The Majesty of the Law

A Martian watching the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas — at least before they were side-tracked by charges of sexual harassment — might well have concluded that the only questions that ever come before the court have to do with abortion and minority rights. The senators asking questions appeared to have nothing else on their minds.

Now that Judge Thomas has been confirmed, The Washington Post puts it this way: “The single most important duty of the court lies always in balancing the rights of minorities in a majority-driven society.” Such a statement would have astounded the men who signed the Constitution. They set up a federal judiciary to hear cases involving suits against the United States, suits involving citizens of different states, controversies between states, cases affecting ambassadors and public ministers, and treason. Now, their highest court is to devote itself mainly to the rights of non-whites.

Reeducation Accelerates

The campaign in schools to whoop up non-whites appears to be succeeding. According to a recent nation-wide survey, more 17-year-olds have heard of Harriet Tubman than of Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin. They are more likely to know who she is than to know that George Washington led the American army during the Revolution or to know that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Education Decelerates

The Comptroller of the State of New York has uncovered strange doings at something called the Academy for Science and Technology at the New York Technical College in Brooklyn. The Academy was set up in the late 1980s at the urging of a black Brooklyn assemblyman, Roger Green. It was supposed to encourage young Brooklyn non-whites to take an interest in math and science.

The Academy never had more than about 100 students, and they showed up for class less than half of the time. Most students received no grades. Of the $850,000 in public money given to the Academy, $500,000 disappeared without a trace. The same location, New York Technical College, already had a program that was supposed to turn young non-whites into mathematicians and scientists. The real surprise is that the state legislature has declined to give the Academy any more money.

This “Academy” was no doubt administered by blacks who claim to be devoted to the welfare of their people. One might expect devoted servants of the black race to stretch every penny to better the lives of the “underprivileged.” Instead, they squandered the money, just as African dictators squander the aid that white countries so faithfully and foolishly send them.

Education Pays

Jean LaMarre, chairman of the student senate of the City University of New York, is learning about big-time public service at an early age. In the first few months of last school year, the black speech major managed to authorize expenditures of more than $400,000 in student funds. This included $13,000 for limousines to carry Mr. LaMarre and a few other student leaders around town. The charge was a little high, he explained, because they always rented limos that had cellular phones. When student leaders aren’t in limousines, they stay in touch with telephone pagers of the kind that drug dealers use. Mr. LaMarre had City University pay for them, too.

Mr. LaMarre also hired his twin sister as executive assistant at $24,000 a year, and gave his best friend a $27,000 a year job, also as an assistant. When asked if this wasn’t a bit odd, he explained that he works better with people he gets along with. Mr. LaMarre also authorized $4,500 in air tickets so that three students (black, perhaps?) could attend the African-African American Summit held in the Ivory Coast.

Then there was $49,000 for a three-day student lobbying trip to Albany. Mr. LaMarre and 75 other students stayed at the Hilton and ran up $24,000 in room service bills. What were they lobbying for? The deficit-ridden state legislature was proposing a modest tuition hike, and Mr. LaMarre argued passionately that the 200,000 working-class students he represents couldn’t afford to pay more. Student senate funding comes out of an activity fee that all students must pay.

“I’m one of the poorest students,” explains Mr. LaMarre, who gets $650 a month for his senate work, and who has been reimbursed by the university for $8,197 in “personal expenses.” Mr. LaMarre, who lives with his mother in Brooklyn, is on full financial aid.

It would be a mistake to assume that even the chairman of the student senate has sole authority to spend $400,000. Mr. LaMarre’s spending was approved by Tilden LeMelle, who was vice chancellor for student affairs. Mr. LeMelle, who is also black, has since resigned to become president of the University of the District of Columbia.

Building a Browner Future

Although non-whites are still only one quarter of the U.S. population, they are younger than whites and have more children. By 1995, it is expected that one third of all public school students will be non-white.

In 1989, New Mexico, Hawaii, and the District of Columbia already had non-white majorities in public schools. By 1995, California and Mississippi will too. Whites are in the minority at the University of California at Berkeley and at the University of New Mexico, and are likely to dip below the 50 percent mark soon at other universities in the South West.

The state with the smallest number of non-white public school students (and, we might add, the highest average SAT scores) is New Hampshire. In 1989 it had only 1.2 percent. That figure is expected to jump to five percent by 1995.

Odd Bedfellows

Memorial Avenue, the most beautiful boulevard in Richmond (VA), gets its name from the statues of Confederate heroes that shelter beneath its great trees. Now, city officials want to put up statues of “civil rights” leaders to look the rebel generals in the eye.

Since 1977, the City Council has had a black majority. “The heroes of civil rights and the heroes of the Civil War in a democracy could stand alongside one another,” says Councilman Henry Richardson, who first proposed the new statues.

Muddled Masses

On October 14, the United States held a lottery to give 40,000 people the right to permanent residency — a giant first step to citizenship. All anyone had to do was mail a letter to Merrifield (VA); the first 40,000 to arrive that day would win. Applicants could send in as many copies of their letters as they liked, and some sent thousands. Three million arrived on October 14, and another six million were expected during the week. Illegal residents may apply just like anyone else. If they are chosen they are, in effect, amnestied. When Congress passed the great amnesty law for illegal aliens in 1986, it promised never to vote another amnesty again.

Applicants had to be from certain countries, mostly European, but could also be from Algeria, Indonesia, Japan, or Tunisia. 16,000 slots were to be set aside for the Irish. This silly procedure is a sop to Europeans and a few others, who are virtually excluded from the million or so immigrants who come by the usual routes. There will be similar lotteries in 1992 and 1993. Has any other country in the history of the world ever raffled itself off?

Blinkered Bankers

The Federal Reserve has just released a massive study showing something everyone already knew: that blacks and Hispanics are turned down for home mortgages more often than whites. Like virtually every other study done on bank lending, it simply counted heads; no one bothered to check the credit histories of the applicants or the quality of the collateral. Bankers point out that blacks and Hispanics are just not as credit-worthy as whites, but the usual yahoos are screaming “racism.”

How, exactly, is “racism” supposed to keep white bankers from making mortgages to blacks? No one has ever suggested that whites refuse to sell blacks shoes, for example, and handling a customer’s feet is a good deal more intimate than handling his credit application. It’s difficult to imagine thousands of white bankers depriving themselves of profits just because the customer was black.

Another detail: The study shows that Asians are less likely than whites to be turned down for mortgages. Is this supposed to be because white bankers are racially prejudiced in their favor?

Building a Blacker Future

The reason South African blacks are in ignorance and poverty, it is said, is because of the oppression of Apartheid. It doesn’t sound that way at the Veritas Secondary School in Soweto. Ten years ago, it was a model school, complete with science labs, home economics kitchens, and a library that “would rival the library in any white school,” according to one parent.

Now, thieves have stolen every book, and have even pulled out the shelves. The laboratory and kitchens were stripped long ago. Thieves have even ripped out the school’s wiring and plumbing, so it has neither electricity nor water. Rival tribal factions bring guns to school, and students threaten to kill each other. Once white rule is brought to an end, South Africa will begin to look more and more like the rest of black Africa.