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Vol 5, No. 3 March, 1994
  C O N T E N T S 

Research That Was to Prove Jensen Wrong
                                      Proves Him Right
A Different View
Railing at America
Gentlemen, Place Your Bets
0 Tempora, 0 Mores!
Letters from Readers

  C O V E R   S T O R Y 

Research That Was to Prove Jensen Wrong Proves Him Right

An adoption study designed to show that environment causes low black IQ confirms that the cause is genetic.

by Richard Lynn


Prof. Richard Lynn
It is now about a quarter of a century since Arthur Jensen of the University of California at Berkeley broke the consensus of some forty years by proposing that there is a strong genetic basis to race differences in intelligence.1 From around 1930 it had been almost unanimously stated that the IQ difference between blacks and whites was entirely due to social deprivation. This was the doctrine routinely taught to college students throughout the United States.

During this period of virtually unchallenged environmentalism it was nevertheless recognized that there was a substantial IQ difference between American blacks and whites. This was first shown conclusively during the First World War when conscripts to the military were given intelligence tests to determine whether they were acceptable for service and what training they should be given. The average IQ difference between blacks and whites was 17 points, and this difference had been shown repeatedly in later studies. The difference has never been in dispute. The problem lies in its causes and what part, if any, genetics plays.

It was in 1969 that this environmentalist consensus was broken by Dr. Jensen. He suggested that the best reading of the evidence was that between two thirds and three quarters of the black IQ deficit was probably due to genetic causes. What this meant was that if black children were reared in the same environment as whites, the IQ difference would be reduced to between two thirds and three quarters, i.e. to about 10-12 IQ points. At the time, this was essentially an informed guess. There was no direct evidence to show whether it was right or wrong.

The crucial evidence on this question became available only in 1992, and it showed that Dr. Jensen was right and, if anything, had underestimated the strength of the genetic factor. Ironically, the evidence was produced in a study that was designed to prove that Dr. Jensen was wrong but ended up showing he was right.2 This is the story.

The Adoption Study

In the early 1970s, Sandra Scarr of Harvard and her collaborator Richard Weinberg decided to study what would happen to the intelligence of black babies who were adopted and brought up by white parents. Their plan was to test Dr. Jensen’s hypothesis that there would still be a substantial deficit in their intelligence. Dr. Scarr and Dr. Weinberg were confident that this hypothesis would be disproved and that the IQ of the black children would turn out to be the same as that of white children.

They found 29 black infants adopted at an early age by white college graduates. They also found 68 babies with one black and one white parent, which they called the inter-racial children, who had also been adopted by white college graduates. And finally, as controls, they found 25 white adopted babies.

The first report on what came to be known as the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study came out in 1976.3 At this time the white adopted children were ten years old while the black and inter-racial children were six. The average IQs of the three groups were black = 97, inter-racial = 109, and white = 111.

Dr. Scarr and Dr. Weinberg claimed this result as a triumph for environmentalists. As everyone knows, they argued, the average black IQ in the United States is 85. The average of the black infants brought up by white parents was 97, almost the same as the white average of 100. Furthermore, the IQ of the inter-racial children was 109, well above that of whites. It seemed that being brought up by white college graduates had removed the black IQ deficit. Dr. Scarr and Dr. Weinberg claimed they had proved the environmentalist case. It seemed Dr. Jensen was wrong.

At the time, these conclusions were fallacious but they were to be shown to be even more fallacious in 1992 when the second report on the study was published. There were two fallacies in the study. First, the babies came from the northern states and northern blacks have a higher average intelligence than southern blacks. The probable reason for this is that more intelligent blacks migrated north, leaving the less intelligent in the south. The average IQ of northern blacks is 88 while that of southern blacks is 83, so the IQ of 97 for the adopted blacks must be compared with the figure of 88 for northern blacks who are reared in their own black environments. Even so, they apparently had a nine IQ point advantage, suggesting that being reared by white parents raises the black IQ by nine points.

This conclusion needs further modification. The children were mostly tested with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (the WISC), which was constructed and standardized in 1947. The intelligence level of the population has been increasing over time at about 3 IQ points a decade, largely because of improvements in nutrition.4 Dr. Scarr and Dr. Weinberg were therefore using a test that was 29 years out of date.

Over that period the average IQs of both blacks and whites rose by nine points. So where does this leave the apparent 9-point advantage gained by black children raised by white parents. The answer is “precisely nowhere.” The average IQ of these children turns out to be just the same as that of black children raised by their own parents. This would have been clear if Dr. Scarr and Dr. Weinberg had used an up-to-date IQ test.

Nevertheless, the inter-racial children appeared to perform a bit better. On the genetic hypothesis they should have obtained an average IQ half way between whites and blacks. Adjusting for the fact that IQs are higher in the northern states (blacks = 88, whites = 103), and adding 9 IQ points for the outdated test norms (blacks now = 97, whites now = 112), the IQ of the inter-racial children should have been half way between 97 and 112, or 104.5. The fact that their IQ was 109 seems to show that these children had gained 4.5 IQ points from having been reared in a white family. This suggests that being brought up by college-educated white parents does improve the IQs of inter-racial children.

The Follow-up Study

This result gave some support to the environmentalist position, but even this consolation was to disappear when a follow-up study of the children was published in the fall of 1992. The children were given intelligence tests again in 1986, at an average age of 17 years. It was to be six years before Dr. Scarr and Dr. Weinberg published the results. Normally these data would take a month or two to analyze and write up and a year to publish, and the results would have appeared in 1988. The four-year publication delay is excessive and is probably due to the fact that Dr. Scarr and Dr. Weinberg were worried by what they found.

The results showed that adoption had no beneficial effect whatever on the IQs of the black, inter-racial, or white children. Their average IQs at age 17 were 89 (black), 98 (inter-racial), and 106 (white). Different IQ tests were used from those in the earlier 1976 report, but they were still approximately 10 years out of date. Three points must therefore be added to the average IQ of the group to which the black children are compared – blacks in the northern states.

The IQ of northern blacks (adjusted up by three points) was 91 in 1986, so the black adopted children actually had lower IQs (89 vs 91) than northern blacks brought up in their own communities. The same absence of any effect is found for the inter-racial and white children after adjustments are made for the fact that the children were from northern states and that the test norms were obsolete.

Note also that the difference between the reported (unadjusted) IQs of black and white children reared in identical environments is 18 points (88 vs 106), slightly greater than the average difference between blacks and whites that has consistently been found since the First World War. Even if adjustments for obsolete test norms and northern origin of the children were not necessary or appropriate, this 18-point difference is very difficult for environmentalists to explain. If rearing environment rather than race accounts for racial differences in IQ, why do these differences remain even when the rearing environment is the same?

There is only one conclusion to be drawn from these results: being adopted by white college graduates has no beneficial effect whatever on the intelligence of black, white or inter-racial children at the age of 17. Since the results show that the rearing environment has no effect on the IQs of adopted children, the only conclusion to be drawn is that the factors responsible for these different levels of IQ are genetic. Not only do they vindicate the conclusion put forward by Dr. Jensen in 1969. They show that Dr. Jensen underestimated the genetic contribution to the low black IQ. The study by Dr. Scarr and Dr. Weinberg indicates that genetic factors are responsible for the entire black IQ deficit, not for between two-thirds and three-quarters of it as Dr. Jensen had suggested.

Curiously, in their paper Dr. Scarr and Dr. Weinberg state that their results “demonstrate the strong effects of the rearing environment on IQ.” Their results provide no evidence whatsoever for this statement. Apparently, the wish was father to the thought.

Policy Implications

Now that the genetic basis for the low level of black intelligence is established it is important to start thinking about the social and political implications of this problem. We have to face the fact that because intelligence is an important determinant of educational and occupational achievement, blacks are never going to achieve equality with whites. This can only mean that the social problems and tensions arising from black underachievement are going to continue into the indefinite future. These problems consist of a substantial black underclass characterized by unemployment, welfare dependency, crime and drug addiction.

Furthermore, this underclass will increase in size, partly through high fertility and partly through immigration. The Census Bureau estimates that the black population of the United States will increase by 25 percent over the next 60 years.5

Both sources of increase need to be addressed. The fertility of the underclass needs to be reduced by the provision of family planning instruction and services, and the removal of welfare incentives. Immigration needs to be reduced to zero, as is now the case throughout Europe. The claims of bogus political refugees should be scrutinized more rigorously and greater numbers should be refused admission. Illegals need to be identified more effectively and repatriated. None of these policies will be easy to implement, but these are the issues which need to be opened up for public discussion. 

Richard Lynn is professor of psychology at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland.

1. A.R. Jensen. How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement? Harvard Educational Review, 39, 449-483.

2. R.A. Weinberg, S. Scarr & I.D. Waldman. The Minnesota transracial adoption study: a follow up of IQ test performance at adolescence. Intelligence, 1992, 16, 117-135.

3. S. Scarr and R.A. Weinberg. IQ test performance of black children adopted by white Americans. American Psychologist, 1976, 54, 260-267.

4. R. Lynn. The role of nutrition in the secular increase of intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 1990, 11, 273-286.

5. J. Day. Population Projections of the United States by Age, Sex, Race and Hispanic Origin: 1992 - 2050. Washington, D.C.: Bureau of the Census. Text end.

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  A R T I C L E 

A Different View

Comments on Prof. Lynn’s interpretation of the adoption study.

by Michael Levin

I would emphasize somewhat different aspects of the Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study than does Prof. Lynn.

For one thing, it seems premature to assert with certainty that the intelligence of the American populace has been rising at the rate of 3 IQ points per decade. The people who built America in the 19th century could hardly have been mainly retardates. Perhaps intelligence has remained constant and more recent IQ tests have measured it more accurately.

What matters is that the Scarr study is independent of changes in IQ tests, since all the adopted children as well as the biological children (birth children) of the white adoptive parents took the same IQ tests. Environmentalism predicts that by late adolescence the IQs of the black adopted children would approach those of the birth children, or at least those of the white adopted children. This did not happen.

Even if the average IQ score of 89 for the black children raised in a white environment (the score reported in the follow-up test) represents a real gain over the national black average of 85, this gain is much smaller than would have been expected if the race gap is wholly environmental in origin. The crucial point is that the gap between the average IQs of the black and white adopted children is as large as that between blacks and whites in the general population. Though Prof. Lynn does not mention the IQ scores of the birth children, the gap between their scores and those of the black adopted children is even wider.

I think it is possible that being reared in a white environment may have somewhat increased the IQ scores of adopted black children. A little-mentioned factor of great importance in interpreting the Scarr study is the high quality of the adoptive white environments. The typical father, for example, had some education at the post-graduate level. In other words, although the adoptive environments were unusually rich even by white standards, the IQs of the black adopted children increased only a few points (if at all), and remained far below the national white average. In a commentary on the Scarr study scheduled to appear along with Prof. Lynn’s in the journal Intelligence, I therefore estimate that the race gap in IQ would remain about 85 percent of what it is now even if blacks were raised in the typical white environment.

Incidentally, a phenomenon called “gene/environment correlation” explains how a rich environment can have some effect on black intelligence even if 100 percent of the race difference in intelligence is ultimately due to genetic factors. One of the ways genes produce high IQs is by producing high-quality environments, which in turn stimulate the development of children raised in them. Smart parents speak intelligently to their genetically smart children, which makes their children even smarter. So it would not be surprising if the high-quality environments in the Scarr study gave black children a few extra points of IQ; the catch, for the environmentalist, is that these environments themselves were created by white people in accordance with their distinctive genetic endowments.

The second matter on which I would take a somewhat different tack from Prof. Lynn is his “policy consequences.” Right now, the white majority in the United States is wholly unprepared to take any steps adverse to black interests, such as limiting immigration from black countries. What is much more important at the moment is that whites understand the calumnious charges constantly being hurled against them and be ready to assert their innocence. The great moral of the Scarr study is that blacks really are far less intelligent than whites, and they are so for genetic reasons that whites had nothing to do with. When “white racism” is said to keep blacks from succeeding in prestigious and remunerative professions, whites can now reply, “Not guilty.” After they have become confident in this unaccustomed reply, they can go on to think about repairing their country. 

Michael Levin is professor of philosophy at the City College of New York. Text end.

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  B O O K    R EV I E W 

Railing at America

Why middle-class blacks are
just as angry as the underclass.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

The Rage of a Privileged Class

Ellis Cose

Harper Collins, 1993, 192 pp., $20.00

We have all heard about the “legitimate rage” of the underclass, which is said to explain its savagery. Now, Ellis Cose, a black contributing editor at Newsweek, explains that affluent blacks may be even more angry and disaffected than ghetto-dwellers. As he writes in the book’s opening passage, “Despite its very evident prosperity, much of America’s black middle class is in excruciating pain.”  What causes this pain? No reward for the right guess: Racism denies even the most deserving blacks the just fruits of their labors.

This book could have been a parody of an Al Sharpton speech, but it is not. Mr. Cose probably tried very hard to be fair to whites. Nevertheless, anyone whose views are circumscribed by liberalism and by doctrines of inherent racial equality cannot avoid contradictions. This book is therefore an excellent demonstration of the intellectual dead end to which a liberal/egalitarian analysis of race invariably leads.

Non-racist Racists?

Mr. Cose has spent his career working with whites and knows very well that most are not hostile to blacks. “I am not suggesting that most whites are ‘racist,’ “ he concedes; “The majority emphatically are not – at least not in any meaningful sense of the word.” As the reader wonders what it might mean to be racist in a meaningless sense of the word, he is quickly told that “people do not have to be racist – or have any malicious intent – in order to make decisions that unfairly harm members of another race.” In other words, most whites are not racist but they don’t have to be racist in order to hurt blacks.

Mr. Cose does not explain this somewhat metaphysical insight, but the examples he advances of the insults blacks suffer begin to fit a pattern. For example, a white supervisor takes aside a talented black employee, compliments him on his excellent work, and asks how the company might find other able blacks. The black is insulted and upbraids his boss because the question implies that it is difficult to find competent blacks. 

Mr. Cose recognizes that the boss’s praise was sincere, but refuses to acknowledge a genuine problem: Whites are under pressure to hire blacks but few are qualified. To pretend that America is awash in overqualified, unemployed blacks is an obligatory egalitarian exercise.

Mr. Cose is also shocked to find that whites and even Hispanics define “good” or “safe” neighborhoods as ones with few blacks. There is probably no better, single indicator of an area’s crime rate than the number of blacks, but Mr. Cose insists that this is “stereotyping.” Stereotypes are almost always true, but denying this is another obligatory exercise.

Crime is, in fact, something Mr. Cose fails to understand. Time after time we hear of outraged middle-class blacks who are stopped by the police or followed by store detectives simply because they are black. This is no doubt disagreeable for them, but Mr. Cose seems to have no explanation for this but “racism.” He quotes Prof. James Q. Wilson’s observation that whites sometimes treat blacks differently because blacks are far more likely to commit crimes, but he calls this “utter nonsense.” 

Mr. Cose points out that men are much more likely than women to commit crimes, and says that by Prof. Wilson’s logic, men should face the same kind of discrimination as blacks – taking for granted that they do not. On the contrary, they obviously do. People do not call the police when they see a “suspicious woman” in their back yards, or cross the street to avoid teen-age girls. When police go looking for unknown murderers, they launch a manhunt, not a womanhunt. Is this discrimination? Yes, and common sense, too, just as it is common sense to be more suspicious of blacks than of whites.

Being Black

Mr. Cose is dismayed to find that some black executives explain that an important ingredient in their success has been that they stopped being “black.” That Mr. Cose should think this a tragic sacrifice proves how little he understands. Large companies have good reasons for requiring a certain dress and demeanor and whites, too, must sacrifice to fit the mold. Hippies, nudists, and communists all must leave important preferences at home when they come to work, and big afros and a chip on the shoulder are no more acceptable on the job than beads and long hair.

Moreover, what does it mean that blacks who cease to act “black” get ahead in the corporation? It means that whites are not opposed to skin color but to behavior. Of course, many blacks are incapable of ceasing to act “black,” and companies should be under no greater obligation to hire Afro-centrists or hip-hoppers than to hire cross-dressers.

On the other hand, some of the exclusions that blacks claim to suffer are undoubtedly real. Whites who are willing to hire blacks may not want them in their neighborhoods, clubs, schools or families. These are perfectly normal feelings, though whites are always made to apologize for them. Mr. Cose quotes one wise black man who observes, “You can’t make somebody love you.” 

In a genuinely free society no one could make an employer hire him or a club admit him any more than he could make someone love him. Laws that forcibly integrate schools, neighborhoods, and corporations are assaults on liberty. To insist that people should likewise open their private lives to all claimants is an assault on human nature. 

It is no doubt unpleasant to be the only one in the executive suite not invited to join the hunt club. To therefore say, as Mr. Cose does, that black managers expend as much energy battling racism as on doing their jobs is excuse-making. Of course, once he has conceded that American society is not inveterately racist, his explanations for black failure cannot help but sound like excuse-making. 

Surprisingly, Mr. Cose actually considers the possibility of racial differences in ability, but only to reject it and cast suspicion on the motives of those who study the subject. In the end, Mr. Cose is reduced to the meaningless phrases one always finds at the end of egalitarian arguments, claiming, for example, that the source of black failure is “a special burden born of ‘the experience of being black in America.’ ” Somehow, freedom from this special burden has not helped Haitians or Africans build glorious societies.

When it comes to policy, Mr. Cose has almost nothing to say. His basic fair-mindedness has lead to so many concessions about white good will that he is left with very little evil to extirpate. He concedes that blacks see insults when none was intended and that “the source of their outrage is generally . . . someone . . . who causes great pain while truly intending no harm.”  It is hard to wax indignant against racist America when most whites are admittedly not racist and cause “great pain” without intending harm. 
“Most whites are not racist but they don’t have to be racist in order to hurt blacks.”
Mr. Cose cannot bring himself to wonder whether under these circumstances it is the “great pain,” not white society, that may be suspect. In the end, he falls back on a reluctant endorsement of affirmative action, calling it “riddled with the taint and reality of unfairness.”

It would be hard to think of better testimony to the bankruptcy of conventional thinking about race than to concede that the policies it produces are unfair. But it is in an approving quotation from Senator Bill Bradley that Mr. Cose presents us with an almost perfect crystallization of the incoherence that now reigns as dogma: “We’ve got to see diversity as our strength. We’ve got to deal with the issue of race. You’ve got to be candid about it.” For how much longer will our legislators preside over our decline while they flatter themselves on their bold approach to race, on their “candid” discussions that must always conclude that diversity is our strength? 

In fact, Mr. Cose’s entire book can be read as mockery of the senator’s remarks. The conventional view is that America’s race problem is one of crime and poverty, and that once blacks are lifted into the middle class race is no longer an issue. Mr. Cose’s point is that race is always an issue, just as much for educated, well-paid blacks as for criminals and ne’er-do-wells, and for whites as much as blacks. “Racial discord will be with us for a long, long time,” he concludes. Indeed, it will – and for precisely as long as we force different races to live side by side. Text end.

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  S P E C I A L    R E P O R T 

Gentlemen, Place Your Bets

Recent laws give Indians more unearned income.

by Marian Evans

For decades, American Indians have lived in greater misery than any other group in the country. Only 43 percent graduate from high school, 45 percent live in poverty, and 35 percent are unemployed. On some reservations, more than 80 percent are unemployed. Indians have the highest rates of alcoholism in the world, and 25 percent of Indian boys are problem drinkers by age eighteen.

A large part of the problem is that Indians were the first welfare recipients. The Bureau of Indian Affairs spends about $1.4 billion every year on reservations that are “sovereign nations” and do not pay taxes. In the last several years, however, Indians have stumbled upon an even more lucrative form of unearned income: gambling.

In 1988, Congress passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which requires all states to permit Indian reservations to engage in commercial versions of all forms of gambling allowed in the state. This means that if, ordinarily, only churches or schools are permitted to hold fund-raising “casino nights,” Indian tribes can operate real, Las Vegas-style gambling palaces. 

Since the tribes do not know how to run the operations, they hire professional gambling companies like Harrah’s and Mirage Resorts to do the work. In many cases, they have no competitors within the state or even the region, and palefaces from the surrounding area are eager customers.

Twenty-one states now have legal, reservation gambling, and the annual take is about $15 billion a year, or three times as much money as the country spent in movie theaters. Although this is still only a small part of the $300 billion Americans bet legally in 1992, Indian gambling is growing at a rate of about $1 billion a year. Since profits on reservation casinos are not taxed, tribal gambling is immensely profitable. In states like New Jersey and Nevada, which have well-established commercial gambling, Indians can lure customers by offering better payouts.

Minnesota, with 17 Indian casinos, is now the third largest gambling state in the country, after Nevada and New Jersey. Indian gaming employs 10,000 people and is the seventh largest employer in the state. The small Mystic Lake reservation of the Shakopee Medwakantons has a 135,000 square-foot casino that is larger than anything in the Donald Trump empire. Since the casino opened in 1992, the reservation has bought land and more than doubled its size to 600 acres. Millions of dollars have gone into new roads, water and sewer systems, and a tribal courthouse. A $7 million recreation center is under construction, and a tribal credit union is expected soon.

Tribe members who live on the reservation are considered shareholders in the casino and get more than $4,000 a month each. Long lost Medwakantons are moving back to the reservation for a cut of the swag. Dividend income is a big change for a reservation whose previous major industries were incinerating discarded tires and salvaging copper from utility wires.

The per capita profits have not been so great for more populous tribes, but gambling is still a windfall. The Sycuan tribe of southern California took in $80 million in 1992 from gambling and bought medical and life insurance for all its members. At the Turtle Lake, Wisconsin reservation of the St. Croix Chippewa, gambling has paid off the tribe’s debt, built roads and homes, and now funds quarterly payments of $1,300 per tribe member.

The switch from incinerating tires to operating casinos has not always been smooth. In 1991, a fierce dispute erupted among the Wisconsin Winnebago over tribal debt and gambling revenues. For several months, the Winnebago even had a rival tribal government-in-exile, and the feud culminated in several killings at a casino and an attempt to burn it down. Gambling is now back on track, though a score of high Winnebago officials were recently accused of accepting bribes from casino operators.

The Indian gambling boom could end as quickly as it began. Donald Trump’s company is suing in federal court to have the Indian gaming law declared unconstitutional. The National Governors’ Association has woken up to the fact that the law forces states, even against their wills, to permit casino gambling within their borders. The association now urges that the law be repealed.

At the heart of the problem, of course, is our nation’s deep confusion over its racial, cultural, and national identity. Any government that thinks a 600-acre pocket of Indians is a “sovereign nation,” is scarcely fit to govern. Text end.

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  I N    T H E    N E W S 

O Tempora, O Mores!

Idol Worship

Several years ago, an employee of the city of San Francisco dumped an old concrete traffic barrier in a secluded part of Golden Gate Park. The barrier was a four-foot tall cylinder with a rounded top, and its phallic shape and sylvan setting convinced some loonies that this was a sacred manifestation of the Hindu god, Shiva. The traffic barrier soon became a shrine, attracting pilgrims from as far away as India. It also attracted crazies and bums who threatened the worshipers and stole the coins they left as offerings.

The city’s Recreation and Park Commission was not pleased to find itself the proprietor of a religious shrine, and decided to get rid of the “Shiva Linga.” This infuriated the loonies, who launched a federal law suit to keep the site undisturbed. A compromise was reached when the city offered the traffic barrier to what news reports call a New Age Hindu, named Kali Das. Mr. Das now displays the sacred block of concrete in his studio, where it is available for veneration. Meanwhile, the bums and crazies have erected an imitation Shiva Linga on the old site in the hope that the faithful will continue to leave offerings. [Philip Matier and Andrew Ross, New Age Shrine Moved from Park, SF Chron, 1/21/94, p. A17.]

Muslim Muzzled?

Khalid Abdul Muhammad is the spokesman for the Nation of Islam who has recently been in the news because of his virulent anti-white outburst at a New Jersey college (see Letters, Feb. 1994). He has been honored with a unanimous vote of condemnation by the U.S. Senate, and was even rebuked by his boss, Louis Farrakhan, who approved of his message but not of his choice of words.

It is surprising – and gratifying – that Mr. Muhammad’s views received some publicity. The Nation of Islam has been preaching white extermination for years. Extermination is a logical policy for a religion based on the view that whites are devils, created in a laboratory by a mad black scientist named Yacub. This little experiment is said to have taken place 6,000 years ago on the Isle of Patmos, of all places.

Although he is now technically on suspension from his post as “Minister of Defense,” Mr. Muhammed is one of the Nation’s most popular speakers. Many young people call him “the new Malcolm X,” and he schedules speaking engagements so that he can fit two or three into a single day. He was paid $2,650 for the speech that made him famous.

Mr. Muhammad claims to have a PhD from Dillard University and to have taught African studies at California State University at Long Beach. Dillard says Mr. Muhammad attended classes but never got a degree; California State has never heard of him. His followers refer to him as Dr. Muhammad.

Mr. Muhammad, whose real name is Harold Moore Vann, was convicted of fraud in 1987. He spent three months in a Georgia prison and was on parole for two years. [Jeremy Milk, Inspiration or Hate-Monger? Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 19, 1994, p. A33.]

London Lunacy

Jane Brown is the 36-year-old director of a London school for children under the age of eleven. Recently, she refused an offer of cut-price tickets for her students to see the ballet “Romeo and Juliet” at Covent Garden. She explained that the story is too heterosexual, and that until books, movies, and the theater reflect the full range of sexuality, she did not wish to promote traditional love stories. Miss Brown has been rebuked by the chief of education for the district of Hackney, and has apologized.

“Mass Graveyard”

Ivory Coast, like most of black Africa, is a prolific breeding ground for AIDS. Some 12 to 20 percent of the population is thought to be infected with the virus, and an American doctor was so concerned about the health menace that he closed his private practice in Atlanta and opened a clinic in Ivory Coast. With funding from the Church of Christ, Dr. Mark Ottenweller concentrates on telling Africans how to avoid AIDS. He uses video tapes, charts and pamphlets, and sponsors intensive group counselling. He is disappointed that all this has so little effect. Even after months of counselling sessions, many of his clients still do not understand how AIDS is spread. “Within the next seven years, [Ivory Coast] is going to become a mass graveyard of AIDS patients,” says Dr. Ottenweller. [Amba Dadson, African choose to ignore advice on fighting AIDS, (Associated Press) 12-2-93, no paper given.]

Canadian Update

Canadians may be even more determined than Americans to destroy their society. Taxpayers are required to pay for the legal fees of criminal aliens who apply for refugee status. A recent case is that of Suchart Areepham from Thailand, who was caught in 1990 trying to smuggle in $100 million worth of heroin. Although he was sentenced to 15 years in jail, Mr. Areepham is now out on parole after claiming refugee status from his jail cell. He is entitled to welfare while he waits for a hearing, and immigration officials estimate that his legal expenses will cost Canadians about $25,000.

Another seeker of refuge, this one from Nigeria, has been caught renting out his subsidized apartment at market rates. Joseph Obazee was paying the refugee rate of $120 a month to the Toronto Housing Authority, while collecting $600 a month from tenants. Mr. Obazee has also been found to be applying for credit cards under a variety of different names.

Another aspiring refugee, Ouebigue Tagui from Chad, was recently denied a government loan by a female lending officer. He promptly walked into the Montreal subway and pushed the first woman he could find onto the tracks in front of a train. Mr. Tagui has been charged with first-degree murder. Canadian women’s groups have been silent about the case.

The Canadian government recently took a secret poll on immigration, but the results were leaked. The poll found that “attitudes to immigration levels appear to be hardening, with significantly more Canadians feeling there are too many immigrants coming to Canada.” This deeply upsets the government, which worries that “Canadians seriously underestimate the number of immigrants arriving annually. It is unclear how their attitudes to immigration would change if knowledge of the number of immigrants were more accurate.”
[Canadian Immigration Hotline, Jan. 1994, No. 52.]

On the contrary, it is perfectly clear how their attitudes would change. The government keeps quiet about the figures (about 220,000 a year) as it promotes a policy directly opposed to the interests of the dwindling white majority.

Vox Populi

According to a recent poll, 86 percent of Californians think that illegal immigration is a problem and they want less of it. More than half want less legal immigration, too. When they were asked to name immigration’s greatest benefit to America, 43 percent of respondents couldn’t think of anything. Seventeen percent said “cheap labor” and an equal number said “cultural diversity.”
[Dianne Klein, Majority in state are fed up with illegal immigration, LA Times, 9/19/93, p. A1.]

Model Mayor

David Dinkins, former mayor of New York City, has taken some souvenirs with him. In his last three weeks in office, Mr. Dinkins’ spokesmen repeatedly rebuffed requests for a list of gifts and other equipment that are ostensibly given to the mayor but belong to the city. When Rudolph Giuliani, the new mayor, moved into the office, it was bare – Mr. Dinkins even took expensive gifts inscribed to his predecessor, Edward Koch.

Early in his term, Mr. Dinkins was criticized for having the city carve a $11,400 headboard for his bed at the mayor’s residence, Gracie Mansion. Last December, the Gracie Mansion curator informed him that the headbord belongs to the city and was to stay at the mansion. Ever a credit to his race, Mr. Dinkins took that with him, too, after paying the city $1,400 for the cost of the wood. [Dan Janison, Dave’s team packs it in – including Ed’s tiffany bowl, NY Post, Jan. 3, 1994, p. 4.] This sort of thievery appears not to bother Columbia University, which has offered the former mayor a professorship.

New Form of Female Sterilization

Widespread testing overseas has demonstrated the effectiveness of a new, non-surgical form of female sterilization. The method involves the insertion of a drug called quinacrine through the cervix into the uterus. Quinacrine briefly irritates the skin and prompts the formation of harmless scar tissue that blocks the openings of the Fallopian tubes into the uterus. This prevents eggs from being released and fertilized.

Quinacrine, which has been used since before the Second World War as an anti-malarial drug, is injected with a modified inserter for intrauterine devices, and must be introduced in two doses, one month apart. The procedure is about one-thirtieth as expensive as surgical sterilization and causes only one-fiftieth as many complications.

Carefully supervised clinical trials of the new procedure are under way in eleven countries, including Chile, Iran, Pakistan, and Venezuela. So far, 80,000 women have been sterilized by using quinacrine. Since the drug already has FDA approval, it would be legal to use it for sterilization in the United States. [Center for Research on Population and Security, Box 13067, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, Press release titled “Major advance in non-surgical sterilization,” (no date). Also The Lancet, July 24, 1993, p. 188, “Family planning in Vietnam.”]

DC’s Finest

Last December, at about 3:00 a.m., two black Washington, DC police officers stopped a 39-year-old white woman on suspicion of drunken driving. They then made her sit on the ground in near-freezing weather with her hands cuffed to the leg of mailbox. She sat like this for nearly twenty minutes screaming for help, while the officers talked and laughed.

A photographer for the Washington Post happened to be driving by and found the situation odd. He started taking pictures and the officers wrenched the camera from him. When police supervisors arrived, they returned the camera and freed the woman, who was later found to have drunk more than the legal limit. The arresting officers are being investigated for violating rules that prohibit handcuffing suspects to inanimate objects and that require them to cooperate with the press. [Serge Kovaleski, D.C. Police Handcuff Motorist to Mailbox," Wash Post,
Dec. 19, 1993, p. 1.]

The Rest of the Story

Paul Harvey, a nationally syndicated radio commentator, had a dangerous brush with the truth in his broadcast of Dec. 27, 1993. “Are backward people backward because they’re backward people?” he asked. He went on to deny that social deprivation is the cause and called the dangerous decay that has set in in our cities “a grim, irreversible malignancy.” Mr. Harvey concluded with a question: “If backward people are backward because they’re backward people, is the condition correctable, reversible?”
[Broadcast of Dec. 27, 1993, KAFFFM.]

African Justice

Nairobi, Kenya is going through a lynching boom. In 1992, 431 suspected thieves were summarily murdered by screaming crowds, and by last October, the figure for 1993 was 354. What most strikes foreign observers is the eagerness with which people from all walks of life – ladies in high heels, men in business suits, bums in rags – participate in rough justice. When the cry of “Thief!” rings out, virtually everyone in earshot runs after the suspect. Most thieves are beaten to death, but some are burned. No one keeps track of lynchings in the country as a whole, but in Nairobi the number has risen eight-fold in less than a decade. 
[AP, Lynchings increase in Kenya as daily life becomes struggle, Birmingham News, Oct. 14, 1993.]

Red Carpet for Blacks

Vidor, Texas, had a brief moment of press attention last year, when an attempt to integrate its all-white federal public housing project failed. The Department of Housing and Urban Development sent a few blacks to live in the 74-unit project, but white residents made life uncomfortable for them. The last black to leave, William Simpson, was shot dead by a black robber less than 24 hours after he left the all-white project.

Under Henry Cisneros, HUD is determined to integrate the Vidor complex. This time, at least 15 black families will be moved in at once and there will be extra security to protect them from harassment. The department has also decided on a huge, $1.8 million upgrade, or the equivalent of $24,000 per unit. Besides a top-to-bottom face lift, the project will get central heat and air conditioning, a new recreation center, laundry rooms, and a leased van to carry residents around town. A local university and the Vidor school system have promised to host programs to help residents finish high school. Long-term residents shake their heads in wonder at the efforts the government is making to make the place comfortable for its new residents. [Richard Stewart, Vidor prepares for new wave of desegregation, Houston Chronicle, Jan. 2, 1994, p. 1D.]

Getting a Grip on Tenure

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education is currently exploring the idea that the tenure system may have to be abolished because it is an obstacle to giving professorships to blacks. In a letter to academics, the magazine’s managing editor, Robert Slater, argues that because “underperforming senior scholars can’t be dismissed or retired,” the tenure system may be keeping blacks out of jobs.  He also argues that scarce academic resources may be going to “traditional, and perhaps unneeded, courses” being taught by senior faculty, which should be done away with to make room for black studies. [Letter dated Jan. 15, 1994 from Robert Bruce Slater]

Swayed by Peppermint

Joycelyn Elders is the first black woman to be Surgeon General of the United States. Her recent call for the legalization of drugs was given an ironic back drop when her 28-year-old son was arrested for selling cocaine a few weeks later.

A recent New York Times profile of the Surgeon General brought to light a little-known fact. She was originally named Minnie Lee Jones (Elders is her married name), but decided to change her name at about age fifteen. She saw the name Joycelyn on a peppermint-candy wrapper and thenceforth became M. Joycelyn Jones. “It was the best peppermint candy in the world,” she explains. [Isabel Wilkerson, The surgeon general has people thinking, NYT, 12/31/93, p. A1.]

County Needs Green

In a most unusual move, the IRS has put a tax lien on Greene County, Alabama. For several quarters running, the county failed to pay federal withholding and social security taxes on its employees’ salaries. County employees have started receiving reduced paychecks in an attempt to pay off the debt. Greene County is 85 percent black and gets most of its revenues from a greyhound race track. [AP, IRS puts tax lien on Greene County, Birmingham News, 10/22/93.]

Happy Motoring

People who rent Hertz automobiles in Florida get a list of safety tips, including the following:

“If you become lost, do not pull over to the side of the road to read a map or directions.”

“Avoid traveling in curbside lanes whenever possible.”

“Do not idle your car in neutral. You may need to accelerate quickly should someone approach you.”

“As you approach your car, check inside and beneath your car to make certain no one has hidden in or near your vehicle.”

The pamphlet, written in French, German, English, Spanish, and Japanese, omits the most important safety measure of all, especially for foreign tourists: Stay away from non-whites. 

Fighting Back

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) is the accrediting body for all universities in California, Hawaii, and Guam. It is relentlessly “multicultural” and puts great pressure on schools to hire and admit non-whites. When a school is up for reaccreditation, WASC drums up minority grievances and demands that they be redressed.

Aquinas College in Santa Paula is a small, private Catholic college that teaches the Great Books. It does not categorize students or faculty by race for any purpose and refused to produce non-whites for WASC to interview. This tactic worked and Aquinas was reaccredited. The school is now leading the fight against “diversity” standards for accreditation. [The Diversity Standard, WSJ, 12/29/93, p. A8.] Text end.

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

Sir –  The reply to Mr. Meldahl in the Dec. and Jan. issues is the best, most calmly reasoned statement of the correct moral view of our situation I have ever read. I have trouble remain-ing so dispassionate on the subject of our dispossession. Too many whites seem to be intent on committing suicide – something I still do not fully understand.

While I would be perfectly willing to send everyone who came here after 1965 back where he came from, using whatever means necessary, realistically that is not going to happen. The sheep are too mesmerized by the false prophets of egalitarianism to save themselves. Unfortunately, they will drag us down with them.

Partition into ethnostates is the only relatively peaceful solution 
I see, although that, too, is rather unlikely at this point. So far, I’ve seen the next step written about by only three people who have voices in the national media: Walter Willaims, Samuel Francis, and now Llewellyn Rockwell. That step, of course, is secession.
Deo Vindice,
Michael Masters, Fredericksburg, Va.

Sir – Your reply to Mr. Meldahl was excellent as far as it went. However, you did not state a fact that I believe is paramount: that American liberalism, like Marxism, is more a religion than a political philosophy. Pointing out scientific evidence of racial differences makes no impression on these people.

Part of their religion is the belief that whites should give way to people of other races. Therefore, the unfairness of discrimination against whites is of no importance. Finally, some white liberals take a perverse enjoyment in the degradation of their own people. I have noticed this especially in some men of the cloth, who derive great pleasure from prostrating themselves before non-white icons.
Rick Maio, Kincaid, 111.

Sir – Although I came to the conclusion reluctantly, the reality of what is happening in our besieged nation leads me to realize that you are a voice ahead of its time in the area of race and
rights – rights for all, that is, and not just for some. I say reluctantly because, while I thoroughly abhor all the “smelly little orthodoxies” of the left, I find equally despicable the hysterical tunnel vision of the opposite camp – the Metzgers, the Rockwells, the KKK, etc.

The one overarching impression that keeps coming through to me about our country is that it is not, any longer, simple equality that the kingpin black “leaders” and their many followers are demanding. It is not even the absurd notion of “reparations.” No, the obvious motivating force for this cohort of blacks – and to a large extent, Hispanics as well – is revenge, pure and simple. 
O.M. Ostlund, Jr., State College, Penn.

Sir – Thank you for American Renaissance. Leave a few issues in a time capsule somewhere so future earthlings will know what happened.
Fred Kopp, Malibu, Cal.

Sir – Your February review of Patricia Turner’s book about the myths that circulate among blacks was fascinating. However, your choice of illustration was too clever by half. “Old Klavern Whiskey,” indeed. The fine print on the label even says that “Old Klavern” is distilled in Jefferson County, Kentucky. Louisville, I note, is in Jefferson County. Are you trying to feed black delusions? We all enjoy a good joke, but your whiskey bottle was a bad one.
Tom Cowles, St. Louis, Mo.

Sir – With regard to Patricia Turner’s book, it may well be that racially integrated public education is one of the key sources of black paranoia. In the school system in which I work, 35 percent of the children are black. It is not unusual to find 11-year-old black children who have never sat in a classroom in which even one of the top performers was black. Since racial equality is explicitly professed as an established fact of life, it is not strange that black children should sense some undefined “something” that must be working against them.
Name Withheld

Sir – I was pleased to see Mr. Auster’s analysis of Colin Ferguson’s anti-white rampage on the Long Island Rail Road. The only other commentator I know who drew some of the same conclusions is the black radio host you mentioned in the February issue, Ken Hamblin. He describes the massacre as a logical consequence of constantly demonizing whites.

The New York Times recently interviewed Mr. Hamblin. Here are some interesting quotations:

“I want to know why black people can’t pass a civil service examination. The excuse is that it’s culturally biased. Well, I’d like to know what could possibly be culturally biased on a test for firefighter.”

“Let’s get serious. White people don’t have time to sit around trying to figure out ways to hurt black people. They’re too busy trying to pay the bills, raise their families, straighen the kids’ teeth . . . .”

Sam McCloud, Memphis, Tenn.

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