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Vol 7, No. 2 February, 1996
  C O N T E N T S 

The Origin of Races (Part I)
The Decline of the Best (Book Review)
AR in the Public Eye
Temple of Doom
Lady Role Models
0 Tempora, 0 Mores!
Letters from Readers

  C O V E R   S T O R Y 

The Origin of Races (Part I)

Biology will prevail against all attempts to abolish it.

by Michael W. Masters

"If everyone is my brother, I have no brothers."

– Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

It has become fashionable in certain circles to write as if race were not a legitimate biological category but merely a social invention. Like many liberal assertions, the fact that this is a flat contradiction of common sense is apparently no impediment. "The concept of race is in disrepute now," says Jim Davis, professor emeritus at Illinois University. [Kenneth Cole, There's really no such thing as race, more scientists say, Detroit News, June 28, 1995.] "Anthropologists are not saying that humans are the same, but race does not help in understanding how they are different," adds Leonard Lieberman of Central Michigan University.

The purpose of these denials, of course, is to destroy the legitimacy of policies or practices that recognize the reality of race. As Soloman Katz of the University of Pennsylvania puts it, "No one denies the social reality of race; the question is what happens to the social reality when the biological ideas that underpin it vanish." [Robert Hotz, Is the Concept of Race a Relic? LA Times, April 15, 1995, p. A1.]

Is race really just an illusion? Except for a small but energetic group of academics and journalists, just about everyone agrees that there are three major racial groups: Mongoloids, Negroids and Caucasoids. Some would add others: aborigines of Australia and New Guinea; Bushmen of East Africa; American Indians; etc. There are also many hybrids. Dark-skinned Caucasoids of India, for example, were formed from a 1500 B.C. influx of Caucasians who then mixed with earlier natives despite a caste system intended to prevent miscegenation. Genetic studies also show surprising divergence between Northeast Asians and Southeast Asians, likewise suggesting possible hybridization of one or the other group.

Man, the Upright Ape

The origins of race cannot be understood without some knowledge of the evolutionary origins of man himself, a subject that has been studied for many decades. 
It has become fashionable to write as if race were not a legiti- mate biological category.
The first great scientific problem was to determine which came first, large brains or upright posture. Charles Darwin argued that bipedalism and large brains evolved together, along with the invention of stone weapons that could not be used unless arms and hands were free from locomotion. Use of weapons led to increased social interaction, which in turn led to increased brain size.

Darwin has been proven wrong. In the late 1960s, blood protein research showed that humans diverged from apes about seven million years ago. Early hominids are known from fossil finds to have been bipedal from four to as much as seven million years ago. Since use of tools – a sign of growing intelligence – began only about 2.5 million years ago, bipedalism must have come before large brains.

But what caused proto-hominids to walk upright? Many scientists think it may have been a geologically unique event – the formation of the mountainous Great Rift Valley region about 10 million years ago. This created a dry, isolated ecological system in East Africa by interrupting the flow of moist air from the west. This gave rise to a grassy savannah, which was dramatically different from the tropical rain forests in which tree-dwelling apes evolved. For the apes trapped in this newly formed environment, bipedal movement conferred survival advantages in finding food and avoiding enemies.

The first bipedal hominid was Australopithecus ("southern ape"), which lived in Africa from about seven million to one million years ago. The oldest species believed to be ancestral to humans is Australopithecus afarensis, a small biped that retained many of the anatomical features of tree-dwelling apes. East African fossils have been found that are three to four million years old. Lucy, the most famous example, was found by Donald Johanson in Ethiopia in 1974. [N]Australopithecus africanus appeared later, 2.3 to three million years ago, possessing an elongated skull and a steeper forehead – features more like today's humans. Australopithecus africanus' cranial capacity was about 400 cubic centimeters, less than one-third that of modern humans.

The Cerebral Rubicon

The earliest fossil to bear the name Homo was found by Jonathan Leaky at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania in 1970. He found a cranium fragment that was much thinner than any from the known australopithecine species. It had smaller cheek teeth and, more important, greatly increased cranial capacity. Though Leaky's find had a capacity of about 650 cubic centimeters, subsequent fossils placed the average at about 800 cc, well above the "cerebral Rubicon" of 750 cc first proposed for genus Homo by British anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith. The first member of the human family was named Homo habilis, or "handy man," because it emerged coincident with the earliest known use of stone tools, about 2.5 million years ago.

About 1.7 million years ago Homo habilis was replaced by Homo erectus. In The Origin of Humankind, Richard Leaky wrote: "Homo erectus was the first human species to use fire; the first to include hunting as a significant part of its subsistence; the first to be able to run as modern humans do; the first to make stone tools according to some definite mental template; and the first to extend its range beyond Africa."

Dr. Leaky appears to have been wrong about the final point. Fossils were recently found in central China that are at least 1.9 million years old and which have been identified as Homo habilis, the direct ancestor of Homo erectus. The crude stone tools found with the fossils are very similar to those of Homo habilis excavated at Olduvai Gorge.

Homo erectus.
Africa remains the origin of the very oldest proto-human fossils, but the Chinese find raises two intriguing possibilities. One is that Homo erectus actually evolved in Asia and then migrated back to Africa. The other is that Asian strains of man (and perhaps others) have been evolving outside of Africa for nearly two million years. [John Wilford, Bones in China put new light on old humans, NYT, 11/16/95, p. A8.]

Homo erectus may have had spoken language and may also have mated for life. Australopithecines were markedly dimorphic – males and females differed in size – suggesting that dominant males monopolized available females. Homo erectus males and females were nearly the same size, which some scholars regard as evidence of pair bonding.

Homo erectus had a cranial capacity of between 900 and 1100 cc and developed a rich variety of stone artifacts. These are known today as the Acheulean culture, named after the French village, St. Acheul, where important finds from this culture were made. Although no physical remains of Homo erectus have been found in Europe or West Asia, Acheulean artifacts suggest the presence of Homo erectus in those areas. These artifacts have not been found in East Asia although Homo erectus fossils have been found, indicating that East Asian Homo erectus may have been less advanced than its African and European cousins. This finding is consistent with the possibility that Homo erectus may have evolved in Asia and migrated back to Europe and Africa.

About 300,000 years ago, the first hominids appeared with a large enough cranial capacity – 1200 to 1500 cc – to merit the name Homo sapiens (modern European males average over 1400 cc). Covering most of the Old World, these archaic humans were more robust than today's variety, with larger teeth, thicker skulls, etc. Neanderthal Man, a European variant named for Germany's Neander Valley – site of an 1856 skull find – appeared about 150,000 years ago.

He had a low, sloping forehead, a receding chin, and heavy brow ridges. He probably traveled in bands of no more than 30, and his maximum population is not likely to have exceeded a few tens of thousands. He appears to have buried his dead and may have practiced cannibalism.

Neanderthal man is probably not an ancestor of modern man; both are thought to have descended from Homo erectus, with the divergence taking place as many as 200,000 years ago. Neanderthal man disappeared from Europe around 30,000 years ago. He may have been driven off or exterminated by more advanced humans, or he may have passed on his genes by breeding with them.

Some anthropologists believe that remnants of these early Neanderthal-like races still survive in isolated areas of the world. Carleton Coon once said of New Guinean aborigines that they were so thick of brow it looked like they were still sloughing off erectus traits.

Origins of Race

Neanderthal man.
There are two theories of how Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus and/or archaic humans: the "multiregional" theory and the "replacement" theory. The multiregional theory holds that today's races derive from local Homo erectus populations, and the recent Chinese find suggests even more ancient origins. Migration and interbreeding – a process known as "gene flow" – would have prevented these local populations from diverging into entirely separate species. Defenders of the "multiregional" theory, such as Carleton Coon and Milford Wolpoff, cite fossil evidence. For example, there are similarities, such as round skulls and shovel-shaped incisors, between modern Chinese and an East Asian variant of Homo erectus.

The replacement theory holds that the ancestors of modern humans arose in Africa between 140,000 and 200,000 years ago and spread over the earth, replacing all previous hominids without interbreeding with them. Those that entered Eurasia subsequently evolved into the diverse non-African races of mankind as a result of further evolution in their new environments. Supporting evidence includes DNA studies suggesting common ancestry of people of different races that is far more recent than would be the case if evolution from Homo erectus had been "multiregional".

Anatomically modern humans appear in the fossil record virtually simultaneously in East Africa and the Middle East, about 100,000 years ago. Named Homo sapiens sapiens to distinguish them from archaic versions, the debate over their place of origin is unresolved. In The History and Geography of Human Genes, a massive 1,000-page compendium of research on genetic differences, authors Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza lean towards the replacement theory, but do not think the question is settled. This is their scenario for how the first modern humans may have developed from archaic forms:

"Ancestors of modern Caucasoids and modern East Asians (let us call them Eurasians) developed either in northeastern Africa, or in West Asia or southeastern Europe from an originally African source during the period between 100 and 50 kya [thousand years ago]. . . .

"Whether or not it partially hybridized with local descendants of archaic H. sapiens or H. erectus, the Eurasian moiety was ready for an expansion, perhaps about 50-40 kya, and expanded in all directions: north and then east, occupying northeastern Asia, the Arctic, and America; west toward West Asia and Europe; and southeast, where it may have mixed with the descendants of the southern branch of the African migration."


The African Eve

In the late 1980s, a furor arose over a dramatic new theory that modern humans derived from a single African female – quickly dubbed "Eve" by the media. Michael Brown traced the course of this flap in his 1990 book The Search for Eve. The idea appeared in a 1987 article in Nature by Allan Wilson, Mark Stoneking and Rebecca Cann called "Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution." Its opening was provocative: "Mitochondrial DNAs from 147 people, drawn from five geographic populations, have been analyzed by restriction mapping. All these mitochondrial DNAs stem from one woman who is postulated to have lived about 200,000 years ago. . . ."

The research, conducted primarily at the University of California, Berkeley, was based on the fact that once two groups diverge, random mutations begin to accumulate at a (usually) constant rate. The longer the groups are separate, the greater the number of mutations and the more different from each other they become. If the mutation rate is known, the mutations form a molecular clock from which the date of divergence can be computed.

For example, if Asians and Europeans share a genetic characteristic not present in Africans, it means that the mutation that formed the genetic feature occurred after the common ancestor of Asians-and-Europeans split off from the African stream but before Asians and Europeans diverged from each other. However, even within a single breeding group, mutations do not occur uniformly and at the same time in all members of the group, so sophisticated statistical analysis is required to determine when divergence took place. Mitochondrial DNA – which controls certain aspects of energy production at the cellular level – seems an ideal vehicle for such studies because it is simpler than nuclear DNA and, more important, is inherited only from the mother.

According to the Berkeley study, the African samples of mitochondrial DNA (actually African-American samples) appeared to be the oldest. If so, modern humans must have originated in Africa and dispersed from there, replacing all archaic humans without a single instance of interbreeding. The impact of this article – Nature is one of the most prestigious science publications in the world – was immediate. Eve, the "mother of us all," was African and therefore black. This ignited sanctimonious celebration by liberals. If other races had only recently split off from Africans, how could racial discrimination be justified? Blacks were quick to accept their new role as progenitors of mankind.

However, all was not well in Eden. Questions about Eve surfaced as scientists examined the evidence carefully. Doubt was raised about the validity of using American blacks – who average roughly 25 percent white genes due to miscegenation – to represent Africans. The persistence in modern Chinese of distinctly East Asian Homo erectus characteristics – round skulls and shovel-shaped incisors – demanded explanation. Milford Wolpoff asked how Homo sapiens sapiens eliminated earlier forms without a single instance of interbreeding. He coined the term "Pleistocene Holocaust" for the implied planet-wide massacre of archaic humans by the African invaders.

Scientists questioned the mutation rate used by Professors Wilson, Stoneking and Cann to calibrate their molecular clock. Given a more realistic clock rate, the common ancestor – if there was one – lived half a million years or more ago, an era populated solely by Homo erectus. The putative common ancestor might simply represent movement of Homo erectus or one of his precursors out of Africa. In 1992, flaws were found in the statistical techniques used by the Berkeley group.

The decline of Eve's fortune did not rule out the replacement theory, and expert opinion is still sharply divided. It is difficult to know what to believe when specialists disagree. However, Carleton Coon's comment about New Guinean aborigines still sloughing off Homo erectus traits is compelling, and Australian aborigines have heavy brow ridges and massive skulls that suggest a markedly different ancestry from that of other races.

Ultimately, of course, it makes no difference whether the races of man diverged 30,000 or 300,000 years ago. The fact remains that the differences are real, and clearly reflect differing capacities to build and maintain civilization. Today, the work of millennia is being undone as the less intelligent races not only outbreed the more intelligent but push their way into the homelands of the northern races.

In his masterwork, Race, John Baker traces the history of men who spoke about race. Perhaps the most important was Arthur Comte de Gobineau, whose book, Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, explained why civilizations decay and die: "mixture, mixture everywhere, always mixture . . . ." Hybridization of intelligent, creative, racially pure founding stock, he said, was destroying the West, just as it destroyed all previous civilizations – a theme developed by Tenney Frank in History of Rome and Elmer Pendell in Why Civilizations Self-Destruct.

In a more recent book, The Decline of Intelligence in America, Seymour Itzkoff writes of the "encompassing embrace" of third-world immigration to Europe and the United States: "It is an embrace that will suck us back into evolutionary history if we delay too long." What Lothrop Stoddard called "the rising tide of color" may well be reversing the course of human evolution. 

Michael W. Masters is the author of "The Morality of Survival," which appeared in the issues of July and August, 1995. This article will conclude in the next issue.

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  B O O K    R E V I E W 

The Decline of the Best

An analysis of our era's most dangerous illusion:
that genes have no effect on human behavior.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

The Decline of Intelligence
in America

Seymour Itzkoff

Praeger
1994, 242 pp.
$18.95 (soft cover)

eymour Itzkoff can always be counted on to grapple with difficult but vital questions. He is the author of a four-part series on the evolution of human intelligence and never loses sight of the role that heredity plays in human behavior. In his latest book, The Decline of Intelligence in America, Prof. Itzkoff writes about one of the most destructive but little-discussed trends in America today: the decline of the nation's genetic stock.

The book's thesis is simple and essentially irrefutable: the unintelligent are rapidly outbreeding the intelligent. At the same time, third world immigration is bringing in large numbers of non-whites, who have lower average IQs than whites. The consequence is a steady decline in the average American IQ, which threatens the survival of our nation and even the civilization of which it is part.

The NLSY

The problem of birth rates is illustrated in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY), the comprehensive set of data on which Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein based The Bell Curve. As Prof. Itzkoff notes, the NLSY has tracked the progress of a representative sample of Americans who graduated from high school in 1972. When they are divided into five different levels of intelligence, the birth rate differentials sound a grim warning. Four years after graduation, 30 percent of the lowest ability whites and 49 percent of the lowest ability blacks had already had children. Of those of highest intelligence, only six percent of the blacks and ten percent of the whites had had children. Intelligent Americans are not simply delaying having an equal number of children; almost without exception, people who start having children at an early age produce by far the largest number over their lifetimes.

Professor Itzkoff emphasizes that the differential for blacks is especially sharp. Even more than among whites, births are concentrated among the unintelligent and incompetent. Since the entire black distribution of intelligence is already shifted some 15 points lower than that for whites, the preponderance of births to the least capable black mothers is producing a large number of children who, by white standards, are retarded. The average IQ gap between black and white will therefore widen.

Much of this new generation will never be capable of anything more demanding than manual labor. As Professor Itzkoff points out, our society has virtually no need for such people. Furthermore, many are unwilling or unable to work at even the modest occupations of which they are capable. Crime, indolence, and yet more reckless proliferation are the inevitable results.

Professor Itzkoff points out that welfare has been a crucial contributor to this horror. Responsible, self-supporting people are taxed to subsidize the creation of an army of parasites. Guaranteed government support for heedless childbearing has removed the last restraints on even the most ill-favored couplings. In this way, social programs that were supposed to end economic inequality have ensured a harsh, genetic inequality that is far more durable and dangerous.

It is not coincidence, therefore, that every index of degeneracy should have climbed sharply as the first waves of welfare-bred Americans reached maturity. As Prof. Itzkoff notes, from 1960 to 1990, the murder rate doubled, rape rates quadrupled, and robbery rates shot up five-fold. During the same period, the likelihood of an American being the victim of an aggravated assault rose 700 percent. This is only a foretaste of the dysgenic hell that Prof. Itzkoff promises us if our policies do not change.

Degenerate Whites

Everyone has at least a dim sense of the barbarism that now characterizes so much of black America. Less well known is the dysgenic effect of differential birth rates on whites. Hand-wringing over the decline in SAT scores has become almost an annual ritual. Between 1967 and 1982, they reflect a decline of about 1.25 school grade equivalents – an unprecedented drop. Many whites assume increasing numbers of non-white test takers caused the decline, but this is only a partial explanation. The top scores – which reflect the performances of the smartest whites – have dropped even more quickly than the average.

In 1962, 19,099 students scored over 700 on the verbal SAT. Twenty years later, at a time when 50,000 more people were taking the test, there were only 9,392 scores over 700 – a drop to less than half the previous figure. It is almost exclusively whites who get scores in this range, so this collapse cannot be attributed to non-whites.

During the same period, math SAT scores over 700 dropped from 40,644 to 32,469, a more modest decline to 80 percent of the earlier figure. Scores by whites dropped considerably more; their decline was masked by increasing numbers of high-scoring Asians.

Americans perform less and less well in international comparisons. The Second International Mathematics Study, conducted in 1982 but released only in 1987, found that among high school seniors from 20 different countries, the United States ranked last among developed nations. Astonishingly, the average Japanese high school student does math at a level equivalent of the 95th percentile for Americans.

Prof. Itzkoff reports on an international student mathematics competition in which Korean students trounced Americans. Ironically, two thirds of the Americans thought they were good at math whereas less than a quarter of the Koreans thought they were good at it.

Poor school performance has staggering economic consequences. Prof. Itzkoff writes that when one Japanese company started a factory in the United States, it had to hire graduate students to do the statistical calculations for quality control that high school graduates were doing in Japan. In 1992, the president of the west coast telephone company, Pacific Telesis, reported that only 40 percent of the high school graduates applying for entry level jobs could pass the employment test – which was geared to the seventh grade level. Likewise, the U.S. Department of Education says that 47 percent of American adults are barely literate, yet most of them claim to read and write "well" or "very well."

It is not as though the United States scrimps on education; it spends 7.5 percent of GNP on it. Korea spends 4.5 percent and Taiwan, 3.6 percent. These are smaller percentages of much smaller GNPs (both absolutely and per capita) but the Asians get far better results. Likewise, in Japan, the average high school math teacher has 40 to 43 students per class while an American teacher has 20 to 26.

As Prof. Itzkoff notes, part of the problem in the United States is racial diversity. Since the education bureaucracy refuses to recognize racial or even individual differences in ability, enormous sums are wasted trying to bring welfare-bred incompetents up to levels of performance they cannot reach. There is little money left for gifted students programs which, because they include so few blacks and Hispanics, are denounced as inherently racist anyway.

All across the country, school districts are trying mightily to narrow the racial gap in performance. This can be done only by teaching so little that all children are equally ignorant. It is whites (and Asians) who suffer when standards are lowered to the point that blacks and Hispanics can meet them. Declining performance among whites therefore does not always reflect declining ability.

Causes

Part of this book is speculation about why the intelligent are having so few children. Prof. Itzkoff points out that throughout history, in times of wealth and decadence, women of high station often stop having children so as to have time for indulgences. Among both the ancient Greeks and Romans, there were farsighted men who decried the effeteness and infertility of the descendants of the founding families. As the Roman satirist Juvenal lamented, luxury is more ruthless than war.

In our own time, feminism has cut deeply into the progeny of the intelligent. Some of the smartest women are making careers rather than families. Prof. Itzkoff notes that according to a 1986 study, the average compensation for senior, female executives was, not including stock options, $117,000. Fifty-four percent of these women – presumably well into their 30s or even 40s – had no children.

"We have lost the children of almost two generations of our educated and liberated women," he writes. "It has had almost the same effect as if it had been genocide." In his view, they "have shouted a collective 'no' to the future of their society." Intelligent, well-educated couples who do not have children are, in his view "parasites." They have benefited immeasurably from a civilization that was built up over hundreds of generations but refuse to contribute their genes to its future support.

Even those women who do have children are often driven by feminist propaganda to seek unnecessary careers. Prof. Itzkoff notes that in 1960, fewer than 20 percent of women with children under the age of six were working. In 1992, the figure was 60 percent. Women who work will probably have fewer children and the ones they have will be less well cared for.

Prof. Itzkoff also believes that any society that refuses to condemn homosexuality drives a certain number of men into reproductive dead-ends. Only about half of the identical twins of homosexuals are, themselves, homosexual. This suggests a strong but far-from-total genetic determination. In Prof. Itzkoff's view, if culture and environment have any effect at all on sexual orientation, a society that does not stoutly promote the traditional family will lose the children of men who drift needlessly into homosexuality.

Of course, just as it insists that it makes no difference who has babies, liberalism holds that the "traditional" nuclear family is just one of many equally valid ways to rear children. Any adult, single or married, hetero- or homosexual, smart or stupid, employed or on the dole, is a fit parent. This leads not only to the fanciful notion that lesbian couples should adopt children or that mental defectives can become mothers; far more pervasively, it has meant the steady disappearance of marriage.

In 1950, 1.7 percent of white and 16.8 percent of black children were illegitimate. By 1989, the figures were 16 and 66 percent. Illegitimacy has always been more common among the lower orders, and the disappearance both of the stigma and the abject poverty that used to be associated with bastardy has meant record numbers of children who are both unintelligent and without the support of a father. This is often a sure prescription for crime and shiftlessness.

Coasting

Prof. Itzkoff notes that the United States could well be close to disaster without seeming to be. It could coast on the achievements of previous generations, and then crash horribly without much warning. He writes that in 1989, at a time when New York City had a population of 7 million people, only about 800,000 were employed. Each worker was supporting nearly nine people. So long as current trends continue, it is only a matter of time before the weight of the non-productive crushes everyone.

Prof. Itzkoff notes that our status as a "superpower" may be equally precarious. The Desert Storm operation against Iraq would not have been possible without $50 to $60 billion in foreign contributions to what was, in effect, a mercenary army.

Immigration to the United States, because it is not selective, makes current problems worse and adds new ones. In a recent round of applications for jobs as taxi drivers in New York City, 70 percent of the candidates were recent arrivals who could barely speak English. Ninety percent of current immigrants are non-white, and only a handful are admitted because of special skills. "[W]e must halt this uninvited tidal invasion of the genes of the south," writes Prof. Itzkoff. By refusing to do so, the United States has, in his words, "opted to join the Third World."

Are the leaders of this country unaware of what they are doing? Prof. Itzkoff thinks not. "The evidence has been clear for a long time," he writes. "Simply, in every area of our leadership, cowardice abounds." No one dares challenge the current dogma that heredity has nothing to do with human behavior. Professor Itzkoff also suspects that many "leaders" knowingly promote destructive policies because they know that dissent will be punished. They care more about their careers and privileges than about the nation's future.

It is disappointing that although Prof. Itzkoff recognizes racial differences in IQ, he writes as if races are otherwise interchangeable. He is a strong advocate of reduced, and selective immigration, but writes that "there is no question that those few slots for legal immigrants . . . should be chosen from all racial and ethnic groups." This is a sadly conformist view for a man willing to question so many other dangerous assumptions. He has some appreciation for the homogeneity of Japan or Sweden but is saying, in effect, that whites could be completely replaced, so long as the newcomers had high IQs. Elsewhere, one might also quibble with Prof. Itzkoff's discursive style, and his tendency to make sweeping assertions that, even when true, could be better supported. [N]

In addition to his own writing, Prof. Itzkoff edits a Praeger book series called "Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence." It includes such promising titles as Hormones, Sex, and Society: The Science of Physicology and Genes, Brains, and Politics: Self-Selection and Social Life. Another is A People That Shall Dwell Alone, an analysis of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy, which puts its practitioners in conflict with other groups.

Praeger and Prof. Itzkoff are doing important work that deserves to be far better known. Text end.

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  A R T I C L E 

AR in the Public Eye

AR and the people who write for it have recently been in the public eye. On the strength of the cover story he wrote for the previous issue-about the follies of affirmative action in the San Francisco fire department – Robert Charles has been invited to appear on one of the city's biggest conservative radio stations, KSFO. He was scheduled to begin at 6:30 a.m. on January 19th, and continue for as long as there was listener interest. There was sure to have been plenty.

On December 15th, another writer in the same issue, Frank Borzellieri, was on the television program, "20/20." The subject was whether the United States should be multi-lingual, and Mr. Borzellieri got more air time than anyone else on the program. In a particularly effective sequence, he walks into a grocery store in Corona, Queens, where he is an elected school board member. All signs and magazines are in Spanish, and neither the clerk nor a customer can speak English. "I hope my car never gets stuck in this neighborhood," says Mr. Borzellieri. The segment was well-balanced, and presented Mr. Borzellieri very favorably.

The End of Racism, by Dinesh D'Souza, has put the spotlight on AR because of the book's dishonest account of the 1994 AR conference (see AR Nov. 1995). Lawrence Auster, Samuel Francis, and Jared Taylor have all published letters about this matter, in such places as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Washington Post Book World. On November 13th, all three appeared together in the Journal, dominating the letters column.

Since then, in response to a characterization of him in the Journal as a "white supremacist" because of articles in AR, Samuel Francis wrote a long letter to the editor, explaining his view that race relations should be a local rather than federal matter. He was joined on the December 20 letters page by Rabbi Mayer Schiller ("Separation – Is There an Alternative?" AR Feb. 1995), who explained that Mr. Francis' recommendations are actually quite moderate compared to his own advocacy of geographical racial separation.

Fr. Ronald Tacelli ("Morality and Racial Consciousness," AR Jan. 1995) also wrote a short letter to the Wall Street Journal in support of Mr. Francis, which was not published. Its text was as follows:

Sir – Samuel Francis has written extensively on America's "race problem," and in the course of that writing has made several recommendations for solving it.

Greg Forster (WSJ, 1 Dec. 1995) finds some of them "repulsive." He says that anyone who commends such things deserves the label "white supremacist" – a label connoting extremism and marginality.

I admit I sometimes wince when reading Mr. Francis' unflinching prose. But my wincing does nothing to show that his analyses are false or his recommendations immoral. The same goes for Mr. Forster's revulsion.

Suppose half the things said about the black underclass by Dinesh D'Souza in The End of Racism and Jared Taylor in Paved With Good Intentions are true. In that case, the problem of race in America is not merely serious; it's desperate. And in desperate situations we must above all be able to speak frankly and argue rationally. What we do not need is the silencing of serious voices because we find what they say "repulsive." We know that our immediate emotional reactions are not always rationally justified. And the sometimes bitter fruit of honest, intelligent discussion is precisely this: to realize that what made us initially wince or drawback in revulsion might in fact turn out to be true.

In racial matters, as in so many others, we need to get beyond the slinging of venomous clichés. 

Ronald K. Tacelli, Boston College

For copies of recently-published letters about AR, please send $2.00 and a stamped, self-ad- dressed envelope.

 

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  A R T I C L E 

Temple of Doom

Trying to keep the ghetto at bay

by Russell Eisenman

The article in the January issue, "In the Academic Jungle," brought back memories of Temple University, where I taught for 22 years. The author, Kristina Saxon, mentioned the university's dangerous North Philadelphia location but, if anything, things are worse than she says.

Temple is in the heart of a black ghetto, so university people are murdered, raped, and robbed. On one occasion a man got into the psychology building and raped one of the secretaries. There was supposed to be a guard downstairs, but he was away. On another occasion blacks shot and killed a graduate student right on campus because they reportedly "wanted to get a whitey."

I used to ride the buses that Temple operates between campuses. Once, as we were passing through a black area, a boy who seemed about 12 years old fired a pistol into the bus. The bullet smashed through a window, just missed a female student's head, and whizzed past the back of my head. Experiencing danger is so common that I doubt anyone even reported it to the police.

Once I was walking from the train station to the university and was approached by a gang of about 15 teenagers. They more or less surrounded me and asked, "Are you an insurance man?" I had no idea what they meant and said, "No. What's an insurance man?" They kept asking "You an insurance man?" and I kept saying I wasn't. They finally seemed convinced by my answers (and demeanor?) and walked away.

Several years later I learned that "an insurance man" collects insurance premiums from people in the ghetto. Since most do not have checking accounts, they pay cash. Insurance men walk around with large amounts of money, so ghetto gangs make a point of beating and robbing them. My ignorance probably saved my hide; I showed no fear, not knowing I was in danger.

There is no end of stories about how Temple panders to non-whites. I once opposed hiring a black who did not seem to understand his own doctoral dissertation. Another psychology professor screamed at me, "What's wrong with you? The dean says we have to hire a black." We hired him.

At a lecture I once noticed a young black heckling and harassing the speaker. He seemed to enjoy interrupting the lecture, showing off for the other blacks in his group. He acted like a ghetto tough, only he was dressed better. Later I found out he was Director of Minority Recruitment.

Lincoln Herbert, the law student whose fight against political correctness was described in the January issue, certainly has his work cut out for him. Text end.

Dr. Eisenman is associate professor of psychology at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. 

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  A R T I C L E 

Lady Role Models

Liberals are always clamoring for "non-traditional" role models, especially women. Somehow, they never think to seek them in the Confederacy. The War the Women Lived is a collection of 23 first-hand accounts of the war, some by famous women like Belle Boyd but most by ladies who were as brave and patriotic as they were little known.

This is a fine selection, which never tries to apologize or bowdlerize. One lady affectionately describes one of her favorite slaves as "an old man who looked wonderfully like a gorilla." [N]

As the opening guns of the war boom through the Charleston night, Mary Chesnut wonders if her slaves even understand that a fateful decision has been taken:

"You could not tell that they even heard the awful roar going on in the bay, though it has been dinning in their ears night and day. People talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. They make no sign. Are they stolidly stupid? or wiser than we are; silent and strong, biding their time?"


But the most characteristic passages are of determination. A governess for a Virginia family writes of the women she knew:

"The war was theirs, because the cause was theirs; the soldiers, husbands, sons, and brothers; theirs the country, homes, and firesides; their liberty to be fought for, their wrongs to be redressed."

And here is Rose Greenhow, Confederate spy, facing down her captors:

"I am a Southern woman, born with revolutionary blood in my veins, and my first crude ideas on State and Federal matters received consistency and shape from the best and wisest man of the century, John C. Calhoun. . . . Freedom of speech and of thought were my birthrights, guaranteed by our charter of liberty, the Constitution of the United States, and signed and sealed by the blood of our fathers."


This is a collection to inspire both men and women. Text end.

– Walter Sullivan, Ed., The War the Women Lived, J.S. Sanders & Co., 1995, 319 pp., $24.95

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  I N    T H E    N E W S 

O Tempora, O Mores!

New York (Atro)city

Freddie's Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned clothing store in Harlem, operated in space it rented from a black church. It had sub-leased some of the space to a black-owned record store but, with the church's approval, planned to end the sub-lease and expand into that space.

Black protesters, enraged that the record store would have to move, marched outside the shop calling black patrons traitors, threatening employees, shouting "Kill the Jew bastards" and "loot and burn the Jews." Some walked into the store and mimed the action of tossing lit matches onto clothing displays. One black warned the manager he would "be back to burn the Jew store down – burn, burn, burn." A security guard overheard one of the protesters say "We're going to come back with 20 niggers and loot and burn the Jew."

On December 8th, Roland Smith, who had been active in the protests, stormed into the clothing store shouting, "It's on now! All blacks out!" He opened fire on the remaining whites and Hispanics, killing four, and then set the shop on fire, burning seven employees to death before fatally shooting himself. [Jeff Jacoby, The flames of hatred in the Age of Farrakhan, The Boston Globe, 12/14/95.] Mr. Smith, whom the New York Times depicted as a principled radical gone astray, was described by friends as filled with hatred for "crackers" and convinced that everything "was a conspiracy against black people." [Joe Sexton, Gunman's Ardent Credo: Black Self-sufficiency, New York Times, 12/18/95, p. A1.]

Two days after the attack, Harlem activist Morris Powell held a memorial service, not for the murder victims, but for Mr. Smith who, he explained, was the victim of a vast, anti-black conspiracy. "Not one white person died," he said to a crowd of chanting supporters. "All the white people got out through a hole in the wall. The manager . . . left the black people to die. It was a setup." Another speaker explained that Mr. Smith did not shoot himself but was killed by whites. He led the crowd in feverish chants of "Conspiracy! Setup!" [Angela Allen & Kyle Smith, Boycott Boss Mourns for 'Freddy's' killer, NY Post, 12/10/95, p. 9.] Blacks later threatened ten more white- and Korean-owned stores in Harlem. [NY police probe Harlem racial threats, Reuter, 12-22-95.]

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who led some of the protests, denied that race was a factor. "We never said we were going after whites or Jews . . . . The issue was protecting a member of our community." [Richard Pyle, AP, Sharpton: Store boycott wasn't black-white issue, 12/10/95.]

Eleven days after the clothing-store massacre, Michael Vernon, a black man angered by poor service at a Korean-owned Bronx shoe store, produced a gun and executed three patrons, the owner's wife, and a 12-year-old boy. Mr. Vernon fled, using a bystander for cover, but was shot and wounded by a Highway Patrol officer before being arrested. [Grant McCool, Gunman kills five at Bronx shoe store, Reuter, 12-19-95.] He told police he had planned to burn down the store.

Early in the new year, there was another shooting, in Westchester County, just north of New York City. A disgruntled former employee of a Greenburgh auto parts supplier went back to his old workplace and opened fire with a shotgun. He killed Paul Bodisch, the 32-year-old father of four who managed the store, and wounded two others. He then shot himself in the stomach but survived. Last year, Sookhdea Itwaru had been demoted from management to truck driving, and quit two months later. County authorities said that Mr. Itwaru had been deported in 1976 for overstaying his visa, but his nationality was unknown. As detectives photographed the blood-stained floor, one mechanic said he was familiar with violence of this kind in his native Jamaica, but had never seen anything like it in Westchester County. He picked up a wrench and calmly went back to work. [Andrew Revkin, A store manager is slain and 2 men are wounded, NYT, Jan. 3, 1996, p. B4.]

Good Bye, Newark

The city of Newark, New Jersey, now largely black, has one of the highest crime rates in the country. It also has one of the worst police forces. High-level officers confirm that thousands of 911 calls are ignored every year.

William Celester, the police chief, was recently put on leave from his $95,500-a-year job. He is suspected of having spent some $50,000 from a special fund police are supposed to use for undercover drug buys. Such operations came to a halt when the fund mysteriously disappeared; Mr. Celester had been taking trips to Puerto Rico and showering gifts on female friends.

Mr. Celester is hard up for money. A bank foreclosed on his house and he moved into a new condominium. However, he failed to get a mortgage or to pay rent, and was eventually evicted. The owner is now suing for an alleged $30,000 in damage to the building. When he is actually at work, Mr. Celester is known for halting the prosecutions of people with whom he is acquainted.

The department's Internal Affairs Bureau, which is supposed to track down dishonest cops, appears to have been starved by the police chief. Officers have to borrow cameras and tape recorders. It recently managed to get indictments on four senior officers who were buying recovered stolen cars [N]for next-to-nothing at municipal auction rather than return them to owners. The four are still on duty, but the Internal Affairs commanders have been transferred.

Twenty-six officers, including a captain and four sergeants, have been accused of robbing prostitutes and raping them at gun-point. The prostitutes have identified their attackers, but Mr. Celester's department has done nothing to bring them to justice. There are dozens of brutality charges against officers, and the commander of the Gang Intelligence Section has actually been indicted. He continues at his job.

This summer, another Newark institution – the school system – was finally pronounced dead. State authorities determined that the Newark school board was violating the New Jersey Constitution – which guarantees children an education. Students were not learning but school board members were enjoying lavish benefits. When the state took over, it dismissed the superintendent and the entire school board, and fired 13 other top administrators. [David Kocieniewski & John Sullivan, Newark Police Troubles: Out of Control at the Top, NYT, 12/23/95, p. 1. Takeover of Schools is Upheld, NYT, 12/23/95, p. 33.]

Hello, Haiti

Haiti's new National Police force, trained by the United States and introduced with much fanfare, appears to be as corrupt and brutal as the force it replaced. Officers are recruited to "high standards," get four months of American training, spiffy uniforms, and $300 a month – more than most Haitians make in a year. When the first contingent marched into Cité Soliel on the outskirts of the capital, it was met with cheers. In November, disgusted townspeople drove the 24-man unit away under a barrage of rocks, looted the police station and vehicles, and burned them. The National Police have taken to shooting people on whim, raiding homes without warrants, and have been ineffectual crime-stoppers. [Larry Rohter, Support is waning for haiti's U.S.-trained police, NYT, 12/24/95.]

Infants and Intelligence

A new study finds that by age three the IQ scores of black children are about 15 points lower than those of whites (C. Peoples, J. Fagan, D. Drotar, "The Influence of Race on 3-year-old Children's Performance on the Stanford-Binet: Fourth Edition," Intelligence, 1995, 21, pp. 69-82.).

Many researchers had thought that the mental abilities of toddlers of different races were roughly equivalent and diverged only during adolescence. The belief in adolescent divergence allowed egalitarians to claim that differences were mainly due to environment.

The newest findings strongly support the view that racial differences in mental ability have a genetic origin. After all, by age three, most children have been socialized almost exclusively by their parents, and "societal racism" can have had very little effect. Moreover, though some parents may be better than others at encouraging mental development in older children, even the dullest adults should be able to provide adequate intellectual stimulation for a three-year-old.

Contrast in Leadership

In its obituary of assassinated Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, Time magazine quoted him as saying that he approved of all Israelis maintaining their religions and identities. Nevertheless, his main concern was to maintain national character: "For me what is most important is to have a Jewish state in which at least 80 percent of its population is Jewish." [The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Time, 11/13/95, p. 64.]

Contrast this straightforward expression of peoplehood with views unbosomed by nominal candidate for President of the United States, Republican Congressman Robert Dornan. Speaking to the USA Today editorial board meeting, which was broadcast by C-SPAN on Nov. 15, 1995, he said:

"I want to say America stays a nation of immigrants. And if we lose our Northern European stock – your coloring and mine, blue eyes and fair hair – tough! So what if 5000 years from now we're all going to have a golden tan. The races are, at some point – maybe it'll take a million years – we're all going to be blended together because of travel, and because of the information highway."


The Vanishing Negro?

The state of Michigan recently passed laws to add the category "multiracial" to official documents. This was done at the urging of Project Race, a national advocacy group for mixed-race children, which thinks that making children claim the race of only one parent damages their self-esteem. A black state representative, Ed Vaughn led the campaign against the new measure, which he calls a "tragedy." [Michigan Passes Law for Multiracial Category, Jet, Oct. 23, 1995.]

An Elevating Decision

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, the city council has approved an ordinance to ban racial segregation in elevators. Blacks have heretofore been made to use service elevators, which are ordinarily reserved for building employees or for transporting cargo. [(Folha de Sao Paulo, p.1) KNIGHT-RIDDER FINANCIAL NEWS – Sao Paulo, Wednesday, Dec 20, 1996]

Who's Next?

The California Public Utilities Commission has added another affirmative action category in addition to women and non-whites: old soldiers. Beginning in 1996, utility companies will be under pressure to award at least 1.5 percent of their contracts to companies owned by disabled veterans. Contracting "goals" are currently 15 percent for non-whites and five percent for women. Actual percentages in 1994 were 15.11 percent for non-whites and 7.67 percent for women. [SAN FRANCISCO – (BUSINESS WIRE) – Dec. 19, 1995, CPUC Sets Goals for Disabled Vet Procurement Program)]

The American Disease

Justus Kos is a Heineken executive involved in sponsorship and advertising. After viewing pilot programs of a new European music and youth culture show the Dutch brewer is to sponsor, he complained that it had "too high a proportion of Negroes." Heineken has done the usual groveling, but this is never enough. A leading black paper in England, the Caribbean News is demanding that Mr. Kos be fired and that Heineken donate $1.5 million to African charities. [Reuters, Heineken brewery lock in TV racism row, Jan. 5, 1996]

Casualty of Immigration

Awilda Lopez, a black 29 year-old, has been charged with beating her six-year-old daughter to death. Broken fingers and old scars revealed that Lisa had been routinely and savagely abused. [Larry Celona, Angela Mosconi, Sandy Gonzalez, Phillip Messing, Mom Charged In Beating Death Of 6-Yr.-Old Girl, NY Post, 11/24/95, p. 3.] Neighbors reported that she seemed "sad, depressed, scared and withdrawn" and some said they had repeatedly been awakened at night by terrified cries of "Mommy, please stop!" [Angela Mosconi, They heard her screams – and did nothing, NY Post, 11/24/95, p. 3.]

The failure by social workers assigned to Miss Lopez to report abundant evidence of abuse has scandalized New Yorkers. Ironically, Lisa's death came just a few days after an internal investigative report by the city's Child Welfare Administration (CWA). It found that many social workers are recent immigrants, who do not speak English well enough to communicate with their clients. It also reported that there is a large number of unqualified immigrant caseworkers "who have been in the country for only a few years, whose values from their home country conflict" with CWA standards. [Hilton Kramer, Cover-Up Journalism, NY Post, 12/12/95.]

The New York Times agonized over Lisa's death, and reported on the investigation by the Child Welfare Administration. It did not see fit to mention the findings about immigrant social workers.

Setting Aside Set-asides

Federal set-aside programs are increasingly under fire. The Small Business Administration's 8(a) program, which grants $4.4 billion worth of contracts every year to women and non-whites, has been sued on the basis of last June's Supreme Court ruling that requires federal programs to show evidence of past discrimination. One plaintiff, Science Applications International, is a major company with the means to maintain a sustained challenge that could eventually eliminate 8(a). Already, the Supreme Court's new requirements have forced the Pentagon to abandon its $1-billion-a-year set-aside program. [Paul M. Barrett, Main Program for Minority Firms Faces Challenges in Federal Courts, Wall St. Journal, 11/22/95.]

But Preferences Are Still Law

The initial groundswell of opposition to affirmative action appears to have produced few results. State laws to abolish racial preferences have been introduced in at least a dozen states – Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Washington – but have either been defeated or failed to come to a vote.

In Texas, when a Republican state senator introduced such a bill, a black Democrat dressed up as a Klansman, in a robe he jokingly claimed to have found in the Republican's locker. The bill died in committee. In Mississippi, a bill to kill racial preferences went to the floor of the State Senate, but was defeated 29 to 20.

At least six states have started petition drives to end affirmative action – California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Oregon – but there has been little success anywhere but in California. Even there, proponents of the California Civil Rights Initiative fear it may not be possible to secure the necessary one million signatures by the February 21 deadline. The problem is money. Checks – please be generous – should be made out to:

CCRI, Box 67278, Los Angeles, CA 90067.


National politicians have toned down their opposition to affirmative action because of a backlash from women and non-whites. Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich are now talking about improving rather than abolishing affirmative action. [Drummond Ayres, Efforts to end job preferences are faltering, Nov. 20, 1995, p. A1.]

Wretched Refuse

Prof. Donald Huddle of Rice University in Houston, Texas, calculates that immigrants cost the American economy about $51 billion in federal, state, and local assistance programs in 1994. This is over and above all taxes they paid. [Study cites the costs of aiding immigrants, Orange County Register, Oct. 26, 2995.]

The Tiger in the Afrikaner

The ANC government is going ahead with its plans to put Apartheid-era security officers on trial for alleged crimes against blacks. Magnus Malan, former Defense Minister, is the most prominent of eleven high-ranking defendants. Gen. Malan could admit his guilt and avoid a trial, but refuses. "I am not going to repent," he says. "I am not going to ask for favors. What I did, I did for my country, for my God, for my people and all the peoples of South Africa." He also warned President Nelson Mandela not to "awaken the tiger in the Afrikaner," by proceeding with what Gen. Malan considers to be show trials. [President Mandela is firm on Malan Trial, This Week in South Africa, Nov. 21-17, 1995, p. 3.]

Barbie Bias

Over the Christmas season, there was so much demand for the Happy Holidays version of the Barbie doll that thousands of parents spent up to $200.00 for a doll that retails for $35.00. There were actually plenty of Happy Holidays Barbies in stores, but they were the black version – which was selling poorly. Many little black girls also wanted the white doll rather than the Afro-centric one. [Associated Press, Barbie doll shortage only of white Barbies, The Arizona Daily Star, 12/18/95.]

Think Black

Leon Higginbotham is a black judge who has retired from the federal appellate court. In the opening lecture of a series at New York University Law School called "Black Thought in Progress," he sharply criticized black Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for having forgotten how to "think black." Judge Higginbotham noted that Justice Thomas is trying to follow the original intent of the framers, and complains that this is not "the black way." Presumably, "the black way" is to interpret the law in ways favorable to blacks. [Editorial, Higginbotham v. Thomas, Wall St. Journal, 12/01/95 p.A14.]

Feminists, Awake!

Tammy Bruce is president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Like many feminists, she was outraged at the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial, and has made many impassioned public statements about the role that race played in the jury's decision. In November, she refused to appear on a Philadelphia talk show about the trial, and was quoted as saying she did not want to "argue with a bunch of black women" about the Simpson verdict.

This was too much for NOW's national organization. Patricia Ireland, national president, says that Miss Bruce "has clearly violated NOW's commitment to stopping racism," and the national board of directors has voted to censure her and demand an apology. Rather than apologize, Miss Bruce says, without being specific, "We're going to take action," and adds that NOW "will never be the same again." She could be right. The Los Angeles chapter is NOW's largest, and Miss Bruce has been president for seven years. [Racism issue leads NOW to censure, NYT, 12/11/95, p. A15.]

Shakedown

Flagstar Companies, the owner of Denny's restaurants, has begun to send checks to non-white customers who claim they got bad service because they were not white. The suit was filed by the Justice Department on behalf of six black Secret Service agents who said they had been forced to wait 55 minutes for food while 15 white colleagues got prompt service. The case was expanded into a class action suit, and in May, 1994, Denny's agreed to compensate no fewer than 294,537 former customers who, sensitivities heightened by the prospect of cash, claimed they had suffered discrimination. The six Secret Service officers will get $35,000 each. Checks for $177.71 will go to 158,483 claimants and another 135,996 will each get $132.28. The total cost to Denny's will be $46 million. [Denny's Bias Case to yield payments, NYT, 12/12/95.]

For "Shame"

In order to get an athletic scholarship, Kenneth Hayslip, a black University of Southern California athlete, needed a combined score of 700 on the SAT. After three tries, with scores of 480, 490, and 510, his fourth attempt produced a suspicious 780. The increase prompted the Educational Testing Service (ETS), administrators of the test, to cancel the score.

This was just one of the over 1,800 grades that the ETS challenges every year. Mr. Hayslip managed to get the score reissued through arbitration but says this is not enough. He is suing ETS, claiming that the score's suspension caused him $8 million worth of "shame" and "mortification." [Debra E. Blum, Suing Over the SAT, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/24/95, pp. A31-32.]

The Net Tightens

Scientists claim to have found the first gene that is clearly linked to a series of personality traits. The January issue of Nature Genetics reports that people with the gene are more impulsive, excitable, quick-tempered, and more inclined to seek novelty than people without it. About 15 percent of Europeans and Americans carry the gene. So far, there are no reports on whether the frequency varies by race. [Scientists Identify Gene linked to impulsive traits, WSJ, Jan. 2, 1996.]

A Homeland of their Own

Many of South Africa's 3.5 million mixed-race "coloreds" are increasingly opposed to the current black-dominated government. For one thing, they do not qualify for the majority of new affirmative actions programs because they are not considered black. Even if they could qualify as black, 75% of all South African coloreds vehemently reject any claims of racial kinship to the majority population.

Under apartheid, coloreds had separate schools and were denied the right to vote. Nevertheless, during the 1993 elections the overwhelming majority in the Western Cape Province, where coloreds are concentrated, voted for the white-controlled National Party. Many feared black domination as much as whites did.

Coloreds are increasingly conscious of their distinct cultural identity. Recently, a group of protesters marched on the South African Broadcasting Corporation, demanding a "coloreds only" television channel.

Since the end of apartheid, droves of blacks have been moving into what were once colored-controlled areas. Many coloreds find this migration intolerable and are demanding a colored homeland. To accomplish this, some activists in the 40,000-member Colored Resistance Movement have allied themselves with the National Party. They realize that if they help the Nats return to power, the new alliance would be far more likely than the current government to grant them a homeland.

Although many coloreds were anti-apartheid activists, they do not see this new spirit of cooperation with whites as a compromise. Malcolm Lupton, head of another "brown power" group called the Colored Resistance Movement, puts it this way: "For us, whites are not a big problem. They will never return to power anywhere on the African continent. . . . We see them as an asset." [Ken Wells, 'Coloreds' Struggle To Find Their Place In a Free South Africa, Wall St. Journal, 12/06/95.]

Dark Continent

Though no one quite knows why, the end of white rule in South Africa has been followed by a sharp increase in "witch" killing. Belief in witches is widespread among blacks; four fifths are estimated regularly to consult sangomas, who, though not technically witches, deal in mysterious folk medicines.

In some tribes, there is simply no such thing as an accident. Any unfortunate occurance must have been the result of witchery. Venda tribesmen also believe in zwivhuya according to which there is only a limited amount of wealth and happiness to go around; any extra can have been accumulated only through witchcraft.

According to traditional tribal practice, when someone is suspected of witchcraft a sangoma is called in to sniff out the culprit and then the chief determines punishment – usually banishment from the village. Lately, gangs of youngsters have stopped waiting for the chief's sentence and summarily kill the witch. They often sing ANC "liberation" songs while they burn, beat or stone the wretch to death. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are killed this way every year.

In the far north of the country there is a town called Motonawabaloi, which means "place of the witches" in the Sotho language. One hundred twenty-two people live there, all of them accused witches who managed to escape mob execution but dare not return to their homes. Witch-killing is not easy to stop because so many blacks sympathize with it. "Homeland" judges often let killers off lightly.

Some sangoma remedies are indistinguishable from witchcraft. According to a traditional practice called muti, strength can be gained by drinking a stew made of human body parts. To be effective the parts must have been removed while the original owner was still alive. The penis is considered particularly potent. [Witchcraft in South Africa, Economist, Dec. 9, 1995, p. 85.]

Separate in Death

The funeral parlor business is one of the most segregated in the country. In most areas, undertakers handle clienteles that are either exclusively white or exclusively black. Until 1985, funeral homes were labeled "white" or "black" in state directories, and there are still separate, black and white national undertakers' organizations. The business is actually getting more segregated. Until recently, small towns could support only one funeral director, who buried everyone. Now, families are more likely to drive to a nearby town to get service from someone of the same race.

Undertakers who still do handle both races say that traditions differ. Whites like to put the body in the ground in two to four days, while blacks often wait eight to ten days for family members to gather. White services are reserved, while black funerals are boisterous and full of song. Whites tend to show their sympathy for the bereaved during a visitation period, while blacks like to attend the funeral itself. Nationally, in 1993, 21 percent of American corpses were cremated, but fewer than one percent of black corpses were cremated. "Why burn twice?" is a common objection. [Suzi Parker, Equal but separate, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 9/6/95, p. F1.]

Ethnic groups also differ in whether they want to be told they have fatal diseases. Only 35 percent of Korean Americans think patients should know the truth. The figure for Mexican-Americans is 48 percent; blacks, 63 percent; whites, 69 percent. [Lindsey Tanner, Truth not always best, doctors told, Houston Chronicle, 9/13/95, p. 11A.]

African Americans

What may be the best-preserved West African tribal community has been found in the jungles of – South America. In the 17th century, African slaves were brought to work the plantations of Surinam. Many escaped and fled into the wild interior to establish villages. Today, there are six tribes of Maroons, so called from the Spanish word cimarron, which means a runaway horse that has gone wild. Maroon villages are still unlinked by roads and can be reached only by canoe.

Maroon society is matrilineal, as it is in Africa, and in the evening parents tell their children spider fables from Ghana. The Maroons worship snakes, and build thatched spirit houses for them along the forest paths. Recently, the Maroons have decided to promote tourism. "We want to show white people we are clever and smart, that we have a culture equal to theirs," explains a tribal leader. [Laurie Goering, 'Pure' African culture thrives in S. America, Chi Trib, 9/11/95, p. 11.]

You Tax Dollars At Work

New York State has discovered that at least 700 prisoners collected welfare during 1994-95 while they were in jail. It is illegal to do so, but people simply sell or give away their welfare-benefits and social services cards. The state estimates that at least $200,000 was spent in the name of people who were actually behind bars; many got kickbacks from the new beneficiaries. The state makes no attempt to recover the money or to prosecute cheaters, so this is a no-risk crime. [Beating the System, Reader's Digest, Nov. 1995.] 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 – In his December letter, Sheldon Thomas describes the races as "incompatible." Rabbi Mayer Schiller, in an earlier article suggests that "deep cultural differences" may be just as important a part of this as heredity, and this may be a more effective way to discuss the subject with liberals. Even those who bridle at the idea of genetic reasons for racial differences in IQ maybe willing to accept the view that black (and Hispanic) Americans simply have imperatives that are not compatible with those of whites. It is increasingly obvious that each tribe has its own destiny and that it is impossible to throw tribes together and expect them to form a nation.

In her letter in the same issue, Janet Hollander says that "race has poisoned every institution" in America. This is a perfect illustration of what I mean. Whites view welfare as a means of getting people back on their feet, or as a way to protect the helpless. Blacks tend to view it as partial "reparation." Other liberal institutions are likewise poisoned. If it were not for the growing number of disaffected and even hostile groups, it might be possible to rehabilitate criminals, and the government might have a legitimate role in training the unskilled, and taking care of the aged. Eugenics and population control would not be called "genocide," the courts could do their job, etc.

I used to try to maintain a liberal position on race (although I was always opposed to busing and racial quotas). But now that I understand that the races are incompatible, and that a majority of blacks are hostile to whites (not usually on a personal basis but in the abstract) I feel an amazing peace of mind. I'm prepared for atrocities like the O.J. Simpson verdict, or the dangers that every city dweller faces. I don't accept them, of course, but they no longer violate my view of how the world somehow should be.
Paul Neff, Cambridge Mass.

Sir – It was encouraging to see in the January issue that Frank Borzellieri is alive and well, and continuing his one-man campaign against the multi-cultural insanity which is the New York City public school curriculum. I recall the media firestorm over Mr. Borzellieri's attempt to remove the revisionist pap that the board of education considers legitimate, and I remember cheering for him.
The intensity of the media attack on Mr. Brozellieri revealed just how terrified the press and those in authority are of the "R"-word. Mr. Borzellieri is only partially correct, however, in his assessment of the general public. It is not "people" who are, by nature conformist cowards. It is only the white heterosexual male who seems to have lost his will to survive. Blacks, women, homosexuals, and other "minorities" are taking care of their interests quite nicely.
Jerold Weiner, Blairstown, N.J.

Sir – In your November account of the Simpson verdict you call black prosecutor, Christopher Darden, a decent man who believed that black jurors could be fair jurors. Maybe so, but he is no friend of ours. Recently he gave a lecture in New York City, during which he was careful not to criticize the jury, and said that although he was studying the transcript he had not yet decided whether the verdict was based on race. "I don't believe in color lines," he went on to say. "I'll tell you something, you see the way our kids are dating, in 50 or 60 years, we're all going to be taupe."

Mr. Darden would be happy to do his part; he played the white women in the audience as if he were a rock star. An usher named Yvonne wanted to know whether he wears "Fruit of the loom or silk boxers." He invited Yvonne to come backstage afterwards and find out. Another white woman held up a National Enquirer article with the headline, "Darden is Romancing 5 Women and Marcia Isn't One of Them." "Only five?" asked Mr. Darden.
S.R. Smith, Monroe, N.Y.

Sir – In his introduction to reviews of two books by the Social Contract Press, Thomas Jackson rather neatly described the dilemma racialists face: Whites really do appear to have lost some kind of basic instinct for group survival. If group consciousness really has flickered out, arguing about racial displacement or the destruction of the gene pool is like explaining colors to a blind man.

However, I do not believe whites have completely lost their racial instincts. First of all, they have not lost the instinct for individual survival. They send their children to private schools and live in the white part of town. They avoid non-whites when they can. Race is an unacknowledged negative factor in virtually every important decision they make.

Whites must do two things: (1) expand the thinking that governs individual strategies – many of which are obviously race-conscious – into group strategies and (2) make race their own race – a positive factor in decision – making. This kind of change may be difficult but it is not impossible. I have seen it in myself and others, and anyone who finally grasps the importance of race will never again let it slip away.
William P. Orr, Salinas, Cal.


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