Cincinnati Smoldering
On September 26, Cincinnati police officer Stephen Roach was found innocent of negligent homicide and obstructing official business, in connection with the shooting death of Timothy Thomas. The shooting prompted three days of rioting, and Officer Roach became the first Cincinnati police officer ever to be prosecuted for fatally shooting a suspect. Hamilton County Municipal Judge Ralph E. Winkler said Officer Roach shot Thomas in a “split-second reaction to a very dangerous situation that was created by Mr. Thomas,” and that Officer Roach believed he must either shoot or be shot by a suspect who fled from police and acted suspiciously in a dark alley in a high-crime neighborhood at two in the morning.
The judge’s decision angered blacks. Rev. Damon Lynch, III complained, “The officer clearly took a man’s life unjustifiably, and now he walks.” Ronald Dixon predicted more violence: “It’s about to be round two up here,” he said. “I wish there was a better way. But people are mad.” Sporadic violence did break out in Cincinnati’s black Over-the-Rhine-neighborhood, but city officials contained further outbreaks by ordering a city-wide curfew for the two nights following the verdict.
The verdict has by no means brought to an end the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation of the Cincinnati police department for civil rights violations. Despite a $17 million budget deficit, the city agreed to pay black (alleged) super-lawyer Billy Martin $195,000 to help fight the case. This turned out to be just a downpayment. His firm has already billed the city more than $300,000, and no end is in sight.
At an NAACP fund-raiser on Oct. 5, black Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree described the rioters not as thugs, but revolutionaries, and said the riots reflected legitimate frustration with the police and courts. [Jane Prendergast, Roach Not Guilty; City Under Curfew, Cincinnati Enquirer, Sept. 27, 2001. Kevin Aldridge, City Race Issues Analyzed, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 6, 2001, p. B5. Robert Anglen, Cincinnati’s Bill for Lawyer Over Limit, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 6, 2001, p. B7.]
Keeping Terrorists Out
The United States has finally changed its visa-granting procedures in light of the September terrorist attacks. Members of 74 terrorist groups and people who have contributed money to them will not be admitted into the country. Most of the groups are Middle-Eastern, but some have made trouble in places like Rwanda and Ireland. People who use positions of prominence — imams, college professors, journalists, etc. — to advocate terror will also be refused admittance. The Department of Justice says a computerized system to keep tabs on all foreign students could be operating by next summer. [Mary Sheridan, Immigration Rules Tightened, Washington Post, Nov. 1, 2001, p. A3.]
The FBI is slowly taking the gloves off when it comes to investigating religious leaders for potential terrorism. Muslim clerics have been bellowing hatred of the United States for years, but authorities have been shy about going after them. An FBI official reports that even after the events of Sept. 11, “the veil of religion that has been draped over mosques . . . will be tough to move off. The Arab-American community,” he adds “can become enraged and beat on the FBI.”
The classic case of FBI restraint was its unwillingness to look into the activities of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian radical who was finally convicted of planning the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Mr. Rahman arrived in the United States in 1990 despite years under suspicion in Egypt. For a time he had been held under house arrest for alleged support of the group that assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. He was released and then charged again by Egyptian police, but by that time he was in the United States. The FBI knew about his suspicious past and was aware of his harshly anti-American sermons, but hesitated to move against a religious figure. Mr. Rahman is now serving a life sentence for his part in the World Trade Center bomb attack. [Walter Pincus, FBI Wary of Investigating Extremist Muslim Leaders, Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2001, p. A4.]
Needless to say, the FBI’s job has been complicated by loose immigration policies that let people like Mr. Rahman into the country in the first place. The country is now likely to limit free speech and increase covert surveillance because it has foolishly let so many America-haters into the country.
The Chinese have a much more straightforward way of fighting terrorism. Some of their ticket agents have simply stopped selling airline tickets to people from Afghanistan, Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, and Pakistan. People with Palestinian passports can’t buy tickets either. [Helen Luk, Middle East Nationals Kept Off China Flights, Washington Times, Oct. 3, 2001, p. A5.]
Keeping it in the Family
Robert Johnson, chairman of Black Entertainment Television (BET), is a billionaire. Recently The New Republic looked into how he got that way. In 1979, Mr. Johnson hit upon the idea of starting a cable television station for black viewers. At that time, cities were the only untapped markets left for cable, which had already wired up the lucrative suburbs, and cable companies that could claim they were purveying black culture had a big political advantage. A Denver-based cable giant called TCI decided to put up $500,000 for a minority share in a joint venture for which Mr. Johnson put up only $15,000. TCI could then tell mayors and city councils then awarding cable deals that it could offer a black-owned, black entertainment channel. It got a lot of business. Ten years later, TCI admitted it never made much money on this lop-sided investment, but it made Mr. Johnson rich.
For broadcast content, BET has relied on the cheapest footage it can get its hands on, mainly music videos that record companies distribute as free promotion. These are mostly sex-and-swagger rap clips that give BET its characteristic feel. In 1996, one BET executive admitted she never let her daughter watch the channel.
Over the years, Mr. Johnson has given a lot of money to Democrats, but with George W. Bush in office, he has found new political allies. Back when Mr. Bush had other things on his mind besides Osama bin Laden, he was trying to eliminate the estate tax. To his dismay, a splashy group of white millionaires led by William Gates opposed abolition of the tax, arguing that the rich had an obligation to give wealth back to the community rather than to their children. It looked like the tax would stay.
Into the breach stepped Robert Johnson, arguing that the inheritance tax was racist and penalized blacks. He and some rich black friends took out newspaper ads claiming whites had inherited their money but blacks came into wealth by “a different way” (which, incoherently, meant their children should inherit money). The ad said abolishing the tax would let blacks keep their hard-earned wealth and “will help close the wealth gap in this nation between African American families and White families.” This was a curious argument, in that although blacks are 12 percent of the population, there are so few with large estates that they account for only one half of one percent of the people who pay the tax. Needless to say, Mr. Johnson would be among them, and dumping the tax would save his children a lot of money.
Simple-minded George let himself be played like a flute, and started acting as if lifting the tax were a “civil rights” issue. “As Robert Johnson of Black Entertainment Television argues,” he said, “the death tax and double taxation weighs heavily on minorities.” He was thick enough to add that abolition would allow people to transfer wealth “from one generation to the next, regardless of a person’s race.” Mr. Bush got rid of the tax and the Johnson family will keep its millions. [Jonathan Chait, Robert Johnson, W’s Favorite Race Baiter, New Republic, Aug. 27, 2001.]
‘White Slut’
When Rebecca Porcaro entered Seattle’s Rainier Beach High School in 1995, she was part of a white student minority of only 18 percent. The largest group was blacks, who taunted and harassed her virtually from the day she arrived. Almost daily she would hear: “White slut.” “Stupid white girl.” “White bitch, go back to Bellevue.” “This is our school.” She faced constant threats of violence and endless lewd propositions, and started skipping class. She also took as many off-campus classes as possible so as to get away from other students. She and her parents repeatedly tried to get help from school authorities (race unspecified), but were ignored. Miss Porcaro’s mother thinks Rebecca was singled out for particularly harsh treatment because she is blonde and dresses stylishly, which made her appear “super-white.” She is also convinced the school would have stopped the mistreatment if the victim had not been white. Last year, only eight percent of the school’s 683 students were white, 52 percent were black, 30 percent Asian, eight percent Hispanic and two percent were American Indian.
Miss Porcaro graduated in 1999 and eventually filed suit against the school district. She has now won an apology, a $40,000 settlement, and a promise that all high school teachers and staff will get race and sensitivity training — training that presumably includes the startling news that whites, too, can be victims of racial abuse. [Rebekah Denn, White Woman Settles School Reverse-bias Suit, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Aug. 14, 2001.]
Loss of Diversity Brings Boom
The city of Hoboken, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, is enjoying a revival. After decades of slump, its sidewalks are clean, its shiny storefronts bursting with everything from gourmet coffee beans to windsurfing equipment. The city is full of young professionals, attracted by rents that are lower than in Manhattan. Since 1990, the town has added 2,500 new housing units to accommodate the newcomers — who are mostly white. In the last decade, 22 percent of the city’s Hispanics — 2,253 people — cleared out, while 4,804 whites moved in. Hoboken is now 81 percent white, which makes it the whitest town in all of Hudson County.
Needless to say, this is cause for much mourning. Ruben Ramos, a City Councilman of Puerto Rican extraction says the city used to be “an ideal melting pot,” but now, “you walk down Washington Street and most of the faces you see are white . . . It just doesn’t have that neighborhood feeling anymore.” What drove out all the wonderful diversity? Mr. Ramos says the authorities haven’t done “anything to try to save affordable housing stock in Hoboken, and that’s what really hurt Latinos.”
Whites are probably delighted by the change — otherwise, why are they coming? — but apparently feel compelled to regret it. Francisca Alexander, 32, moved from Richmond, Virginia, five years ago, and has witnessed the change. “I can tell the ethnicity balance just isn’t the same,” she says. “I wish it was different, more diverse. I think that’s really healthy for any community.” Abbie Rivers, who owns Empire Coffee & Tea Co, says “A community where everyone is the same just isn’t interesting.” [Karen Mahabir, Loss of Diversity as Hoboken Booms, Journal (Hoboken), Aug. 7, 2001.] Apparently it hasn’t occurred to either of these ladies that “healthy,” “interesting” communities of the kind they claim to want are very easy to find — and probably charge lower rents.
Brain Waves
When a person looks at the faces of people, his brain reacts differently according to whether he is looking at someone of his own race or a different race. A test conducted at Stanford University used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to detect brain activity when whites and blacks were shown pictures of faces. There was a lot of activity in the subjects’ brains’ fusiform regions, an area associated with expert appraisal. The fusiform regions of bird-watchers, for example, light up when they look at birds, and all people have a certain expertise in recognizing human faces. However, there was significantly more fusiform activity when people looked at faces of people of their own race.
In a variation of the test, subjects were shown a set of pictures of black and white faces, and were then shown the set again, with additional black and white faces mixed in. When testers asked which faces they had seen before, whites were better able to remember the white faces, and blacks were better able to remember the black faces. It appears that people have a more advanced ability to appraise and remember faces of people of their own race. [Emma Hitt, Brain Reacts Differently to Faces Based on Race, Reuters, July 27, 2001.]
Seeing the Darkness
Adriana Stuijt, a Dutch journalist, used to be a fervent anti-apartheid crusader. After several years of covering the new South Africa, she is not nearly as happy with it as she expected to be. “I used to work as a medical journalist in South Africa for many years and have covered a large variety of epidemics in those years,” she explains. “Nothing I have seen compares to the current slaughter inside the country today: More than 200,000 people have already been murdered in crime-related violence . . . South Africa’s small number of remaining commercial farmers are indeed the world’s most endangered profession.”
Miss Stuijt notes that public health has collapsed under black rule. Not only is AIDS out of control, but 100 people have died of cholera in the last few months. Millions of children suffer from malnutrition, and the country is now going through the worst tuberculosis epidemic in its history. Malaria and sleeping sickness, which whites brought under control are making a comeback.
The country’s health authorities have taken one important precaution against AIDS. They have issued condoms to South African census takers for their protection, should they be “led into temptation” as they make their rounds. One opposition member of parliament worried that census takers “may be encouraged to forget that their task is to accumulate statistics to help good government.” [Christopher Munnion, Condoms Given to Census Staff, Telegraph (London), Oct. 8, 2001.]
Miss Stuijt has also noticed another casualty of black rule: freedom of the press. Although the evidence of decline is everywhere, it is not permitted to write about it. “Self-censorship inside South African news media is now greater than ever,” she says. [Anthony LoBaido, South Africa Deteriorates Under ANC Rule, WorldNetDaily.com, Sept. 16, 2001.]
Miserable as South Africa is, the legacy of white rule continues to make it attractive to other Africans. A South African unemployment rate of 30 percent is no deterrent to Zimbabweans, who have seen Robert Mugabe drive their own unemployment rate to 60 percent. Thousands of Zimbabweans have been living in squatter camps, causing resentment by underbidding South Africans for jobs. Recently rumors swept a settlement west of Johannesburg that Zimbabweans had killed a woman, and mobs started burning the squatters out of their shacks. Thousands were left homeless as hundreds of shacks went up in flames. “The Zimbabweans are all gone now. Hopefully they will go back to Zimbabwe,” says one contented rioter. [Ed Stoddard, S. African Settlement Tense After Zimbabweans Flee, Reuters, Oct. 23, 2001.]
Land of Despair and Shame
The Schools Prom is an annual musical celebration for British students sponsored by the National Union of Teachers. Traditionally, it is a patriotic event at which children wear Union Jack hats and sing the “Land of Hope and Glory” lyrics to Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.” This year, says the appropriately acronymed NUT, what with the Afghan war and all, there must be nothing “triumphalist” about the prom. Instead of wearing Union Jack hats, children will wave the flags of all countries. The NUT has also changed the words to “Land of Hope and Glory” as follows:
Old | New |
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Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free, How shall we extol thee, Who are born of thee? Wider still and wider Shall thy bounds be set, God who made thee mighty, Make thee mightier yet! | Music and our voices, Unite us all as one, Let our sound be mighty, Sung by everyone. Deeper and still deeper Shall our bounds be set Bring our world together Make us closer yet. |