Justice Grinds On
On the evening of Feb. 20, 1990, Robert Simon and Anthony Carr — both black — were burgling Carl Parker’s house in Lambert, in Mississippi’s Quitman County. Mr. Parker, along with three other family members — all white — arrived home to find a pickup truck loaded with loot just about to drive off. The surprised thieves held the Parker family at gun point and tied up Mr. Parker’s 12-year-old half-brother Greg and then shot him in the back. They raped and sodomized his nine-year-old half-sister Charlotte Jo before they killed her. They shot his stepmother, Bobbie Jo in the chest, and they also killed Carl Parker himself. They cut off his ring finger to get his wedding band — whether before or after they killed him is not known. Then they dragged the four bodies into Mr. Parker’s house and burned it down over them.
Mr. Simon and Mr. Carr were arrested, tried, and given the death penalty, but the story did not end there. The usual appeals mean that nine years later the two men are still alive — and that the people of Quitman county are still paying. Various trials and appeals have already cost more than $250,000, since the county had to pay for defense lawyers for the two indigent blacks. Continued legal maneuvering is estimated to cost $60,000 a year. This is a lot of money for a poor, rural Mississippi county of only 10,500 residents. The county has taken out loans and raised taxes twice in order to cover the cost of defending the killers.
Scott Parker, Carl Parker’s 34-year-old son, was not with his father that Friday night. He lives and works in Quitman County. “They take money out for my taxes,” he explains. “Part of that money is going to the guys who killed my daddy. That’s not right.” (Allen Breed, Price of Justice Makes Poor County Even Poorer, Detroit News, March 21, 1999, p. 19A.)
Back to the Old Ways
The Zimbabwean Supreme Court has decided that some pre-colonial traditions are better than the white man’s ways. In a unanimous, 5-0 decision, the court found that the “nature of African society” is such that women cannot be considered the legal equals of men. According to unwritten custom, a woman is not really an adult but a “junior male.” This means women do not have the right to inherit property or conduct their own marriage arrangements. In divorce cases they have no legal rights to their children. The Supreme Court justices noted that the Zimbabwe constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of “race, tribe, place of origin, political opinions, color or creed,” but argued that “these provisions do not forbid discrimination based on sex.” (Neely Tucker, Ruling Strips Zimbabwe Women of Most Rights, Orange County Register, April, 14, 1999, p. 11.)
Meanwhile, earlier this spring, civil war in Sierra Leone wrought particularly grizzly carnage. Rebels fighting against the government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah had taken parts of the capital, Freetown, but were pushed back by a West African intervention force composed of troops from the region. As part of its retreat, the Revolutionary United Front and its allies slaughtered and maimed thousands of civilians. The rebels’ favorite tactic was to chop off hands and arms, sometimes offering the victim the choice of “short sleeves” or “long sleeves” — to be cut above or below the elbow. European doctors estimate that approximately a quarter of the victims survived these amputations, which were carried out with axes and machetes on men, women, and children.
Some of the most vicious rebels were only children; the government captured “soldiers” as young as eight years old. As they withdrew from Freetown, the rebels taunted the people they had maimed, urging them to apply to the government for new arms and hands. U.N. officials report that one rebel woman specialized in cutting off the ears of Freetown residents, and wore her trophies around her neck. Other rebels preferred to cut off lips. The conflict has pitted different tribal groups against each other. (Dean Murphy, West African Rebels on Mutilation Campaign, Los Angeles Times, March 14, 1999, p. A14.)
Out of the Mouths of . . .
The Contra Costa (California) Times recently published a guest editorial expressing the following sound views:
Although the United States is no Yugoslavia, Americans can ill afford to ignore disturbing signs of rising racial and ethnic tensions at home. . . . this country is now experiencing the greatest sustained inflow of immigrants in its history, over 1.2 million per year on the average, plus hundreds of thousands of ‘temporary’ workers.’
Recent newcomers have come from over 100 countries, and are not assimilating.
. . . competition for resources and differences in culture and ethnicity are often the main dividing forces in multiethnic societies, as illustrated by the mass killings in the former Yugoslavia and recent atrocities committed against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia.
. . . immigration is a time-bomb that must be addressed.
A necessary and urgent step is for Washington to lower annual immigration to no more than the traditional level of approximately 200,000 a year.
The name of the author? Yeh Ling-Ling. (Yeh Ling-Ling, What Can Kosovo Teach Us? Contra Costa Times, May 15, 1999.)
Who Is Black?
African-Americans and Haitian immigrants are not getting along in Miami. The latest row concerns how to spend a $118,000 federal grant earmarked for Broward County. The grant was sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and came with the stipulation that it be used to help “. . . African-Americans living with HIV/AIDS.” Native blacks took the wording to mean it was strictly for them while Haitian leaders claimed they also qualified under the definition.
A nine-member “multicultural committee of the Broward County HIV Health Services Planning Council” was charged with settling the dispute. For two hours the panel heard arguments about who qualified as an African-American. After much yelling the panel voted six to two (with one abstention) that Haitians must be included — though dark-skinned Cubans need not apply. One committee member who voted against including Haitians was Tyrance Kingdom who said, “What you’re seeing here — again — is money being railroaded from the black community. I’m from Mississippi and “African-American’ means “black-American.’”
Mr. Kingdom may have to get used to Haitian dominance in Miami, since their numbers are increasing more rapidly than those of native blacks. In the mean time, the future majority does not think it is being well treated. One immigrant writes: “My experience as a Haitian-American with African-American schoolmates was one filled with racial epithets such as “H.B.O. (Haitian body odor),’ Haitians eat cats, Haitians are boat people, and Haitians have AIDS . . . These African-American kids were taught at home to despise Haitians.” (Marc Mathieu, Immigrant Song, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, January 28-February 3, p.3. Paul Belden, Color Blinded, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, January 28 — February 3, 1999, pp. 5.)
Kill the Messenger
The US Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights has been quietly circulating a warning to universities that it frowns on the use of SAT scores in determining student admissions. The SAT has a “disparate impact” on blacks and Hispanics, which is to say they don’t score as well as whites or Asians. Arthur Coleman, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, says, “To the extent that schools are recipients of federal funds and are not aware of potential discrimination issues, we hope this guide [the warning] will inform them.” Use of the SAT has not yet been forbidden and no federal suits have been brought against schools that use it, but unless there is some mobilization against the department’s position, schools could lose their most reliable gauge of student ability. (Alan R. Lang, Blaming the SATs, Wall Street Journal, June 10, 1999.)
Le Pen v. Mégret
In the February issue AR reported on a very damaging split in the French nationalist movement, which pitted the Front National’s Jean-Marie Le Pen against his best known lieutenant, Bruno Mégret. The two men have been battling in court over which faction is the legitimate Front National and therefore entitled to use the party name, occupy its buildings, and receive the nearly $8 million a year the FN gets from the government on the basis of its past vote-winning record. The Mégret group argues that it was formed as the result of a properly constituted party congress, which elected the former number-two man as head of the party. However, in May, a French court ruled that the break-away congress was not called on the basis of enough valid signatures of party members, and that its deliberations therefore were not official Front National acts. The Mégret group is therefore a new party and must have a separate name, premises, and finances. The new party’s name is National Movement, but the two parties together are considerably weaker than the old, united FN. (Frank Mess-mann, Court Rules in Favor of Far-Right Leader Le Pen, Agence France Press, May 11, 1999.)
Much to the horror of the rest of his family, Charles de Gaulle (the famous general’s 50-year-old grandson) campaigned with Mr. Le Pen for elections to the European Parliament. In the May 19th issue of France’s leading but lefty newspaper, Le Monde, no fewer than 57 of the general’s descendants berated their cousin for throwing in his lot with the nationalists. “No, Mr. Charles de Gaulle . . . your name doesn’t belong to you, it doesn’t belong to you to use it to defend ideas and men who for half a century have been the enemies of what Gen. de Gaulle represented,” they wrote. “We, his grandsons, his granddaughter, his great nieces and nephews, unanimously protest against the insult to the life and memory of our grandfather and grand uncle.” Charles had a ready answer: “Jean-Marie Le Pen has the same ideas as the general. That’s the reality.” (Deborah Seward, De Gaulle’s Grandson Appalls Family, AP, May 19, 1999.)
As AR goes to press, it appears that Mr. Le Pen and Mr. de Gaulle are headed for seats in the European Parliament, with the FN winning just under six percent of the vote. Mr. Mégret’s National Movement got just over three percent, shy of the five percent that would have meant representation in Brussels and reimbursement of campaign expenses. The combined total for the two former partners was about nine percent, well below the 15 percent predicted before the split. Mr. Mégret put a brave face on defeat, but the results do not augur well for his struggling new party.
A report from Harvard Law School and the Graduate School of Education says that school resegregation is on the rise. A study of enrollment patterns from 1968 to the mid 1990s finds that although the number of non-white students is rising, more and more of them are going to schools with few whites. During this nearly 30-year period Hispanic enrollments were up 218 percent, and nearly 75 percent of Hispanics now attend schools that are majority non-white. The number of black students has risen 22 percent, and 69 percent attend majority-non-white schools. Over the same period, white enrollments have declined by 16 percent but most whites go to schools that are 80 percent or more white. The study finds that these trends hold true even for whites who live in majority-non-white areas and for non-whites who live in the suburbs. Schools that are mostly black and Hispanic are 11 times more likely than mostly-white schools to be in areas with concentrated poverty. Black students are most heavily segregated in the following states, in the following order: Michigan, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland. (Anjetta McQueen, Report Cites Resegregation Trend, AP, June 12, 1999.)
‘Racism’ Everywhere
Whenever a white police officer shoots a black criminal there are shouts of “racism.” Now blacks in Chicago are grumbling about “racism” even when the officers doing the shooting are black. During the June 5-6 weekend a black woman being pursued by police was shot when a black officer thought the cell phone in her hand was a gun. On the same weekend, a black officer accidentally shot a black man who went for the officer’s gun.
On June 9, a Chicago city council meeting erupted into shouting and shoving when protesters accused officials of downplaying the idea that “racism” was somehow to blame. Alderman Dorothy Tillman, who is black, thinks black officers are being taught to mistreat blacks. “We cannot sugarcoat this,” she said. “We cannot say that these were black officers and that’s it.” She has demanded that the city hand over data that would back up her assumption that black police mistreat black citizens just as white police do. The Chicago police superintendent reports that no fewer than five separate investigations into the shootings are under way. (Martha Irvine, Answers Sought in Police Shootings, AP, June 10, 1999.)
Responsible black officers are just as likely as white officers to find “racial profiling” useful. When this fact is discovered it will no doubt be seen as evidence of “self-hatred” or “racist indoctrination” rather than as a necessary and effective measure against black crime.
Keeping the Game Black
The National Minority College Golf Championship has been held annually for the last 13 years, but this year something unusual happened. The winning team, which won with a 28-stroke lead, was all white. Bethune-Cookman College, a “historically black” school in Daytona Beach, provoked outrage and an immediate rule change when its carefully-recruited five-man team walked off with the trophy.
“It was very frustrating to see, I can tell you that,” said Craig Bowen, executive director of the tournament. “Our purpose is to provide a venue for minority student-athletes in a sport that has long been short on minority athletes.”
Bethune-Cookman was not alone in fielding an all-white team. “So did Jackson State and Tennessee State, schools with overwhelmingly black student bodies and traditions,” complained Mr. Bowen. “When you go out and recruit white players, it’s totally counter to what we want to do here.” Jackson State finished second.
Tournament organizers are determined to keep white hands off the trophy. Henceforth, a team may have no more than two whites on it, and the competition will be open to any university with at least three non-whites on its team.
Gary Freeman, Bethune-Cookman’s golf coach, smells a double standard. “No one raises any complaints when Duke University, a mostly white school, plays in national tournaments with black players,” he pointed out. “Why are they raising a stink when we play with white players?” Mr. Freeman said that if the new rules prevent him from bringing his best players to next year’s tournament, Bethune-Cookman will not defend its title. “I’m not putting up any quotas on my team,” he says. (John Steinman, B-CC is Blasted for Golf Victory, Orlando Sentinel, June 5, 1999.)
The New South Africa
Reason, the libertarian magazine, continues to publish excellent articles about life in post-apartheid South Africa. The June issue reports that the murder rate of 63 per 100,000 is now nine times that of the United States and that for white farmers — who have been systematically targeted — the rate is a staggering 120. The same article notes that the police absenteeism rate is about 30 percent a day, and that in 1997 14 percent of the national police force were charged with crimes.
The article continues: “To make matters worse, President Nelson Mandela celebrated his 80th birthday last year by releasing 9,000 criminals early. The next day two of them murdered an elderly couple. Another released convict, who had been imprisoned for raping a 50-year-old woman and then hacking her to death, promptly tied up and raped his two nieces, 13 and 14, and went onto rape at least five other children.”
Elsewhere, the article notes the sharp increase in carjackings and observes: “One ANC official denied there had been a real increase in hijackings, claiming that “whites’ were making fraudulent reports to collect insurance payments. Another official blamed the hijackings on what he described as the apartheid government’s policy of giving hijackers immunity from prosecution. He didn’t explain how a government that has been out of power for five years could give immunity to people committing carjackings now.” (Jim Peron, Crime Stoppers, Reason, June, 1999, p. 56.)
Will They Wear Black?
The United Cricket Board of South Africa has decided that the game is too white. During a two-day development conference in May, the board decided that the entire sport — players, umpires, administration — must be 50 percent black in three years. The goal is to achieve a 25 percent representation in the first year, 40 percent the next, and 50 percent in the third year. That is supposed to set in motion trends that will eventually lead to the sport becoming dominated by blacks in proportion to their percentage in the South African population. Beginning immediately, provinces are forbidden to field all-white teams in senior competitions. (Rodney Hartman, Cricket “Must Have 50-50 Racial Split,’ Sunday Times (London), May 30, 1999.)
Frisco Follies
On April 13, a black man was found bound and gagged in front of Buena Vista Park in San Francisco. The man, whom police have not identified, claimed he had been abducted by four “neo-Nazi types” who held him in a van and carved a swastika on his chest. San Francisco police investigated the incident as a hate crime and even went to Oregon to look for leads and interview potential suspects. Meanwhile, officials from the police crime lab turned up inconsistencies in the man’s story. He eventually confessed that he made up the whole incident, telling police that he scratched the swastika on himself and tied himself up “for personal reasons.” (Ray Delgado, Man Admits Inventing Racist Assault in San Francisco, San Francisco Examiner, May 8, 1999, p. A5.)
Sonia Gandhi is the widow of assassinated Congress Party Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi. Last year she became the leader of her husband’s party, which is in opposition to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party. In April she announced a bid to become prime minister as head of a Congress-led government. Mrs. Gandhi is a white woman from Italy who married the former prime minister, and became an Indian citizen in 1983. The BJP has criticized her non-Indian origins, calling her a “foreigner” who is unfit to lead.
Now members of her own party are saying the same thing. Three high-ranking officials of the Congress party — including a former parliamentary speaker and a former candidate for prime minister — want the Indian constitution amend-ed to reserve the posts of president, vice president and prime minister for “natural-born Indian citizens.” In a letter to Mrs. Gandhi, Congress party officials explained, “It is not possible that a country of 980 million . . . can have anyone other than an Indian born of Indian soil, to head its government. It is an issue that effects not just the security, the economic interest and the international image of India, but hits at the core pride of every Indian.” Mrs. Gandhi dropped out of the race a few days later. (Nativists in Own Party Spurn Gandhi’s Prime Minister Bid, Washington Times, May 17, 1999, p. A15. Pamela Constable, Gandhi Drops Out; Party in Turmoil, Washington Post, May 18, 1999, p. A15.)
Fact-Free Duluth
In 1998 a Duluth, Minnesota, group called Violence Free Duluth, decided to study a year’s worth of city gun crimes. Among the factors they were to consider were the type of gun used, the role of alcohol and drugs, relationship between offender and victim, and the age, race and sex of the criminals. In April, the group released its study of the 93 gun crimes reported in 1997 but they left one thing out: race of offenders. Frank Jewell, coordinator of the group, said this was because “there’s a real concern among people of color that if the data shows a high number (of minority offenders), they’re doing more of it. But many people would say they’re simply arrested more. We didn’t include it because we thought it might be misinterpreted.” Mr. Jewell declined to divulge what the race data showed.
Even the police — at least officially — approve of suppressing the facts. Deputy Police Chief Robert Grytdahl says the truth might make whites smug: “It’s a comfortable place for white people to park the (gun crime) problem. It would be a huge distraction, and we wanted to focus on firearms.” (Larry Oakes, Duluth Gun, Crime Study Withholds Race Data, Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 30, 1999.)
Gap Widens
The achievement gap between black and white students grew in 17 states and narrowed in seven between 1992 and 1998 according to an Education Trust report based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading scores. The gap between whites and Hispanics grew in eight states and narrowed in four.
Nationwide, the percentage of white fourth graders reading above “proficient achievement” level on the NAEP rose from 35 percent in 1992 to 39 percent in 1998. The black rate rose from eight to ten percent and Hispanics dropped from 16 to 13 percent. (Some States’ Racial Test Score Gaps Continue to Widen, Montgomery Advertiser, March 6, 1999.)
New Century Foundation (NCF), which publishes American Renaissance, has issued an academic report on race, crime, and violence called The Color of Crime. It contains some of the same information as the cover story of this issue, but is much more rigorous in its treatment of the data. It is directed toward a skeptical, academic or journalistic audience, and includes citations of sources, explications of methods, and even several facsimile pages from key government data sources. The 16-page report, which has been widely distributed to the press, is available on the NCF website. On June 2, Jared Taylor held a news conference at the National Press Club to announce release of the report. The conference was broadcast live by C-SPAN, and resulted in tremendous public interest. NCF has been flooded with calls and letters, many from police departments and officer organizations. The complete conference can be seen on the C-SPAN website.
Here They Come
An estimated 12,000 Africans are expected to immigrate to the United States in 1999. This is the largest number ever admitted in a single year, and is four times the number that came in 1990. Most are Somalis, Ethiopians, and Liberians, and come as “refugees.” The increase has been the result of political pressure on Congress from refugee aid organizations. Many of the refugees come to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and are expected to start chain-migration applications for relatives in Africa. As the numbers increase in the Twin Cities, other Africans in the United States can be expected to move there, too. The area now offers excellent opportunities for teachers, social workers, and hospital attendants who speak Amharic or Somali. (Kimberly Taylor, Largest Number of Africans are Coming to the U.S., Star Tribune (Minneapolis/St. Paul), June 6, 1991.)
When it comes to choosing names for their children Brazilians have — well — made a name for themselves. Just about anything goes. Xerox, Welfare, D’Artagnan, Saddam Hussein, Tchaikovsky, Waterloo, Skylab — such are some of the surprises to be found in the telephone book. American-sounding names that end in on — which has a particularly hearty ring in Brazilian ears — are especially favored by slum-dwellers: Anderson, Robson, Washington, and Edson (a corruption of Edison). Many Brazilians just like the way a name looks or sounds. Portuguese does not use the letters K, W, or Y, so some parents use them deliberately. Diana, which was popular because of the late princess, becomes Tayane. Caroline becomes Kerolyne, and Malcolm becomes Myacon.
There is a law on the books that forbids names that would expose children to ridicule but it is rarely enforced. One bureaucrat, however, refused to let a mother name her boy Rambo, and even rejected her second choice: Sylvester Stallone. Sometimes parents choose names with the best of intentions. One man named Waterloo explains that his father thought the family was going to move to England and wanted his son to have a name that would fit right in.
The upper classes stick to more traditional names, but the rest of the country has had iconoclastic tendencies for a long time: During the Second World War, Adolph Hitler was a popular name. (Sebastian Rotella, What’s in a Name? At Time, Fun, LA Times, May 17, 1999, p. A1.)
Be Prepared
The Kenyan government has set a deadline of April 2000 for a report on preparations for the year 2000 computer problem. (No Need to Rush, Houston Chronicle, April 25, 1999, p. 2A.)