greater strength and with far more consequences than Yale University Press is likely to concede.
 

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Fighting Back

 Even though our government is encouraging the steady transformation of the United States into a third-world nation, a few brave citizens are digging in their heels. The American Immigration Control Foundation (P.O. Box 525, Monterey, VA 24465) is the most articulate and consistent opponent of government policies of capitulation. It publishes an excellent monthly newsletter, Border Watch, and sells books, videotapes, and monographs—some of the most thoughtful available today. 

Another group trying to tighten immigration policy is FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform, 1666 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 400, Washington DC 20009). It also sells useful publications and has an active lobbying program. FAIR has attracted considerable attention, and has helped make open discussion of the merits of immigration respectable. It has done so by carefully skirting the racial problems that arise from our policies, and by concentrating on overpopulation and the difficulties of cultural assimilation.

In Canada, which in proportion to its population is accepting several times more non-white immigrants than is the United States, one of the most active citizens’ groups is C-FAR (Canadians for Foreign Aid Reform, P.O. Box 332 Rexdale, Ontario, M9W 5L3 Canada). It publishes newsletters, sponsors speakers, and sells publications. For those who assume that the great white north will always be a refuge from an increasingly third-world United States, it is sobering to learn of the cultural and racial transformation of our northern neighbor. 
 

  I N  T H E  N E W S 

O Tempora, O Mores!

Hazel Dukes It Out 

Hazel Dukes is the president of the New York State NAACP. She was recently named as the $110,000-a-year head of the New York City Off Track Betting Board, largely because she is black and is a friend of New York's black mayor, David Dinkins.

Last fall, she complained in a radio interview about waiters, “who not only aren't black, but can't even speak English.” When it was suggested to her that this sounded anti-Latino, Miss Dukes replied that she wasn't referring to Latinos. “I'm talking about another nationality,” she said. “Latinos can speak English.” Asked what nationality she had in mind, Miss Dukes thought for a moment and said, “Ecuadorans. I don't know what they are [but] I know they're not Hispanic.”

There was considerable hooting from New York's Hispanics, but Miss Dukes remains securely in her job, thanks to protective coloring. Any white city official who said anything so “insensitive” on the radio, and then replied to questions with such colossal ignorance would be very quickly gone. Mayor Dinkins concluded that Miss Dukes’ remarks must have been inaccurately reported.

An instructive comparison with the Dukes case is that of Dan Landes, a bureau chief in the New York City DA's office, who lost his job last spring because of a single word. He once complained to colleagues that his office was swamped with work because of a large number of “schvartze burglaries and robberies.” “Schvartze,” which is Yiddish for black, is thought by some to be derogatory. It is, of course, infra dig to refer at all to New York's black crime wave, but Mr. Landes would probably still have his job if he had spoken of “African-American larcenies.”

Blame It On Whitey

A recent New York Times poll reports that 29% of all blacks think that the US government may have developed the AIDS virus in a laboratory and is deliberately using it to infect black people. Sixty percent of all blacks think that the government could be deliberately ensuring a supply of drugs to blacks.

In the face of massive education campaigns about both drugs and AIDS, much of it directed at blacks, it is pitiful that so many believe their government is trying to kill them. One wonders how they explain affirmative action, set aside contracting, minorities-only scholarships, tax-breaks for minority broadcasters, and all the rest of the preference industry.

Any black who believes that the United States government is deliberately supplying drugs to blacks and trying to infect them with AIDS will believe any anti-white theory. It would be hard to find a more vivid demonstration of how determined blacks can be to blame all their failings on white people.

Arizona Speaks

The people of Arizona recently voted down a proposal that the state declare a holiday on Martin Luther King's birthday. This, despite the fact that the pro-holiday forces had the support of virtually every official, newspaper, and commentator in the state. The defeat of the holiday shows, once again, how radically different public opinion is from published opinion.

We suspect that the people of most states would vote the same way if they had the chance. Ever since Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays were lumped together to make “Presidents Day,” there is not a single other American whose birthday is marked by a national holiday. That Dr. King should have been a womanizer, a plaigiarizer, and perhaps a communist sympathizer gives some Americans doubts about the holiday.

Nevertheless, groups all over the country are thinking of ways to punish the people of Arizona for their decision. Although “tolerance” is the national watchword, those who yell about it the loudest are the last to practice it. About 40 convention groups have canceled their plans to meet in Arizona, at an estimated loss to the state of $30 million. NFL Commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, says he will recommend that the 1993 Super Bowl not be played in Phoenix, as now planned, because of the vote. Student activists are agitating to get their football teams to boycott the Copper Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl, both held in Arizona.

When colleges participating in the Fiesta Bowl were each offered a peace offering of $100,000 to be used for scholarships for non-whites only, it at least sparked debate on the subject of race-based financial aid. Now that it has been officially established by the Department of Education that private scholarship money can be set aside for blacks only, we presume it is legal to set aside money for whites, too . . .

Ethnic Purity Panel

Hispanic firemen in San Francisco claim that it is unfair for people of Spanish descent to be getting affirmative action and racial promotion benefits. They think that benefits should go only to New World Hispanics, and have proposed an Ethnic Purity Panel to make sure that no Spaniards enjoy racial preferences. “I don't know what their culture is, other than what I read in National Geographic,” complained one of the advocates of ethnic purity. “They live a totally white life.” 

Black Pharaohs

As has now been widely reported, black education “experts” have been mounting an increasingly strident campaign for an “Afro-Centric” school curriculum. The theory is that learning about Europeans breaks the spirit of black children, and that they should be taught about their own ancestors. 

There has been some creativity in the choice of ancestors. For example, it is now gospel among Afro-Centricists that the Egyptian pharaohs were black, and that whites have deliberately spread the lie that they were not. It would be hard to think of an ancient people that can be more easily shown not to have been black. Some Egyptian mummies are so well preserved that it is possible to count their eye lashes.

John Leo writes in the Nov. 12, 1990 issue of U.S. News and World Report that he recently phoned up seven different Egyptologists, all of whom assured him that the Pharaohs were certainly not black. All seven then refused to let Mr. Leo use their names as sources. One explained that the subject was “politically too hot.”

We have known for some time that we live in an era in which even experts are so terrified they dare not say something that is not only true, but that everyone knows to be true. It is gratifying to see their pathetic cowardice dragged into the light by Mr. Leo. It is precisely on subjects that are “politically hot” that the truth must be spoken bravely and freely. We hardly recognize the nation someone once called The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Suing the Schools

Six black families have sued the New York City school system, claiming that the minds of black children are damaged by a curriculum that fails to recognize the achievements of Africans. They charge that the schools have ignored the “participation of African Americans in the various aspects of world and American culture, sciences, history, arts and other areas of human endeavor.” As evidence of the harm done to blacks, a lawyer for the plaintiffs points to all the well-known aspects of black failure: crime, low grades, illiteracy, and unemployment.

Back in 1954, the idea was that blacks were disadvantaged because they weren't getting the same education as whites. Now the theory is that it is having to learn the same stuff taught to white folks that makes blacks drug themselves, have illegitimate children, and shoot each other. 

Who knows; the six black families may win their case. It may not be possible to find an Egyptologist willing to testify in open court that the Pharaohs weren't black. It may not be possible to find anyone willing to testify that George Washington and Thomas Edison weren't Ubangi princes traveling in disguise. Once a few pro-white misconceptions are cleared up, New York's black school children are likely to start doing much better.

Syphilis Up . . . and Down

According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control, rates of syphilis infection have leapt since 1986, and are now higher than at any time since the introduction of penicillin. The increase, however, is due exclusively to more frequent infection among non-whites. In the last four years, the white infection rate dropped to 2.6 per 100,000, while the black infection rate shot up 132% to 121 per 100,000. Blacks are thus 46 times more likely than whites to have syphilis.

The study notes that various African cities have infection rates of 100 to 200 per 100,000 inhabitants. With a rate of 158.4 per 100,000, Washington (DC) would be right at home.

The Price of Purity

In 1989, the city of Austin decided to practice anti-apartheid by refusing to let its public libraries buy a single book from publishing companies that do business with South Africa. A year later, the city discovered that this paroxysm of virtue had had a price: Its libraries could no longer buy the world's leading encyclopedias—the Britannica, the Americana, and Colliers—as well as loads of other standard library fare. 

Late last year, the city council reversed itself, and decided to let the public libraries resume business with racist oppressors.

Expensive Illegals

California passed a law in 1989 to provide medical coverage for illegal aliens who live there permanently. Just how to figure out which illegals are permanent and which are just passing through is a bit of trick, but the state had to pass the law in order to stay in compliance with federal regulations.

In its first year, the law cost California taxpayers $300 million—triple the amount originally projected. Theoretically, the benefits aren't supposed to go to illegals whose permanent residence is some other country, but thousands of sick Mexicans have been slipping across the border, showing up at hospitals, and claiming to be Californians. Doctors have had to cook up elaborate ways to figure out who is permanent and who isn't. “We're overwhelmed with fraud . . .,” says Jim Mayfield, benefits investigator for Imperial and San Diego counties.

The very notion that Americans must pay the medical expenses of illegal aliens is an absurdity. That any should be “permanent” is an outrage. That doctors must distinguish between the “permanent” and the “impermanent” is a farce.

African Adventures

Several people have been killed in Nigeria, recently, in riots that were set off when people started screaming that their sex organs had been stolen. In October of last year, fear swept the country when reports began to circulate of witch doctors who could steal penises and breasts by means of a simple hand shake. Many Nigerians believe that such organs are used in charms and potions.

The witch doctors seem better able to remove good sense than sex organs. According to a Nigerian police officer, examinations of purported victims showed that the “organs were in their natural place[s] and functioning.”

Meanwhile, in September, a Zimbabwean witch doctor disappointed his followers by failing to stay under water for 48 hours. Lovemore Mpofu plunged beneath the surface during a tribal cleansing ceremony, with a promise that he would come up again two days later. His followers, who were in training to become witch doctors themselves, danced and sang for the next two days, and were crestfallen when the body was discovered.

American Adventures

Three years ago, a Zairian woman by the name of Jeanette Kayulu brought her mother and her six children—ages 6 to 16—to New York. They all moved in with Miss Kayulu's sister, who was married to a Canadian diplomat stationed in New York City. Perhaps he got a little tired of his in-laws, but after a year and a half, the diplomat vanished. A month after that, his wife went home to Canada, leaving Miss Kayulu and her crew high and dry. 

Before long, Miss Kayulu followed her sister to Canada, but the Canadians deported her to Zaire. That left the Kayulu children and their grandmother even higher and drier. Grandma was no help at all, since the only language she speaks is Lingala. In a month or two, all seven were evicted and were walking the streets. Nevertheless, as state law requires, they soon got free lodging at the expense of Westchester County. The county offered them all one-way tickets to Zaire, but, according to newspaper reports, they declined “politely.”

County welfare agents spent the next few months tracking down all the relevant relatives, but none agreed to take responsibility. The mother, contacted back in Zaire, sweetly asked the Americans to keep her children and give them a good education. It then dawned on county officials that these seven Africans were illegal aliens, and they stopped writing public assistance checks. A legal services lawyer then flew to their assistance and won restoration of benefits, but not before the Kayulus had been evicted again.

This time, the Kayulu family was put into two rooms at a Hilton Hotel that cost $9,000 a month. Westchester officials explained that according to state guidelines, homeless children must be housed as close to school as possible. 

According to news reports, the children are now busily immersing themselves in American culture. They enjoy watching the Cosby Show, swimming in the Hilton swimming pool, and love pizza and vanilla ice cream.

Proud Parents or Child Abusers?

Americans are on the lookout for child abuse as never before, and the zealousness of the search has turned up a few false alarms. A rash of cases in multi-cultural California have got even the tolerance experts scratching their heads. 

It seems that many Asian men are so proud of their young sons that at the slightest provocation they will whip off the little boy's pants and display his wee penis. According to one survey, more than half of the Koreans, Cambodians, and Vietnamese living in California are likely to say that it is perfectly all right for parents and grandparents not only to exhibit the penis but to tickle or tweak it affectionately. 

Since school children are now under strict orders to tell their teachers about anyone who tweaks their genitals, this curious Asian custom has led to frantic charges of child abuse. The people who specialize in general uplift are perplexed: Should they smile sweetly on this colorful example of “cultural diversity” or should they move to save the children from irreparable harm?

“God Bless America”

In September of last year, a Bronx jury awarded a man $9.3 million for falling onto the tracks of the New York City subway and letting a train cut his arm off. Francisco Marino, a Mexican dishwasher, was drunk. He reeled off the edge of the platform at the 183rd Street station at just the wrong time. The jury reasoned that New York City should pay, because a transit clerk neglected to hustle the obviously soused Mr. Marino off the platform.

The jury made a particularly large award, since it reasoned that there was little demand for one-armed dishwashers and that Mr. Marino's income might be affected. When the verdict was announced, the Mexican citizen reportedly shouted “God bless America.”

Berkeley Balkanizes

In 1989, the University of California at Berkeley became the first major university in the country at which whites are not a majority. Like the state in which it is located, Berkeley is supposed to be a harbinger of the new America. This experimental entity is supposed to be a “world-nation,” in which all peoples will mingle in mutual respect. 

If the Berkeley campus is any indication of what is in store for the country, the “world-nation” is set to be a bust. A 16-month study called the Diversity Project sadly reports that the campus is thoroughly Balkanized. Professional associations, study sessions, and socializing all splinter along racial lines. There are explicit, non-white groupings, like the Black Sociology Student Association, and all-Asian dances. Though whites are not permitted to form analogous exclusive groups, they also drift naturally into association with each other.

The Berkeley campus is thoroughly typical. At the other end of the country, at Syracuse University, the dean of admissions and financial aid observes that “whites don't much want to associate with blacks and blacks don't much want to associate with whites, either.” He conducted an informal experiment in one of the college dining rooms by counting the number of times whites and blacks ate together. It took him 11 consecutive lunch hours finally to find a black and a white eating together.

Thanks to school busing and obligatory integration of all aspects of life, today's college students have lived in far closer contact with people of other races than their parents ever did. That they should still self-segregate so rigidly gives the lie to the dogma that it is only out of ignorance that people prefer the company of their own kind. Every day life on campuses all across the country suggests that such a preference stems from knowledge and experience rather than ignorance. 

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   L E T T E R S   F R O M   R E A D E R S 

Sir - In "The Racial Politics of Murder" (American Renaissance, Dec. 1990), Mr. Boggs writes of the white soul-searching and self recrimination that follow inevitably in the wake of media reports ofwhite-on-black crime. However, Mr.Boggs is -- wrong to assert that the way the Bensonhurst and Howard Beach incidents were reported had something to do with the rarity of such crimes. The
ensuing sensationalism was not the result of novelty. It was simply an example of the hair-shirt mentality and collective masochism that plague white America.

While it is useful to be reminded of the statistical evidence of how much more common black violence against whites is than white violence against blacks, it is just as important to recognize that white Americans seem determined not only to give a cold shoulder to the facts but to leap into the arms of myth. Yes, Howard Beach and Bensonhurst (when compared with racially-motivated killings of whites by blacks) clearly illustrate the double standard in crime reporting, the corner stone on which the "official" theory of race relations is built. And yes, this double standard is crucial to the theory of white responsibility for black failure. But why is it that white
Americans appear not only to believe these theories, but seem to need to believe them?

Self-deception is not confined to the millions of American blacks who
are, as Mr. Boggs puts it, "so deluded as to think their government is trying to exterminate them." In fact self-deception has become so widespread in your country that one might as well add it to the list of elements that make up the national character. In the face of such mass delusion, how does Mr.Boggs expect his appeals to fall on
anything but deaf ears? He ends his article with a white New York City high school student's cries of racial mea culpa. If such sentiments are typical, then your nation will continue to lack the will necessary to take even the smallest step towards redemption.

Mr. Boggs writes that solutions to America's race problems require
frank discussion, but he has painted a picture of a nation that neither wishes nor seeks frank discussion. If Mr.Boggs is correct in saying that even the most delicate broaching of the subject of black crime meets with a "root cause" retort that places the blame on the shoulders of whites, then surely his complaint about the gullibility of black Americans is equally applicable to whites: Are they not just as likely to be, as he puts it, "beyond the terms of rational discourse"?

I should very much like to hear Mr.Boggs turn his attention to the question of why white Americans appear to need to see themselves as villains. Unless something can be done to change the national self-image, your country will continue down the road to ruin. When the final day dawns, Americans will have only themselves to blame.
   Margaret Hunter, London, England

Sir - I was fascinated by Mr.Boggs’ article on how the race of the
victim seems to determine how crime is reported. This double standard has been glaringly evident in the case of Hulon Mitchel of Miami, who calls himself Yahweh Ben Yahweh. He is the leader of the black “Nation of Yah-weh,” a white-hating group that claims
to be the black tribe of Israel. As a test of devotion, Ben Yahweh reportedly ordered his followers to kill white men and to carve off their ears to bring home as proof of the killings. A number of his disciples have been charged with doing just that.

Needless to say, if a white group were caught carving off the ears of
black people, the hullabaloo would be deafening. The story would be on the front page for weeks, and the country would be treated to an orgy of white masochism. As it is, the news got the briefest mention last November and then disappeared from view.
   Name withheld, Boston (MA)

We have been trying without much success, to get more information on these Yahweh murders. We would be grateful to any readers in the Miami area who might be able to send us
local news stories. - Ed

Sir - If I understand the objective of your publication, you mean to bring forward certain truths that need broader circulation in our society. Certainly, one who earnestly seeks for truth is to be commended. Yet Holy Scripture admonishes us: "Speak the
truth in love."

It is precisely the absence of love in your truth speaking that strikes me as the conspicuous weakness of your case. You may find yourself spokesman for a growing body of people who find that you articulate what they have hitherto been unable or unwilling to express. However, you will also find yourself attracting oafs who express their complaints in intemperate terms and who will look to you to give a veneer of gentility to their prejudices.

I fail to detect a desire for dialogue with those you perceive to be blind to the truths you seek to propagate. Your tone will most likely irritate them to such an extent as to render them incapable of attending to your arguments.
   Troy B. Harcal, Clinton (SC)

Sir - In a letter to the editor in the December, 1990 issue of your
magazine, M. Meldahl warns that if you are not careful you risk 
being “David Duked," that is, being written off by respectable folks. There are worse things than being "Duked." should like to remind M. Meldahl that Mr. Duke won 60% of the white vote in his recent run for the U.S. Senate.
   Paul Holland, Natchitoches (LA)

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