Serving the People
C. Vernon Mason, the black lawyer who has attached himself to every incendiary racial case in the New York area he could find, has been disbarred. Having made a name for himself as a great friend of the black man through his well-publicized involvement in such cases as the Tawana Brawley hoax and the Howard Beach incident, Mr. Mason was frequently retained by the families of black felons. A disciplinary panel — which held 52 sessions and produced 8,000 pages of transcript — recently found that he routinely swindled his customers. [Scott McConnell, C. Vernon Mason’s disbarment: We may not be better off, NY Post, 2/1/95.]
Hast Seen the White Female?
Picturesque Greek fishing villages are frequent vacation destinations for Northern Europeans. The tourists have given rise to the profession of “kamakia” or harpooning, who try to make a living by seducing foreign women. The favorite targets are blondes with blue eyes.
Dr. Sofka Zinovieff, an anthropologist who spent two years studying the “kamakia,” explains their preference this way: “Many see themselves belonging to a poorer, inferior society, and by conquering foreign tourists from the supposedly superior ones, they have some revenge.” [Helena Smith, Modern Zorba the Greeks are still on the prowl for women, 1/24/95, no paper name, but story taken from London Observer Service.]
Three Words and You’re Out
Poor Francis Lawrence. Last November, the president of Rutgers University said the following at a faculty meeting:
The average S.A.T. for African-Americans is 750 [out of 1600]. Do we set standards in the future so that we don’t admit anybody with the national test? Or do we deal with a disadvantaged population that doesn’t have the genetic hereditary background to have a higher average?
Someone was recording his remarks — which went unchallenged at the time — and leaked them to the press in January. Dr. Lawrence has been apologizing and backpedaling ever since. “What I intended to say,” he now explains, “was that standardized tests should not be used to exclude disadvantaged students on the trumped-up grounds that such tests measure inherent ability.” [John Nordheimer, Rutgers Leader disavows linking race and ability, NYT, 2/1/95, p. B5.]
There is much to ponder here. First, non-whites at Rutgers have been baying for his head, despite the fact that Dr. Lawrence has been one of the most ardent advocates of racial preferences, speech codes, and multiculturalism on any American campus. His record and his abject apologies meant nothing; he had to be fired. Thus do non-whites reward their benefactors. In February, when the university’s Board of Governors announced that Dr. Lawrence would be kept on, some black activists shed tears of grief.
Clearly, many blacks believe that Dr. Lawrence meant what he said at the faculty meeting. It would be significant if, indeed, he believes that blacks do not have the same genetic endowments as whites, but still deserve affirmative action. This might become the fallback position for the defenders of racial preferences, once the facts about IQ have become too well known to be ignored. Race-based handouts are all the more necessary, it might be argued, if some races face built-in limitations.
Starting Young
A recent issue of the DC comic, Green Lantern, has a battle to the death between a band of contemporary Nazis and a noble black member of the heroic green lanterns. Part of the conflict involves a beautiful white woman after whom one of the Nazis lusts but who is depicted several times expressing her preference by sleeping with the noble black. She watches the final, climactic battle and rushes into the black man’s arms after the last evil blond Nazi falls dead.
Likewise, in an issue of Topps Comic’s Lone Ranger released in February, Tonto gets tired of playing the white man’s sidekick and declares independence. “I’m not your Indian. I’m not anyone’s Indian,” screams Tonto, as he flattens the Lone Ranger with a vicious uppercut. [Who was the thrashed man?, NY Post, 2/20/95.]
The following message was left on the answering machine at American Citizens Together, an organization in Anaheim, California that is active in the movement to control America’s borders:
You’re wasting your time, man. We’re going to take your country whether you like it or not. You know there are so many of us. Now you know, you might as well give it up, man. We’re going to control your government and everything, because of sheer numbers. Don’t you realize we have the freedom to vote now, and that we’re out-reproducing you people six to one.
“Who do you think’s going to be running this state, man? Give it up. Take a vacation. You’ve had it, man. Now we’re going to take your country from you — something the Japs couldn’t do. We’re going to do it easy, and you’re going to help us — your government — ‘cause you’re stupid.
Cleaning up Graffiti
Many of the neighborhoods in the East San Fernando Valley of California were very pleasant when they were first built, immediately following the Second World War. Now, Hispanics have moved into many of them, and the remaining whites note that graffiti have moved in with them.
William Masters therefore became something of a celebrity when he put a violent end to a Mexican spray-painting party. In February, Mr. Masters was taking his regular midnight walk when he found two men defacing a freeway overpass. He took down the license number of their car, but when the two men demanded that he hand over the piece of paper he did so. As Mr. Masters turned to walk away, one of the men then produced a screwdriver while the other approached him from behind.
Mr. Masters carries a nine-millimeter automatic with him when he goes strolling at midnight, and decided to use it, killing one of the Mexicans and wounding the other. The police declined to prosecute, concluding that Mr. Masters acted in self-defense. “I didn’t do anything until they threatened to perforate my abdomen,” he explains.
Hispanics are furious, but Mr. Masters is the toast of the town. He also continues to take his midnight walk, and is not afraid of retaliation. “Those guys know I shoot straight,” he explains. [Scott Lindlaw, Slaying of vandal strains ties in graffiti-weary community, Buffalo News, 2/19/95, p. A10.]
Remember Bernie Goetz?
This reminds us of another screwdriver incident, which took place in New York City in 1984. Four blacks, one of them carrying a sharpened screwdriver, approached Bernard Goetz on a subway train and asked for money. Mr. Goetz, who had been mugged before, drew a weapon and started shooting. His aim was poor and he got no kills but he winged all four. Ten years later, Mr. Goetz is living quietly in Greenwich Village. What about the four “youths?”
One has been in jail since 1985 for robbery and rape. Another is now serving three to seven years for robbery. The third was last convicted in 1990 for shoplifting. The fourth owes a crime-free ten years to that fateful meeting in the subway; he has been in a wheelchair ever since one of Mr. Goetz’ bullets paralyzed him. With the help of William Kunstler, he has launched a civil suit against Mr. Goetz and is asking for $50 million. [Great moments in the collapse of liberalism, Washington Times, 12/22/94, p. A20.]
No Discrimination Here
Stanford University claims to revere diversity, but the political affiliations of its faculty show a suspicious uniformity. Not one professor in the Psychology, African-American Studies, or Feminist Studies departments is a registered Republican. In the English department, Democrats have a 31-2 lead, and the scores elsewhere are History — 22-2, Sociology — 11-1, and Political Science — 26-4. In all the undergraduate humanities departments, only one in every twenty professors is Republican. [Aman Verjee, Does Stanford Engage in political discrimination? Wash Times, 1/9/95, p. A21.]
Not Rain Nor Snow Nor Hail of Bullets
The first of every month is a particularly dangerous time to carry the mail. That is when welfare checks arrive, and it is the favorite day for robbing mailmen. Los Angeles has been particularly hard hit, accounting for fully half of all 294 robberies of mailmen that occurred in 1994. In Watts, the post office doesn’t even deliver mail on the first. People come to the station to get their mail or wait until the next day. In other bad neighborhoods, 100 armed guards patrol the routes on check day.
In other areas, the post office has sent letters to hundreds of thousands of people, asking for cooperation. The letter explains that on the first, the mailman will honk three times when he parks his truck. Everyone in the neighborhood is then asked to show himself: sit on the porch, water flowers, walk the dog. As the letter explains, “When would-be thieves see potential witnesses keeping an eye on the mail and the letter carrier, they will leave instead of stealing your mail.” [John Mitchell, Robberies Lead Post Office to delay some L.A. mail delivery, LA times, 2/11/95, p. A32.]
A Question of Solidarity
Archbishop Mitty High School in West San Jose is a well-regarded Catholic school with 76 blacks among its 1,250 students. On Feb. 9, at an assembly for Black History Month, the leaders of the Black Student Union (for 76 students?) asked all present to stand and remove hats for the singing of “Lift Up Your Voice and Sing,” which has been called the black national anthem. Two or three whites did not remove their hats until asked to do so by a teacher and have been, according to school authorities, “severely” punished. Afterwards a few whites wore Confederate emblems on scarves or belt buckles, but this bit of protest was instantly snuffed out. [Marilyn Lewis, A sensitivity question, SJ Merc News, 2-25-95, p. 1A.]
In March, there was an entirely different display of student solidarity in Amelia, Virginia, 25 miles southwest of Richmond. A black woman teacher always made a point of wearing African clothes to school, including a headdress. The school, which has a rule that women are to cover their heads only for religious reasons, asked Delmarti Womack to leave her head bare. One hundred black students, out of a total of 183, then wore African clothes or dressed in black, to protest the school’s request. The school relented. [African clothes create racial divide at school, Wash times, 3/2/95.]
Successful Rally for Michael Westerman
On March 4, an estimated one thousand people gathered at the Jefferson Davis monument in Fairview, Kentucky, to mourn the death of Michael Westerman. Mr. Westerman was killed by blacks on January 14 for flying a Confederate battle flag from the back of his pickup truck.
The gathering, organized by the Council of Conservative Citizens, the Southern League, and the Heritage Preservation Association, was an important departure from the impotent silence that usually greets outrages by blacks against whites. The crowd, most of which had traveled from Nashville in a two-mile, flag-waving convoy, was treated to a number of rousing speeches. AR editor, Jared Taylor, put Mr. Westerman’s death into the larger national context of black racial violence against whites. He pointed out that much as Southerners may be tempted to see the incident in terms of Confederate heritage, Mr. Westerman was not killed by Yankees. He told a receptive crowd that all whites murdered by blacks should be memorialized, whether or not they fly the Confederate flag.
The rally was covered by a number of regional newspapers and television stations. The stories that emerged were generally fair and even sympathetic.
African Update
The Liberian civil war has gone on for five years — so long that it has dropped out of the news. The “nation” is now an ungoverned jungle of factions that are so numerous hardly anyone can keep track of them. One reporter interviewed what he took to be a typical young fighter, a lad who fell in love with shooting people when he started at age 15. To him, gunfire “sounded like reggae music.” At one point he was separated from his band, which had been fighting for warlord Charles Taylor, and found himself in territory controlled by warlord Roosevelt Johnson. He promptly started fighting with the Johnson clan against the Taylor clan. When the reporter asked him how he could switch sides so easily, he replied that he did not understand the question.
More than half of all Liberians have been driven from their homes. An estimated 150,000 have been killed. Eighty percent of the population survives on foreign relief rations. There has been no running water in the capital, Monrovia, for three years. Every few months, the electricity works for a few days. [John Balzar, War, woe lay waste to Liberia, 2/1/95, LA Times, p. A1.] Liberia is dissolving into darkness, illuminated by the occasional flash of an imported weapon.
Somalia is headed in the same direction. Three years, 30 dead, and 127 wounded Americans later, all foreign forces have abandoned the country. Americans claim that the rescue mission, started by George Bush, saved many starving Somalis — but for what? To die in renewed clan fighting? or when the next famine hits?
Undaunted, the U.S. State Department has announced high hopes for the new head of state of Sierra Leone, a 27-year-old army captain named Valentine Strasser. Capt. Strasser has impressed Americans with his “economic reforms” and his promise to establish democracy. The United States is giving the country surplus military equipment.
In fact, Sierra Leone is little different from its neighbor, Liberia. Outside the capital, insurgent bands — many of them just criminal gangs — block roads, rob travelers, and burn villages. It has become so unsafe to venture into the interior that no one can find out who leads these groups or whether they want anything other than plunder. About a third of the population are refugees and cholera has killed thousands of them. But Valentine Strasser has promised to establish democracy. [John Balzar, In a paranoid land, contagion of fear spreads, LA Times, 2/4/95, p. A2.]
In South Africa, the taxi wars have flared up again. Bush taxis, packed to the gills, are the country’s most common form of public transportation, and anyone with a van can get into the business. This has led to fierce turf wars, in which rivals simply shoot up each other’s vehicles, passengers and all. Nearly 200 people died in taxi battles last year, which only got worse after April’s all-race elections.
The new South Africa has not turned out quite the way columnist Mary McGrory expected. Last May, she wrote:
Nelson Mandela has won what the [Washington] Post calls ‘one of history’s sweetest victories over racial subjugation’ and he is going to keep it clean and beautiful so that newspaper readers will think they are reading scripture when they read dispatches from South Africa that cannot be read except through tears.
Master Race on the March
Despite yelps from Westerners, China has instituted a strong anti-dysgenic natality law. Couples that wish to marry must undergo a compulsory checkup for “genetic disease of a serious nature.” Doctors can veto marriages or births that are abnormal or prone to produce unhealthy children. Health Minister Chen Minzhang estimates that China cares for 10 million disabled people, most of whom would never have been born if the current law had been in effect. [Uli Schmetzer, China lays down the law on births, Chi Trib, 1/17/95, p. 5.]
Mob Rule
A group called 21st Century Vote, which is a spinoff of Chicago’s largest gang, the Black Gangster Disciples, fielded five former convicted felons in the aldermanic elections. The group, which sometimes uses unconventional tactics to get out the vote, finds inspiration in former convict Marion Barry’s reelection as mayor of Washington, D.C. Two felons have won enough votes to take part in the run-offs.
One candidate, Wallace (Gator) Bradley, says that gangs are not the problem. “The attacks on gangs are just a way to isolate the African-American community, to put fear into people. Look at fraternities. They have hazings. They’re a gang. The Police Department is a gang.” [Dirk Johnson, In Chicago, a gang tries to show political muscle, NYT, 2/28/95, p. A8.]
Rainbow Coalition
New York City has long been plagued with bands of black and Hispanic thugs who threaten violence if they are not hired to work on construction sites. This has become such a pleasant racket that the bands have begun to fight each other for turf — along racial lines. The latest skirmish was in Times Square on Valentine’s day, fittingly enough. Lunch-time strollers were treated to the sight of blacks and Hispanics waving baseball bats, chasing each other through mid-town traffic. Two men were shot and 15 were arrested. [Richard Perez-pena, Work crews’ clash leads to gunfire on 42nd St., NYT, 2/15/95, p. B1.]
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, black and Hispanic gangs have brought their warfare into the jails. The two groups have never been friendly, but relations have been especially bad since the Mexican mafia began to move into the drug business. In January 1994, Mexican prisoners started the largest-ever racial brawl in the city’s history. Hundreds of inmates were involved and 76 were injured in battles that raged sporadically for seven hours. Violence even spilled out into the high schools, where blacks and Hispanics attacked each other.
Since then, jailers have made every effort to keep the races apart, and have managed a 56 percent reduction in black/Hispanic violence. One measure that has helped has been intensive strip-searching of convicts. Many have taken to smuggling metal rods into jail, concealed in their rectums. These can be sharpened on concrete and used as knives. Part of the search involves making naked prisoners bend their bodies in all directions. Those who cannot or will not bend are X-rayed.
“It’s amazing,” says one prison officer, “the lengths some of these guys will go to to hurt each other.” [Seth Mydans, Racial Tensions in Los Angeles Jails Ignite Inmate Violence, NYT, 2/6/95.]