200306 American Renaissance

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There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.— Thomas Jefferson

Vol. 14 No. 6 June 2003

The Hollow Debate on Race Preferences

American Renaissance

The Supreme Court side-steps the central question.

by Jared Taylor

In June, the US Supreme Courtis expected to rule on whether universities can continue to fa-

vor blacks and Hispanics over whites and Asians in their admis-sions policies. This will be the highcourt’s first major decision on “af-firmative action” in the 25 yearssince California v. Bakke , and par-tisans on both sides are bracing for a ruling that could set the permis-sible bounds of race policy for many years to come.

The court’s ruling will hinge ontwo central issues, one of which has

been widely discussed, and theother completely ignored. Thefirst—treated at length in legal argu-ments—is whether “diversity” of a stu-dent body is so important a national goalthat racial discrimination is permitted inorder to attain it. There has been legaland media silence, however, on the ques-tion of whether students of all racialgroups are of equal ability and areequally capable of benefiting from uni-versity instruction. As we shall see, ig-noring this question falsifies the debate,and undercuts the validity of the Su-

preme Court’s decision, no matter howit rules.

Moving the Goal Posts

Since it was initiated under the Nixonadministration, “affirmative action” hashad a series of justifications, that evolvedas the successive assumptions on whichit was based turned out to be false. Ra-cial preferences arose from the disap-

pointments of the immediate post-CivilRights era, when many activists expectedthat once the barriers of discrimination

were thrown down, blacks would glideeffortlessly into good jobs and top uni-versities. The theory was that systematicdiscrimination had excluded large num-

bers of smart, hard-working blacks fromtheir rightful places, and that once dis-

crimination ended, they would succeedat the same level as whites.

This was one of many naïve assump-tions of the time, as universities andemployers quickly discovered. It washard to find attractive black candidatesfor Harvard and management training

programs. The first goal of “affirmative

action” was therefore to flush these people out, actively to identify and re-cruit blacks who were presumed to beas qualified as whites but were shy aboutshowing up. When diligent searchingfailed to find qualified blacks, it was thenonly a small step to selectively loweringstandards. This was now justified by theargument that if blacks did not appear to be attractive candidates it was only

because of the effects of past discrimi-nation, which could be undone only by

preferences. A leg-up at the right timewould set them firmly on the path to suc-cess.

Many institutions established outrightquotas for blacks, and for Hispan-ics as well, as their numbers in-creased and they, too, were unableto meet white standards. The 1978

Bakke case drew attention to quo-tas at the University of CaliforniaMedical School at Davis, whichheld open 16 of 100 places for non-whites. Allan Bakke, a white manwho was denied admission despitehaving better qualifications than allthe quota non-whites, brought thesuit that resulted in the famous rul-ing. By a majority of only 5-4, thecourt rejected outright racial quo-tas, but Justice Lewis Powell’s de-cision permitted the use of race as a

“plus factor” in admissions.University officials simply instituted

racial quotas but without the name. Sincerace was a permissible factor for admit-ting students, a university could give it

just the right amount of consideration to bring non-whites up to a desired number. This was the clear intent of the Uni-versity of Michigan, which is the defen-dant in the two cases now before thecourt. Gratz v. Bollinger challenges theundergraduate admissions system, whichrated applicants on a scale that rangedfrom 47 to 150 points. “Underrepre-

sented” minorities—blacks, Hispanics,and American Indians, but not Asians— automatically got 20 points added totheir scores, an instant boost of nearlyone fifth of the total possible variationin point scores (a candidate with a per-fect 1600 on the SAT got only 12 pointsmore than someone who got the rock

bottom score of 400). The university hada target number of non-whites students,and set the point advantage for them at

The justices didn’t get the whole story.

Blacks and Hispanics got20 extra points. PerfectSAT scores were worth

only 12 points.


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American Renaissance - 2 - June 2003

Letters from ReadersSir — In his letter in the May issue of

AR, Kevin MacDonald blames the Im-migration Act of 1965 on the Jews. But

the Immigration Act of 1965 was not thecause of massive Third World immigra-tion. As Stephen Webster points out inAR of April (“Fade to Brown”), none of its supporters thought it would lead tolarge-scale immigration. Moreover, asHugh Graham points out in the book thatProf. MacDonald cites ( CollisionCourse: The Strange Convergence of

Affirmative Action and Immigration Policy in America , pp. 93-4) its support-ers assumed that its main beneficiarieswould be immigrants from southern andeastern Europe. The reason for massiveThird World immigration, as Mr. Web-ster also points out, is that the US gov-ernment did not react to the unintendedresults of the Immigration Act. On thecontrary, it has constantly increased theceiling on the number of legal immi-grants and has done almost nothing tostem the flow of illegal immigrants.

Countries in which the number of Jews is negligible, like the Netherlandsand Belgium, and countries in whichJews hardly exist, like the Scandinaviancountries, have also let themselves beinundated with Third World immigrants;and they began doing that well before1965. MacDonald trivializes a suicidalmental attitude that pervades the Westand afflicts Jews as well as gentiles.

I would also like to make two com-ments about Samuel Francis’s percep-tive review of Steven Pinker’s importantThe Blank Slate (March 2003). First, atone point Dr. Francis lets rhetorical ex-aggeration get the best of him. He writes,“Politically, much of what the Progres-sive Era, the New Deal, and the Great

Society did or tried to do was justifiedin terms of the blank slate doctrine.” Icannot see how any of the programs of the Progressives (e.g. direct election of US senators; referendum and recall at

the state and municipal level) or NewDeal (e.g. social security, the NationalLabor Relations Act) were motivated or

justified by the blank slate doctrine.

Second, Dr. Francis points out the bla-tant contradiction between the evidencethat Prof. Pinker adduces for genetic de-termination of intelligence and other traits, and his contention that the genetic

basis of the black-white IQ differencehas not been proven. Many scholars whotry to be honest about American race re-lations make an exception for this, theultimate issue (e.g. Stephan and AbigailThernstrom in America in Black and White). I have long thought that the res-ervations they express about the genetic

bases of racial differences is a tactic theyuse to enable them to get their other dataand observations to a wide audience. Inthe case of Prof. Pinker, the contradic-tion is so obvious that I can see no other explanation. In fact, I think there is astrong possibility that he intended for his

readers to understand that that is whathe is doing.

Prof. Steven Farron, Johannesburg,South Africa

Sir — As for what some Jews think about a polyglot society (re: “Fade to

Brown” by Stephen Webster in the Aprilissue), I suggest you seek out the posi-tions of Rabbi Daniel Lapin and DennisPraeger. Both are prolific authors, essay-ists, lecturers and highly regarded talk-show hosts—Rabbi Lapin in Seattle andMr. Praeger in Los Angeles. Both havestated many times and on many occa-sions that only in a white, ChristianAmerica is the Jewish community safe.

If the Hebrew Immigration Aid Soci-ety (HIAS) is looking to import Negroesfrom Kenya, it is clear that they have

become a Negro organization like the

Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Theseorganizations and the ACLU are Negroorganizations in everything but name.The ADL supported the blacks as theyrioted and killed Yankel Rosenberg inCrown Heights, New York, ten yearsago. It didn’t seem to matter that the

black war cries were “Kill the Jews!” and“Hitler didn’t do the job!” Many suchorganizations have become somethingtotally different from what they wereoriginally.

If you want some Jewish thinkingother than the usual conventional stuff,

you might also look to Jews for the Pres-ervation of Firearms (jpfo.org).

Edmund Levine, Philadelphia, Pa.

Sir — Regarding Mr. Taylor’s re-sponse to “Ethnic Genetic Interests”(Feb. 2003), it is true that most people

become racially aware only after hav-ing to endure the company of large num-

bers of non-whites. Subjective reasonsfor white unity are all that I (and mostothers) need for fighting for our “racialfamily.” We don’t need to justify our cause objectively—we love our own

because they are our own. Even the Biblesays to prefer the company of your ownkind (Rom. 12:10), to look after your own family (Gal. 6:10), and to preserveyour heritage (Deut. 7:1-6). And yet wedon’t need religion to justify our causeeither. People with healthy instincts havea natural, innate affection and preferencefor their own.

Rich Moran, Pleasant Valley StatePrison, Coalinga, Calif.




American Renaissance is published monthly by the

New Century Foundation. NCF is governed by section501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code; contributionsto it are tax deductible.

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Please make checks payable to: American Renaissance, P.O. Box 527, Oakton, VA22124. ISSN No. 1086-9905, Telephone: (703) 716-0900, Facsimile: (703) 716-0932,Web Page Address: www.AmRen.com Electronic Mail: [email protected]

Continued from page 1

American RenaissanceJared Taylor, Editor

Stephen Webster, Assistant Editor James P. Lubinskas, Contributing Editor

George McDaniel, Web Page Editor

a figure that ensured it would get thatnumber: a quota in everything but name.

Grutter v. Bollinger challenges ad-

missions to the Michegan Law School,and though preferences were imple-mented differently, a district court foundthat race was “enormously important” inadmissions decisions. The school setaside what was in effect a quota of 11 to17 percent of each class for favoredgroups.

In the past, the Supreme Court hasruled that “narrowly tailored” preference

programs are permissible if they are de-signed to compensate for specific actsof past discrimination. However, it isnow nearly 40 years since the CivilRights Act of 1965 banned racial dis-crimination in employment and univer-sity admissions, and there have beensystematic preference programs for atleast 30 years. The University of Michi-gan has been recruiting blacks since well

before today’s freshmen were born, soit would be hard to argue that its pointsystem compensated them for past dis-crimination. And, indeed, that is nolonger the justification for racial prefer-ences.

The argument Michigan is making,and one supported by amicus briefs filed

by dozens of other universities as wellas the US Army, is that racial diversityitself is such a compelling national andeducational interest that it justifies dis-crimination against whites. PresidentWilliam Adams of Colby College saysit is a “fundamental truth” that students“learn more and more powerfully, in set-tings that include individuals from manydifferent backgrounds and perspectives. . . .” A former Michigan president, LeeBollinger (the primary named defendant

in these cases), is even more categori-cal:

“Diversity is not merely a desirableaddition to a well-run education. It is as

essential as the study of the Middle Ages,of international politics and of Shake-speare. For our students to better under-stand the diverse country and world theyinhabit, they must . . . study with, arguewith and become friends with studentswho may be different from them. It

broadens the mind and the intellect— essential goals of education.”

These academics are, of course, jus-tifying diversity of only a certain kind.They would no doubt be horrified tothink their reasoning could encouragethe admission of evangelical Christians,race realists, big-game hunters, smokers,gun collectors, Stalinists or Nazis. Theywant uniformity of views, expressed by

just the right mix of races.In its arguments before the Supreme

Court, the university claimed that the di-versity it achieved by admitting under-qualified minorities was of great valuefor students, but its own internal docu-ments cast doubt on that claim. In March

1990, the university commissioned astudy on the effects of diversity, the find-ings of which were published on May24, 1994, two years before the Bollinger suits were filed.

The study surveyed the “expectations, perceptions, and experiences with re-spect to diversity,” of a sample of stu-

dents in the 1990-91 freshman class andthen followed up with surveys in suc-ceeding years. One important findingwas that students’ attitudes toward di-versity are established before they arriveon campus, and aggressive multi-racial

programs do not increase their apprecia-tion of diversity. “Quite simply, accessis not enough,” concludes the executivesummary of the report. “Increasing thenumbers of students who attend the in-stitution from different racial/ethnic

backgrounds does not in itself lead to amore informed, educated population,

prepared to achieve in a complex anddiverse world.” The university tried tolook on the bright side: “The results donot support the claims by some thatmulticultural programs and curricular efforts are in themselves causing divi-sion and tension on campus.”

In fact, in some respects, the reportadmits that students’ attitudes towardsdiversity deteriorated with time:

“When students evaluate the univers-ity’s commitment to students of color,African American and White student

perceptions are increasingly polarized.

At entrance, 46 percent of AfricanAmerican students perceive a universitycommitment and at the end of the sec-ond year, this number decreases to 19

percent. For White students, the number perceiving a university commitmentto students of color increases, from 57

percent at entrance to 70 percent in thesophomore year.” In other words, whitescertainly notice the university’s endless“support” and “sensitivity” for blacks,

but blacks think it’s not enough.Perhaps most significantly, the report

found that blacks are not interested inthe cross-cultural give-and-take that LeeBollinger assures us in the above quota-tion is one of “the essential goals of edu-cation.” As the report delicately puts it:“Interaction is generally not occurringin close social networks . . . .” Blacks“seem to assess diversity efforts in termsof more institutional aspects of the ra-cial climate. Interpersonal contact or concern with ‘division’ are not as salientin their evaluations of diversity, as areissues of ‘university commitment,’ ‘re-

More veritas, please.




spect,’ and representation of AfricanAmerican experiences in the educational

process. . . . Unfortunately, the desire tolearn and understand other groups’ con-tribution to society (Asian American or

Latino/Hispanic, for example [presum-ably they already know all about white,European history and culture]) does not

appear to be an important component of their evaluation of diversity as of yet.”Put in plain English, blacks don’t give

a damn about “studying with, arguingwith, and becoming friends with studentswho may be different from them.” Tothem, “diversity” means the very oppo-site of what it means to the university: Itis whatever it takes to make their four years on campus as comfortingly “black”as possible. They are not interested inoffering people of other races the enrich-ment their presence is alleged to confer,nor do they want enrichment from oth-

ers.The Michigan study is not the only

one to deflate grand claims for diversity.The Spring 2003 issue of The Public

Interest (Stanley Rothman, Seymour Martin Lipset, Neil Nevitte, “Racial Di-versity Reconsidered, pp. 25-28.) in-cludes results of a survey of 140 univer-sities and colleges, which compared theattitudes of students on racially diversecampuses with those at less diverseschools.

The results are worth quoting atlength:

“It is commonly believed that in-creases in black enrollment will produce

positive assessments from students abouttheir educational experience. But in factthe correlation went in the opposite di-rection. As the proportion of black stu-dents rose, student satisfaction with their university experience dropped, as didtheir assessments of the quality of their education and the work ethic of their

peers.” The article notes that faculty andadministrators had the same view: the

more diverse the campus, the worse theyfound the quality of education and lower the level of student competence.

Increasing numbers of Hispanics alsohad a depressing effect on student evalu-

ation of the quality of their educa-tion, though not to the same extentas increases in blacks. The presence

of Asian students seems to have hadno effect, positive or negative.The article continues:“Finally, enrollment diversity was

positively related to students’ expe-rience of unfair treatment, even af-ter the effects of all other variableswere controlled. (As the proportionof black students grew, the incidenceof these personal grievances in-

creased among whites. . . . Thus diver-sity appears to increase complaints of unfair treatment among white studentswithout reducing them among black stu-

dents.)”To anyone not completely deceived by liberal propaganda, such results areentirely to be expected. Most whitesleave when blacks or Hispanics moveinto the neighborhood, and most white

parents take their children out of schoolsthat become majority non-white. Blacksand Hispanics themselves show amarked preference for living and asso-ciating with people like themselves. Whywould this near-universal distaste for diversity blossom into love only on col-lege campuses?

Diversity among college students isno different from diversity anywhereelse. It may very well expose people todifferent experiences and points of view,

but these are points of view they mayfind repellent and experiences theymight rather not have. This, then, is thecompelling national goal Michigan as-sures the Supreme Court is so importantit justifies racial discrimination.

It is ironic that most of the people nowtelling us what joys diversity brings arenot speaking from experience. The ad-ministrators who explain to us how es-sential diversity is to education and tounderstanding our fellow man had, bytheir own standards, defective educa-tions in bleakly homogeneous institu-tions. Those who studied at Oxford asRhodes Scholars must have learned al-most nothing, lost as they were in a uni-form sea of Englishmen. But this is theway it is with race: Whites who have hadthe least experience with non-whites al-ways consider themselves qualified tolecture us on race relations. It is entirely

possible that the whites on the SupremeCourt, who likewise had miserable, ho-mogeneous educations, can be talkedinto thinking they know what is best for the rest of us, and will agree that diver-sity is a compelling national objective.The one justice who has experienced“diversity” all his adult life, black jus-

tice Clarence Thomas, will probablyvote against any form of racial prefer-ences, but whites who know better maywell outvote him.

Race and Reality

The Gratz and Grutter cases are, how-ever, taking place in something of anintellectual vacuum. Let us imagine, for a moment, an Olympic Games withoutseparate divisions for men and women,in which all events were open to bothsexes. Any country that had any hope of

winning would field a team that was allor mostly men (perhaps an equestrian or an archer might be a woman). Let us thenimagine an American Olympic commit-tee intensely committed to sexual diver-sity, and that claimed diversity was suchan important goal it justified taking sexinto consideration in the selection of ath-letes. In the national debate that fol-lowed, someone would surely point outthat men are stronger and faster thanwomen, and that if the Olympic teamturned out to be all male it would sim-

ply reflect superior ability. A debate in

which this point were not raised wouldhardly be a debate.

Likewise, a national debate on racial preferences that does not raise the ques-tion of race differences in mental abilityis hardly a debate. To continue the Olym-

pic analogy, it is like assuming men andwomen are equal in athletic ability, andthen straining every muscle to root outthe terrible sex discrimination that keepswomen off the team.

It is true that the current SupremeCourt debate is couched in terms of di-versity rather than discrimination, but theunderlying assumption of every nationalracial policy is that all races are perfectly,mathematically, geometrically equal inability, and that any non-white shortfallin achievement is due to white “racism.”Indeed, today, the most powerful caseto be made for racial preferences is not to sing the dubious praises of diversity,

but to argue the following syllogism:“We know the races are equally able andhardworking. We know blacks and His-

panics perform badly because of white

The law school.




oppression. Racial preferences are there-fore just compensation to blacks andappropriate punishment for whites.”Within the stylized exchanges that passfor debate on race, this is an irrefutableargument.

The fact that Asians, despite a historyof considerable discrimination, make

more money than whites and are ac-cepted at higher rates by elite universi-ties, never seems to sway our officialfaith in the “racism” explanation for

black and Hispanic failure. If the racesare equal, and white malevolence ex-

plains underachievement by non-whites,does white favoritism somehow explainAsian overachievement? Asians are in-convenient to the racism-explains-allview, so proponents of racial preferencesignore them.

Of course, among psychologists andexperts in mental testing, it is widely

understood that blacks and Hispanics aresimply not as intelligent aswhites, and that Asians areslightly more intelligent. Ever since the First World War, whenlarge-scale data were first col-lected, blacks have been foundto have an average IQ of about85 as opposed to a white aver-age of 100. There is, of course,considerable racial overlap, butonly 16 percent of blacks haveIQs of 100 or above. Whites areabout six times more likely than

blacks to have IQs of 135 andhigher, that is to say in the“gifted” range at which peoplemake a real mark in intellectu-ally demanding fields. Blacksare about six times more likelyto have scores in the “retarded” rangeof 70 and below. As the graph on this

page shows, because there are manymore whites than blacks in the UnitedStates, the absolute numbers of whitesin the higher ranges of IQ are vastlygreater than for blacks.

North Asians—Japanese, Koreans,and Chinese—have an average IQ of 103to 105. American Hispanics are a veryheterogeneous population, but their av-erage IQ scores range from the mid-80sto mid-90s.

Among specialists, there is no debateover the fact of differences in IQ and thatthese differences underlie different lev-els of achievement. The only debate nowis over how much of this difference toattribute to genes and how much to en-vironment.

In the mid-1980s, at a time when pub-lic discussion of race and IQ was, if any-thing, even more taboo than it is today,Mark Snyderman and Stanley Rothmansent a survey to psychologists and men-tal testing experts to gather their viewsanonymously . A majority of the 661 re-spondents wrote that the black/white IQ

gap had both genetic and environmentalcauses; only 15 percent wrote that therace difference was caused entirely byenvironment.

Since that time, there have been sig-nificant advances in our understandingof the IQ gap, most notably the continu-ing work of Arthur Jensen, and that of Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn, LindaGottfredson, Michael Levin, and others,

but our rulers and media elites continueto pretend none of this research was ever done, or to deride and mischaracterizeit when they mention it at all. The situa-

tion Dr. Snyderman and Prof. Rothman

described in the 1980s continues to thisday:

“[W]e believe the expert communityhas more or less accepted such distor-tions as inevitable. Since their scientificfindings run counter to a conventionalwisdom whose supporters are quite pas-sionate, they have accepted a tradeoff that permits them to publish their find-ings in professional journals, but not for

popular consumption. Under such cir-cumstances they can continue their sci-entific work without the fear of being

pilloried by the larger community andof being deprived of grants for research

by government agencies and privatefoundations. So fully have many expertsaccepted this arrangement that they areangered by colleagues with whom theyagree but who popularize their views and

thus threaten their scientific work.”(Snyderman and Rothman, The IQ Con-troversy , Transaction Publishers, 1988,

p. 50.)Linda Gottfredson of the University

of Delaware, who has fought off torrentsof abuse because of her research on race,has lost patience with timid colleagues,

whom she accuses of collective fraud:“Collective fraud is the systematicand knowing suppression of unwelcometruths by a set of experts who either shade the truth or acquiesce to such shad-ing. . . . [I]t is tacit collusion in distort-ing or suppressing scientific evidence for the purpose of sustaining a major false-hood. . . . Perhaps the most aggressively

perpetrated collective fraud in the socialsciences today is that which sustains theegalitarian fiction . This is the frequent

but false assertion that intelligence isclustered equally across all human popu-

lations, that is, that there are, on aver-age, no racial-ethnic disparitiesin developed mental compe-tence.” (“Equal Potential: ACollective Fraud,” Society ,July/August, 2000, p. 19.)

Our rulers are schizophrenicabout IQ and mental testing. Itis fashionable to claim that IQscores are meaningless; toclaim that intelligence cannot

be defined; that whatever it is,it can be boosted by early in-struction; that essentially any-

one can be trained to do any-thing. And yet, when the USSupreme Court was persuadedto rule that convicts with IQs

below 70 could not be consid-ered fully responsible for their

actions and should therefore not be ex-ecuted, there was no outcry about themeaninglessness of IQ. Likewise, the USArmy routinely tests recruits and doesnot accept anyone with an IQ below 85.The army therefore rejects a far greater

proportion of blacks than whites on thegrounds that they are untrainable, but itwould never draw public conclusionsabout racial differences.

The racial gap in IQ (see issues of Sept. 1998, Oct. 1997, and Feb. 1995for in-depth articles on findings in thisarea) is central to any number of con-stantly recurring problems in Americansociety that are otherwise baffling. Thereis not a single school district in the coun-try in which blacks and Hispanics per-form at the same level as whites andAsians. Nor are blacks and Hispanics

Black/White IQ Distributions




accepted into gifted programs at thesame rates as whites or Asians (exceptfor some districts that explicitly relaxstandards for them). Year after year, inevery state, black high school seniors dowork at about the level of white ninthgraders. Why, after decades of trying,can’t even one of thousands of school

districts get it right?After well-publicized reports duringthe 1980s that American high school stu-dents perform poorly by internationalstandards, 19 states instituted graduationexaminations. Invariably blacks and His-

panics fail the exams at disproportion-ate rates, and put pressure on schools tolower standards or do away entirely with“racist” exams. Recently, blacks andHispanics demonstrated in several ma-

jor California cities to demand an endto graduation tests that require knowl-

edge only at the ninth or tenth gradelevel.

In New York State, students must passwhat are called Regents examinations inorder to get a high school diploma. Stateauthorities are now mulling whether tofollow the original plan and raise the

passing score for 2004 from 55 to 65 onthree of the five exams. The problem isthat blacks and Hispanics are three timesmore likely than whites to fail if the statemakes this change, and school adminis-trators know they will face terrible criti-cism if they do anything that could becalled “racist.” There is an excellentchance the state will fail to raise the pass-ing score only because blacks and His-

panics will fail to meet them.The goal of narrowing the perfor-

mance gap between blacks and whites(no one seems to worry about the needto bring whites up the level of Asians) isa constant refrain in education circles.A recent report commissioned by theCollege Board concludes that “a prior-ity objective of local, state, and federal

education leaders and policy makersshould be equal representation of Afri-can Americans, Latinos, and NativeAmericans,” at top levels of achieve-ment, and urges that all education po-lices at every level be evaluated in lightof this goal.

This is a fool’s errand. The country

might as well launch a national campaign

to stamp out lust and selfishness; itwould be no more likely to succeed.Moreover, it is unfair to set goals for teachers and school systems that cannot

be reached. The goal should be to raisescores for everyone , and to stop pretend-ing to be shocked when different racialgroups do not perform identically. All

children benefit from good instruction,

R acial preferences arise from thefact that “underrepresented mi-norities”—blacks, Hispanics,

and American Indians—do not have thesame abilities and qualifications aswhites and Asians. In California, for example, eligibility for state universi-ties is based on a combination of highschool grades and standardized testscores. Last year, students of differentraces met these standards in the follow-ing percentages: Asians - 30 percent;whites - 13 percent; Hispanics - 4 per-cent; blacks - 3 percent. Asians nowdominate the top University of Califor-nia campuses like Berkeley and UCLA,and any attempt to get blacks and His-

panics into the system in anything likerepresentative numbers requires stiff racial preferences. In the country as awhole, at selective colleges, blacks havecombined SAT scores about 200 pointslower than whites.

In 1996, Californians passed a state-wide initiative to ban consideration of race by the state in hiring and collegeadmissions. The number of black andHispanic students—who were now ad-mitted purely on ability—plummeted.The UC system did not simply acceptthis. It poured effort and money intotrying to improve primary and second-ary education for blacks and Hispan-ics. It also recruited even more vigor-ously than before, to make sure that thetiny number of blacks who might havegone to Harvard go to Berkeley instead.

Most significantly, it changed its evalu-ation of candidates to admit anyone whograduated in the top four percent of hisCalifornia high school class—no mat-ter how bad the school. Blacks and His-

panics are still greatly “underrepre-sented,” and administrators would loveto return to unabashed race-based ad-missions.

It is local, not federal law. that hasforced race preferences in Californiainto slightly less blatant form. A Su-

preme Court ruling could force admin-istrators across the country into thesame kind of maneuvering. Maneuver-ing would be greatest in graduateschools, where the competition for ad-mission is fiercest.

To get into the U of M law school, awhite student must score at least 165on the Law School Admissions Test andhave a grade-point average of at last 3.5.Last year, 4,461 law school applicantsin the whole country did this well or

better. Of that number, only 29 (0.6 percent) were black and 114 (2.5 per-cent) were Hispanic. In each law schoolclass of about 350, Michigan likes tohave at least 30 blacks. With so fewqualified candidates, the school mightwell have no blacks or Hispanics at allif they had to meet white standards.

About the last place Americans wantto see lowered admissions standards isin medical school, but diversity is on

the march there, too. According to theAssociation of American Medical Col-leges, if its member schools relied onstrictly academic qualifications, onlythree percent of medical students would

be black, Hispanic, or American Indi-ans as opposed to the current 11 per-cent. One dodge for letting in more non-whites is to give points for “economichardship”—as if that made people bet-ter doctors—but this doesn’t work ei-ther. In 2001, black and Hispanic medi-cal school applicants from familiesearning $80,000 or more got average

Medical School Admission Test scoresof 21.9. Whites and Asians from fami-lies with incomes of under $30,000outscored them, with averages of 25.7and 25.5 respectively.

In our society there are many well-entrenched people prepared to do what-ever it takes to achieve racial “diver-sity.” They will lower standards, theywill discriminate openly against whites,and they will unblushingly subvert anyattempt to restrain them.

Through the Back Door

ΩΩΩΩΩ

It is unfair to set goals forteachers and school sys-

tems that cannot bereached. The goal should

be to raise scores foreveryone , and to stop

pretending to be shockedwhen different racial

groups do not performidentically.




and when each child gets the best pos-sible instruction achievement risesacross the board, but the gap betweenthe smart and not-so-smart increases .The only way to eliminate differencesin achievement is to teach nothing, leav-ing all children equally ignorant.

The quest for proportionate racial rep-

resentation at all job levels is equallyfoolish. Linda Gottfredson has studiedthe IQ requirements for different profes-sions, as well as the representation of

blacks in these professions. Given thewell-known patterns in which intelli-gence is represented in each race, it is

possible to calculate approximately howmany blacks are smart enough to be doc-tors, lawyers, or corporate presidents.Prof. Gottfredson has found that blacksare already slightly over represented inthese professions, meaning that we donot live in a society that holds blacks

down, but in one that raises them up (seesidebar, previous page).

Misdiagnosis

What Prof. Gottfredson calls “collec-tive fraud”—the systematic assertionthat there are no group differences inability—must be one of the most suc-cessful and damaging propaganda cam-

paigns in history. To put it bluntly, itssuccess means that we cannot even un-derstand racial problems, much lesssolve them. Misdiagnosis means our at-

tempts to solve problems are not justwrong; they are perverse. The entiredecades-long and embittering experi-ence of racial preferences would never have begun if our society had acceptedand understood racial differences fromthe outset.

Because we deny the real causes of black failure, we devote ourselves tosearching for and “eliminating” spuriouscauses. If the theory is that blacks fail

because they do not have proper “rolemodels” we hire unqualified blacks and

put them in positions of authority. If white society has destroyed black self-esteem we promote grandiose fantasiesabout African history. If segregatedschools were bad for blacks we sendthem to white schools. If black childrenstill get bad grades, we devalue the cur-riculum so everyone can get “A”s. If

blacks do poorly on standardized testswe do away with the tests. If not enough

blacks and Hispanics can get into gifted programs, we lower standards just for them. If “racist” employers prefer not to

hire blacks, we force employers to hirethem. If a “racist” society still managesto impoverish non-whites, we give themwelfare and food stamps. And every-where, always, we batter whites with theconstant message that “racism” is thegreatest of evils, and that whites are col-lectively responsible for black and His-

panic failure.When one grand project to lift up the black man mysteriously fails, Americaembarks on yet another, but each suc-cessive failure only confirms the terribletruth: Whites must be even more vi-ciously racist than anyone had thought.Therefore, each new experiment islaunched with more denunciations of white wickedness and appeals to whiteguilt. No opportunity is lost to invokethe memory of slavery, Jim Crow, seg-regation, and the lynch mob.

The battle against “racism” is not just

about steeping whites in guilt. It requiresdirect racial discrimination against themof the very kind civil rights laws weresupposed to prohibit. The injustices of affirmative action are visited on everynew generation of white Americans thatapplies to college or needs a job. The

burden falls on young whites who havegrown up long since the abolition of le-gal discrimination against blacks andwho cannot possibly be held responsiblefor whatever wrongs may have beendone to blacks in the past. The meek-ness with which young whites accept

discrimination and the diligence withwhich their elders mete it out are amongthe wonders of our era. The Michigancases and other anti-discrimination suits

brought by whites are a sign that the pa-tience of whites is finally wearing thin.

As Michael Levin has demonstratedin Why Race Matters , any theory of com-

pensation for non-whites requires proof that whites have wronged them. InAmerica today, every disparity inachievement is automatically attributedto white “racism,” past and present. Butif, as the evidence overwhelmingly dem-onstrates, blacks and Hispanics are held

back by inherent reasons over whichwhites have no control, the argument for compensation collapses.

Many would argue that even if thereare racial differences in average ability,this subject is best not discussed. Theyare like the Victorian lady who said of Darwin’s theory of evolution: “I pray thatit not be true. And I pray that if it betrue, it may never become widelyknown.” One reason offered for sup-

pressing the truth is that public recogni-tion of racial differences might lead tocalls for persecution of blacks, and evengenocide or slavery. This is nonsense.Until 50 or 60 years ago, everyone took racial differences in ability for granted,

but this never lead to genocide. The people who ended slavery were firmly

convinced of Negro inferiority but thisdid not temper their abolitionist zeal. Infact, millions of white people are awareof current research, and have quietlydrawn their own conclusions from itwithout changing their attitudes towardsindividual blacks.

The other reason to suppress the truthis the fear that it might “devastate”

blacks, and drive them to even greater depths of violence, illegitimacy, unem-

ployment, and drug-taking. In fact, noneof these problems was nearly so badwhen Americans, white and black, be-lieved in significant racial differences.There is no evidence that blacks in the1920s, for example, were psychologi-cally “devastated” by prevailing viewson race. They did as Booker T. Wash-ington told them, and got on with their lives. Violence, illegitimacy, and drug-taking—brought on, we are constantlytold, by “hopelessness”—were nothinglike the problems they are today.

Whites are certainly not “devastated” by the idea Japanese and Chinese may be smarter than they are. On many col-lege campuses, especially in California,whites stay out of science courses inwhich many Asians are enrolled becausethey know the competition will be stiff.This doesn’t drive them to crime and co-caine.

An important part of growing up isthe realization that there are people whoare better at some things than we are. If we lost the competition it was because

Booker T. Washington - never “devastated.”




we were beaten fair and square, not be-cause we were cheated. By telling blacksthey are just as able as whites, we haveinstilled in them the conviction that theyare constantly being cheated even whenthey are beaten fairly. Insisting on equal-ity despite the powerful evidence to thecontrary only sets up expectations for

blacks that are sure to be disappointedand lead to bitterness and even worse.White “racism” becomes the only

acceptable explanation for black failure,and incessant tub-thumping about it stirsup hatred that is completely undeserved.If whites in positions of authority keeptelling blacks how “racist” the countryis, what could be more natural than for

blacks to hate whites? Anyone whodoubts the widespread hatred of blacksfor whites need only listen to all-black radio. This hatred is borne out both inthe venomous rhetoric of rap lyrics (see

May, 2000) and in the gruesome statis-tics on interracial crime (see “Race,Crime, and Violence,” July, 1999). Per-haps the most alarming index of the stateof mind of blacks is that nearly one third

are willing to tell pollsters they think AIDS was invented by the US govern-ment as a way to exterminate them. If ten million blacks really think the samegovernment that forbids racial discrimi-nation and that mandates racial prefer-ence programs is trying to kill them, whatdoes this say about what they think of

whites in general?It may be that the Supreme Court fi-nally will rule against the injustice of ra-cial preferences, despite the yawningracial gap in achievement. It may rulethat campus diversity is not sufficient

justification for taking measures againstwhites that would be called vicious dis-crimination if taken against blacks or Hispanics. If it does rule to permit race-

based admission policies, however, wecan be certain that looming large in the

background of that decision was the falseassumption that was neither affirmed nor

disputed: that the races are all equal, andthat only white oppression explains un-equal results.

However the court rules, universityadministrators will find ways to admit

underqualified blacks. Several states,including Florida, Texas, and Californiahave reacted to local bans on racial pref-erences by declaring that any high schoolsenior graduating in the top ten percentor so of his class (the percentage figurevaries from state to state) is automati-cally eligible for the best state universi-

ties. This is a cynical policy that countson segregated high schools to ensure thatthe top students at some—undoubtedlyinferior—schools are black. These pro-grams are explicitly designed to subvertthe purpose of bans on affirmative ac-tion and to get the effects of racial pref-erences without openly using race as acriterion.

If the Supreme Court prohibits racial preferences, we can be certain these andother substitutes for racial discrimina-tion will proliferate. Until our countryrecognizes the reality of racial differ-

ences in ability, we will continue to passlaws and promote policies that subvertthe merit system, stir up racial hatred,and punish whites for the failures of non-whites.

‘Science’ in the service of politics.

by Michael Rienzi

O n April 24, PBS aired the firstof a three-part television seriescalled “Race—The Power of an

Illusion,” produced by a lefty outfitcalled California Newsreel, whosewebsite says it specializes in “educa-tional videos on African American lifeand history, race relations and diversity

training, African cinema, Media and So-ciety, labor studies, campus life, andmuch more.” The first episode, called“The Difference Between Us” purportedto demonstrate that race is an “illusion”concocted to justify repression of “people of color” by nasty white-skinned

people.This is, of course, the kind of pro-

gramming liberals love. The Philadel- phia Inquirer called it “one of the most provocative, and potentially most impor-

tant television shows of this or any other season.” Black columnist Clarence Pagereveled in the indictment the series

brings against whites.The first installment assembled a

number of prominent race-denying “experts:” Richard Lewontin, a long-time

critic of the biological race concept, and

Joseph Graves, who wrote the race-de-nying book The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Mil-lennium . The late Stephen Jay Gould,notorious for his economy with the truth,was also featured. All the experts weredeniers; not a single scientist who rec-ognizes the concept of race was inter-viewed, or participated in producing the

program.What arguments do these experts

make? First, they harp on the fact that

there is no single gene or (small) set of genes unique to any racial group. Theysuggest that two members of the samerace may differ from each other more ata specific gene locus than they do fromsomeone of a different race. In other words, at some small part of their ge-nomes, a person can appear more simi-lar to some people of other races than tosome people of his own race. This is true,

but meaningless.This argument implies that if, for any

particular genes or traits, two familymembers are less like each other than to

a complete stranger, then “family doesnot exist, and family is an illusion.” Letus imagine two full brothers: Joe andTed. Joe has brown eyes, brown hair andhas blood group O. Ted has blond hair,

blue eyes, and blood group B. Hans, whois a complete stranger to Joe and Ted,also happens to have blond hair, blueeyes, and blood group B, just like Ted.If we look at only these traits , Ted ismore closely related to Hans than to his

Race Denial: The Power of a Delusion Race: The Power of an Illusion , produced by California Newsreel and the Independent Television Ser-vice, Larry Adelman, Executive Producer. Funding from the Ford Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Diversity Fund. 2003. Running time: 56 minutes per episode. Three episode set,

$295, individual episodes, $195.

ΩΩΩΩΩ




brother Joe. Does this, then, invalidatethe concept of family?

It is, in fact, true that among the tensof thousands of genes, it is possible tofind some number of gene loci at whicha white person may appear more similar to an Asian or African than to certainother whites. This does not invalidate the

concept of race any more than the ex-ample of Ted, Joe, and Hans invalidatesthe concept of family kinship.

An important argument in favor of race—and, of course, absent from the

program—is that when enough genes areconsidered, race becomes unmistakablyreal. As readers of AR are aware (seeissues of Aug. 2000, March 1997), boththe work of Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, as wellas that of Masatoshi Nei and ArunRoychoudhury, show consistent geneticdifferences between human populations.When these genetic differences are rep-

resented graphically, the resulting popu-lation groups are virtually identical tothe major racial groups established by

physical anthropology.In other words, the idea that a race

must be characterized by specific genesfound only in that race and never in an-other race is a straw man put up by ex-

perts, so they can knock it down andmake politically-motivated claims.These experts seem to be well aware of

popular misconceptions, and appear de-liberately to take advantage of them. Thelayman might well think different racesmust differ greatly in genetic structure,that there must be genes unique to eachrace, that races must differ “90 percentgenetically,” etc. Experts then comealong and point out that this is not so,and then try to use this surprise to con-vince people race is an illusion. Realscientists understand that racial differ-ences are a result of many patterns of differences in gene frequencies, as wellas specific differences in forms of vari-

ous genes that code for racially-relevant physical traits.

What is probably the central event of this television program is a DNA testgiven to a group of students of differentraces. First, the students are introducedand made to say that they expect to begenetically more similar to other students

of the same race. For example, a black student named Jamil says: “I think I havethe most differences with Kiril [who iswhite] and the most similarities withGorgeous. She’s African-American, I’mAfrican-American. I mean, like black.”The white student Noah says he thinkshe will be most similar to fellow whiteslike Kiril. The students also compareskin color to set the stage for the results.

The program’s producers are shrewd-ly manipulating the students, settingthem up for the “surprise” when the re-sults do not turn out as they (or naive

members of the audience) expect. The punch-line is that Jamil finds out he ismore similar to the white Kiril than tothe black Gorgeous, and the Asian Jackieis similar to someone from the Balkans.

Noah, who is white, has DNA sequencessimilar to a sample from the Balkans,from Iceland, and from Africa. The nar-rator intones: “Genetic data can subvertracial assumptions about racial ances-try.”

The key to this test—and what canonly be seen as mendacity on the part of its producers—is that it was done with

mitochondrial DNA. MitochondrialDNA can be useful for population stud-ies, but is completely useless for deter-mining race at the individual level, or for comparing the racial ancestry of oneindividual to another.

This special kind of DNA is found insmall organelles, called mitochondria, inthe protoplasm of the cell, and is inher-ited exclusively from the mother. Mito-chondrial DNA is involved in the orga-nization and structure only of mitochon-dria, not of the rest of the body. You in-herit all your mitochondrial DNA fromyour mother, but only 50 percent of your autosomal nuclear DNA, the DNA thatcodes for the rest of the human body,including racially-relevant traits. How-ever, your mother got all her mitochon-drial DNA from her mother—your ma-ternal grandmother—while your grand-mother’s contribution to your overallgenome is only 25 percent.

With each preceding generation, theautosomal genetic input from your mi-tochondrial DNA precursor is halved.

Your matrilineal ancestor of only fivegenerations back contributed all your mitochondrial DNA but only 1/32 of your total genes. Go back ten genera-tions, and it is 1/1024, a vanishinglysmall number, which would have virtu-ally no effect on overall racial charac-ter. It is obvious, therefore, that mito-

chondrial DNA markers tell you almostnothing about the overall racial ances-try of any individual.

Someone who appears to be a 100 percent “pure” Negro could have an“Anglo-Saxon” mitochondrial marker and vice versa. The fact that Jamil ismore similar to Kiril than to Gorgeousin mitochondrial DNA tells us that per-

haps many generations back, one of hismaternal ancestors was white. An esti-mated nine to 15 percent of American

blacks have Caucasian mitochondrialDNA, meaning that this percentage haveat least one white maternal ancestor. Thatis all it would take for Jamil’s mitochon-drial DNA to be more similar to that of whites than to that of blacks who have

no white maternal ancestors. Maybe the person from the Balkans who had mito-chondrial DNA similar to the AsianJackie had a maternal ancestor who wasfrom Central/East Asia—possibly a Turk or Avar or Hun or Mongol or Bulgar,etc.

All mitochondrial DNA can tell anyindividual is the possible place of originof one out of thousands of ancestors. Itis impossible to determine race this way,and for the “experts” to imply that thistest somehow invalidates the concept of race is outright deception. A test usingautosomal DNA would have given verydifferent results.

Mitochondrial DNA is certainly “ge-netic material,” but it is not what most

people are thinking of when they think of “genes” or genetic identity. In fact,the mitochondria are so “genetically de-generate,” they cannot depend entirelyon their own DNA but get help fromaotosomal DNA, which codes some of their proteins. A population geneticist,for example, would laugh at the idea of

The key to this test—andwhat can only be seen asmendacity on the part of its producers—is that it

was done with mito-chondrial DNA.




trying to identify someone from mito-chondrial DNA. It is difficult not to con-clude that the “experts” on this programwanted a racially ambiguous result andchose a methodology that would produceit.

This reliance on mitochondrial DNAis particularly disturbing, given that an

autosomal DNA “race test” is readilyavailable from DNA Print Genomics,Inc. (The company calls it a test of “bio-geographical ancestry.”) The latest ver-sion of the test, (see http:/www.ancestry

bydna.com) uses autosomal DNA mark-ers and determines the proportion of ancestry that is Indo-European (Cauca-sian), African (sub-Saharan African; i.e.,

Negro), Native American (Amerindian),or East Asian (Mongolid/Oriental/Pa-cific Islander).

Individual case studies are featuredon the company’s website. The com-

pany’s CEO, Tony Frudakis is mostly of European descent, but has one great-grandparent described as an “almost

pure Cherokee.” Dr. Frudakis maps outas having 11 percent American Indianancestry (very close to the 12.5 percentexpected from his great grand-parent);

he is also 85 percent Indo-European andfour percent African. His Mexican wifemapped out as 76 percent Native Ameri-can, 13 percent African, and 11 percentIndo-European, an unsurprising mix for a Mexican. Neither Frudakis nor his wifeshowed any East Asian/Pacific islander ancestry.

It is hard to reconcile data of this kindwith the idea that race is an illusion. Withthe right genetic information race can bedetermined unmistakably, as well as pro-

portions of any individual’s racial mix.The “experts” put up by PBS tried to foolthe audience with mitochondrial DNA,while a publicly-available test wouldeasily have distinguished between Jamiland Gorgeous on the one hand, and Noahand Kiril on the other, and would have

put Jackie in a separate, Asian, category.The “experts” on this program also

make the usual statements that there isso little genetic variation between human

populations it has no significance. Dr.Lewontin repeats his often-touted find-ing that there is more genetic variation

within population groups than betweengroups, which implies not only that raceis an illusion, but—like the deceptivemitochondrial DNA test—suggests awhite person might be biologicallycloser to a black than to other whites.AR has dealt with this argument at lengthin several articles (March 1997, Dec.

2000) but new information underscoresthe futility of these race-denying argu-ments.

Most scientists believe humans andchimps are 98.7 percent genetically simi-lar, though recent data suggest the dif-ference may be slightly larger. This closesimilarity was highlightedin 1975 when Mary-ClaireKing and Allan Wilsonshowed that the tinyamount of genetic variation

between humans andchimps was not enough to

account for the physicaldifferences between thetwo species. They specu-lated that the way genes areexpressed must be moreimportant than the amountof genetic difference.

New work (WolfgangEnard et al. Science , 296:340-343, 2002) has demon-strated that this view—which can becalled “the regulatory hypothesis”—iscorrect. There is a significant differencein human-chimp gene expression pat-

terns, especially in the brain, and it isthese differences in expression thatmainly account for human-chimp phe-notypic differences. Genes are arrangedin a hierarchy, with some genes control-ling the expression of many others. Thus,a small genetic difference in one or sev-eral genes can result in large differencesin expression of other genes, even if these other genes are themselves struc-turally identical between the groups.

Indeed, another recent paper by Dr.Enard has shown that small alterationsin a single gene, FOXP2, is probably themain reason humans are capable of speech and apes are not. Small changeshave enormous consequences. Even thescientists who make public race-deny-ing statements about how “geneticallyidentical” humans are, also make state-ments more privately about the geneticsimilarity between humans, chimps, andother mammals. The parallel to racialdifferences is obvious: If a less than two

percent difference in human and chimpgenome can produce such extraordinary

physical and mental differences, thesmall differences between races—differ-ences no scientist denies exist—can like-wise have important results. As Dr.Enard points out in his Science paper,“The variation in gene expression be-tween individuals within the [human]species is substantial, relative to the dif-

ferences between humans and chimpan-zee.”As the late Glayde Whitney pointed

out in an AR cover story in March, 1997,if we calculate the total, combined ge-netic variation in the population of Belfast and a troop of macaque monkeys,

much more than 50 percent of that varia-tion will be found in both the macaquesand the people of Belfast. That is to say,there is more genetic variation within the

groups than between them. This does not mean there are not extremely importantdifferences between the two populationsor that Irishman are more similar tomonkeys than they are to each other— which is exactly the kind of nonsense theLewontin argument implies about race.

If the “more variation within than between” argument invalidates race, whynot species, too? Thus, there is moregenetic variation within populations of humans, chimps, and even mice thanthere is between humans, chimps, andmice. Would Prof. Lewontin argue for equal rights for chimps? Why not? Isthere not less genetic variation betweenchimps and humans than within eachgroup? Can we not say that there are only“superficial” differences between hu-mans and chimps—just as racial differ-ences are superficial?

Another argument the television experts make is that we are all mongrels(but if there are no races, what is the mixthat produces mongrels?) This argumentfails in two ways. First, the various

Just another tribe of Africans?

Arguments that “invali-date” race would alsoinvalidate family and

even species.




stocks that have gone into producingmany of today’s ethnic groups were rela-tively similar to begin with, so it hardlymakes sense to call the present popula-tions “mongrels.” How different, for example, were the Anglo-Saxons fromthe Celts? Second, mixtures of relatedstocks can stabilize over time, and form

a new, unique, and separate ethnic group,race, or breed. Thus, even if today’sraces are the result of ancient mixturesthose mixtures are distinct and extremelystable.

The experts on this program consis-tently claim that race is “only skin-deep,”and that there is no concordance between“superficial” racial traits and other char-acteristics such as intelligence and ath-letic ability. They claim these traits areindependently inherited without regardto race.

This deliberately disregards decades

of careful research. Many consistentgroup differences have been found inintelligence, behavior, brain size, resis-tance to disease, twinning rates, speedof maturation, etc. Prof. Arthur Jensenhas gathered irrefutable proof of racialdifferences in average intelligence. In

Race, Evolution and Behavior Prof.Philippe Rushton has not only docu-mented the large number of other racialdifferences but shown how they fit thevarying reproduction strategies followed

by different racial groups. Even the mostanti-racist medical doctors recognize

that transplant donors and recipients of-ten have to be matched not just for race

but for close ethnicity within race, be-cause inter-racial transplants often fail.

The “experts” claim there hasn’t beenenough time for humans to evolve sig-nificant differences with different levelsof intelligence, for example. This is anodd argument because physical differ-ences have evolved. The “experts”somehow believe there has been enoughtime for the striking differences betweena Nigerian and a Swede to evolve, butnot enough for differences in intelli-gence.

PBS tries to use sports to invalidaterace, arguing that in the 1930s, Jewishteams dominated American basketball.The program thus implies that black pre-eminence in basketball today is some-how a historical accident with no bio-logical implications. Of course, in the1930s basketball was largely a white,urban sport, and Jewish players were notcompeting against the likes of MichaelJordan or Wilt Chamberlain. How would

even the best-trained Jews fare against blacks on an NBA court in the year 2003? Does anyone expect Israel to wina gold medal in basketball in the nextOlympics?

Nor is it fair to ignore the dominanceof people of West African descent insprinting, and the dominance of EastAfricans in longer races. And do we ex-

pect black African nations to win goldmedals in Olympic swimming? Thereare plenty of rivers and lakes in Africain which blacks could become expertswimmers if they had natural ability. AsJohn Entine has shown in his book Ta-boo (reviewed in Feb. 2000), there arewell-established physiological racial dif-ferences that explain why certain popu-lations excel in certain events.

Another argument from the experts’ bag of tricks is that there is “continuousvariation” in human differences. Thus,they claim that if you travel from “the

tropics to Norway” you will see agradual change in skin color and youwould not be able to say where the dark and light races become differentiated.This argument is nonsense at two lev-

els. Logically it implies that mixtures or hybrids invalidate the concept of more

pure forms. These “experts” would haveto argue that because we have a mixturethat produces the color orange, red andyellow are really “illusions,” and thatsince there are “mutts” this proves dog

breeds do not exist.Second, the argument is not factually

correct. Moving from the tropics to Nor-

way, there are a number of sharp, albeitimperfect, divisions in both geneticstructure and phenotype that result fromgeographical barriers. The greatest di-vision is that separating the very dark

Negroes south of the Sahara from the predominantly Caucasian, lighter-skinned Berbers and Arabs of North

Africa (there is also a mulatto presencethat resulted from early mixture). TheMediterranean is another barrier, sepa-rating North Africans to the south fromthe genetically and phenotypically dis-tinct European populations in SouthernEurope. And of course there are geneticand phenotypic gradients within Europeitself.

The PBS experts present a consis-tently one-sided point of view that fits

perfectly with the underlying ideologyof the program, the flavor of which isclear from the following quotations:

“To keep America’s mongrels at bay,eugenicists proposed a series of restric-tive measures unthinkable today. Yetthey were adopted within and outside of America. Taken to their extreme, theyfueled one of the century’s greatest hor-rors.”

“The Nazi propaganda machine pointed out that their eugenic policieswere entirely consistent with and in factderived from ideas of American racescientists.”

One person on the program says: “I’mwhite. Would I trade my skin color? . . .

um . . . I probably wouldn’t trade myskin color. It’s something that I’ve takenfor granted. It’s also a privilege, I guess.”

And, finally, the central message:“Race is a human invention. We createdit, we have used it in ways that have beenin many, many respects quite negativeand quite harmful. And we can think ourselves out of it. We made it, we canunmake it.”

Here we have it: Race is not a bio-logical fact but a wicked human inven-tion that must be abolished. Race-deny-ing scientists, fueled by ideological fer-vor, are trying to distort reality and “un-make race,” just as the Lysenkoists of Stalin’s Soviet Union tried to unmake thelaws of genetics. The danger is that lay-men are fooled by these arguments and

by rigged “experiments” designed togive misleading results. This is not sci-ence, but hard-core propaganda, and itis important to understand the anti-Eu-ropean, anti-Western bias that fuels it.

Michael Rienzi is the pen name of abiologist working in the Northeast.

Find the white boy.

Swimmers, not runners.

ΩΩΩΩΩ




Accusers are AccusedADL loses precedent-set-ting defamation case.

by Stephen Webster

O n April 22, a three-judge panelof the US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a $9.75 million

jury award against the Anti-DefamationLeague (ADL), for defaming a Coloradocouple it had accused of anti-Semitismin 1994. The case, Quigley v. Rosenthal ,arose out of series of confrontations be-tween William and Dorothy Quigley andtheir Jewish neighbors, Mitchell andCandace Aronson.

The verdict and appeal have estab-lished important precedents for punish-ing reckless charges of anti-Semitism.The same reasoning should now applyto charges of “racism,” “homophobia,”and all the other crimes invented by po-litical correctness. In a very welcomedecision, the court rejected whatamounted to an outrageous exemptionfrom defamation laws for “watch-dog”groups—which are now whimpering.

The Aronsons moved into the Quig-ley’s affluent Denver suburb of Ever-green in August 1994. The families werefriendly at first, and the Quigleys hosteda welcoming party for their new neigh-

bors. Relations became strained after Mrs. Aronson took the Quigley’s twochildren, ages 14 and 9, to an R-ratedmovie without their parents’ knowledge,

but real hostility broke out over theAronson’s dog.

First it attacked the Quigley’s dog,and Mrs. Quigley asked Mrs. Aronsonif the dog had had rabies shots. Mrs.Aronson told her it was “none of her goddamned business,” and cursed her.The Aronsons continued to let their dogrun free, and a few weeks later it got intothe Quigleys’ yard and scared their chil-dren. Mrs. Quigley went next door andtold Mrs. Aronson that if she didn’t keepher dog in, she would call animal con-trol. Mrs. Aronson slammed the door inher face. The dog continued to roamfreely, and Mrs. Quigley complained toanimal control. An animal control officer investigated, and noted that Mrs.Aronson had said “she was going to ‘getthat bitch,’ ” and wanted a complaint

issued against the Quigleys. Mrs.Aronson began acting more aggressivelytoward Mrs. Quigley, threatening her

with the dog, and yelling obscenitieswhen their paths crossed.On Oct. 20, 1994, Mrs. Aronson was

stopped in her car in the middle of thestreet as Mr. Quigley drove toward her trying to pass. She made no effort tomove over, and glared at him as hesqueezed between her car and a garbagedumpster at the side of the road. Thesame morning, the Aronsons, using a

police scanner, picked up a conversation

on a cordless telephone between Mrs.

Quigley and an out-of-state friend.The conversation turned to thetroubles with the Aronsons, and Mrs.Quigley’s friend, obviously joking, men-tioned the Holocaust and said, “Tape a

big oven door on the side of their house.”“We could throw some bars of soap anda lamp shade around the front, you

know,” added Mrs. Quigley. There wereother jokes about cross burning and Klanhoods, and Mrs. Quigley noted that theconversion had taken an unhealthy turn.“Sick, sick, sick,” she said; “Oh, gosh.”

The Aronsons recorded that call aswell as another the same day, in whichMr. and Mrs. Quigley talked about thesituation. Mr. Quigley went over the dog

problem, Mrs. Aronson’s obscene lan-guage, and the car incident, and con-cluded, “you’ve got to stop it somehow,

and if it means, you know, clipping their wings and going after them in other ways, then I don’t have a problem with

that, and they’re wrong.” The Aronsonslater claimed this was a threat of vio-lence.

That night, Mrs. Aronson contactedthe Jefferson County Sheriff’s Depart-ment about the road incident, claimingMr. Quigley drove at her at high speedand swerved away at the last minute. Anofficer investigated but could not sub-stantiate Mrs. Aronson’s claim. The nextday, Oct. 21, Mr. Aronson called theDenver office of the ADL and reportedthe Quigleys were making anti-Semiticthreats.

ADL moves in

The ADL referred the Aronsons to aDenver lawyer named Gary Lozow, anADL volunteer and local board mem-

ber, who helped write Colorado’s eth-nic intimidation law. Mr. Lozow con-cluded that it was legal for the Aronsonsto record telephone conversations, butdid not realize federal wiretap laws wereabout to change. Mr. Lozow then sug-gested the Aronsons file an ethnic intimi-dation complaint with the DA’s office for

criminal prosecution. The Aronsons con-tinued making tapes, and gave them tothe DA’s office. In several calls theQuigleys referred to the Aronsons’Jewishness, and made more jokes aboutwhat they might do to them or to their house.

In November, another lawyer, StuartKritzer—likewise a Denver ADL boardmember—joined Mr. Lozow, and thetwo agreed to file a civil suit against theQuigleys, with compensation on a con-tingency basis. The suit, filed in federalcourt on Dec. 6, 1994, claimed that

“[s]hortly after the [Aronsons] movedinto their home . . . they became the ob-

jects of religious, class-based invidiouslydiscriminatory animus and conduct bythe [Quigleys], who conspired with eachother and others.” The complaint in-cluded selected passages from the re-corded telephone calls.

On Dec. 7, Saul Rosenthal, director of the Denver ADL, called a press con-ference in which he accused the Quigleysof engaging “in a vicious anti-Semitic

Vicious bigot hard at work.

The ADL wanted anoutrageous exemptionfrom defamation laws.




campaign” intended to drive the Aron-sons from their home. “This has beenone of the most astonishing cases of anti-Semitic harassment our office has ever confronted,” he said. “The filing of thelawsuit makes clear that this kind of ac-tivity will not go unchallenged or unpun-ished.” Later that day, Mr. Rosenthal

went on the radio and expanded on theaccusations. He said it was “the worst[case of anti-Semitism] that I’ve seen inso many years, since the Berg murder [Alan Berg, a Jewish radio talk showhost, was killed by anti-Semites in 1984],

because it’s . . . so massive in the number of acts that . . . the Quigleys engagedin against the Aronsons.”

Neither Mr. Lozow nor Mr. Kritzer nor the ADL ever looked into the dis-

pute between the Quigleys and theAronsons. All they cared about wassniffing out “anti-Semitism.” The ap-

peals court took note of this in uphold-ing the lower court’s verdict.Two days after the press conference,

the DA’s office filed criminal ethnic in-timidation charges against the Quigleys.The DA also charged Mr. Quigley with“felony menacing,” in connection withthe road incident of Oct. 20. The resultsfor the Quigleys were unpleasant. Theyreceived threats and hate mail (includ-ing a package of dog feces), were de-nounced from the pulpit by their own

priest, and groups threatened to boycottMr. Quigley’s employer, United Artists,

unless he was fired immediately.Later that month, the lawyers for the

Aronsons learned that the federal wire-tap law had made it illegal to record tele-

phone conversations after Oct. 25, 1994,and they deleted from the complaint anyreference to calls recorded after thatdate. Still, the ADL did its best to playup the incident as a shocking exampleof bigotry. On Jan. 6, Mr. Rosenthal toldhis deputy to make sure the ADL was“maximizing all opportunities” thatarose from the Aronson case. He orderedher to alert the press and keep the ADL’s

New York and Los Angeles offices in-formed. “Make hay while the sunshines,” he told her.

In January 1995, the Quigleys coun-tersued the Aronsons, and filed a sepa-rate suit against Mr. Rosenthal and theADL for libel, adding that lawyersLozow and Kritzer violated federal wire-tap law by intercepting telephone con-versations after Oct. 25, 1994.

Steven Jensen, the Assistant DA as-signed to the case, soon discovered it

was very shaky. He found the sheriff’sreports “pretty sparse,” and began hisown investigation. He listened to all thetaped conversations—not just the snip-

pets offered by the Aronsons’ lawyers— and decided that the most in-

flammatory remarks werenothing more than

“venting” and “sick humor.” He also deter-mined that Mr. Quig-ley had made no racistor biased remarks, and

dismissed the ethnic in-timidation charges within

the month. The DA dropped the felonymenacing charge soon after.

The Quigleys then sued the JeffersonCounty District Attorney’s Office for malicious prosecution, and received a$75,000 settlement and two letters of

public apology. The Aronsons, in turn,

sued their lawyers, Mr. Lozow and Mr.Kritzer, accusing them of working for the ADL rather than for them. In Feb.1998, more than three years after chargeswere initially filed, the lawyers agreedto pay $350,000 to the Quigleys, and anundisclosed amount to the Aronsons, inexchange for release from all state andfederal liability. The ADL paid the fullcost of the deductible on the lawyers’malpractice insurance.

This did not, however, end theQuigley’s case against Saul Rosenthaland the ADL, which went to trial in

2000. A jury found them guilty of defa-mation, invasion of privacy, and viola-tion of the federal wiretap law, and or-dered combined compensatory and pu-nitive damages of $9.75 million—nearly25 percent of the national ADL’s annual

budget.The ADL appealed, but in a 2-1 deci-

sion on April 22, the appeals court up-

held the defamation and federal wiretap judgments, while reversing the invasionof privacy verdict on technical grounds.The court left the damages figure un-touched, so unless the ADL wins on fur-ther appeal, it will have to pay.

Of greatest significance in the ruling,however, was the ADL’s failure to carve

out for itself a special exemption in defa-mation law, a failure that is a setback for all people and organizations that makeit their business to accuse others of thought crimes. Defamation and libelsuits generally divide plaintiffs into twocategories: public and private persons.A public person—a politician, actor,

author, broadcaster—is deemed to havemade a decision to go before the publicand run the risk that people will talk about him. Some of the things they saywill be unpleasant and some will befalse, but there must be a showing of actual malice or willful disregard for thetruth for a damaging statement about a

public person to be considered legally punishable. This makes it very hard for public persons to sue for libel.

Private persons—the vast majority of citizens—have greater protection. Thereis some variation from state to state, but

a false and damaging statement about private people can be pursued in civilcourt if the person making the statementcan be shown to have been merely neg-ligent with the truth. Under some circum-stances, private people may lose thishigher level of protection if they are en-gaged in what is considered a “matter of

public concern.” Courts make this de-termination case by case and have found,for example, that racial discriminationin hiring even if practiced by a private

person is a “matter of public concern”when it comes to libel law.

The ADL argued that “bigotry” is byits very nature a matter of public con-cern, and therefore anyone who engagesin it is a public figure and forfeits hisrights as a private person. Thus, an ac-cused “bigot” can be defamed onlythrough actual malice rather than merenegligence of the truth. The ADL saidthe lower court erred in concluding thatthe Quigleys’ alleged anti-Semitism didnot rise to level of public concern. Pleasenote that what is under considerationhere are charges that have been shownto be false , and that the only dispute isover whether the bringer of false chargeswas reckless or merely negligent. TheADL’s argument was that suspected anti-Semitism is so fantastically important,even accusations that turn out to be falseshould not be punished in the same wayas other kinds of false accusations.

Writing for the appeals court major-ity, Judge Mary Beck Briscoe disagreed.She pointed out that until the ADL pressconference in Dec. 1994, “the dispute

between the Aronsons and the Quigleys




was still essentially private.” “TheQuigleys were not public figures at that

point,” she wrote, “and Rosenthal’s state-ments about them are, accordingly, notsubject to the higher [actual malice] stan-dard [of fault].” She concluded that“[Aronson lawyer] Kritzer’s action, and

by extension the ADL’s action, was taken

with utter disregard to the serious con-sequences that would follow allegationsof anti-Semitism lodged against plain-tiffs.”

In a dissent, Judge Harris Hartz re-flected the widespread obsession withcurbing even private expressions of “big-otry.” He wrote that matters of “socialconcern” can easily become matters of

public concern, adding “I would havethought that the social concern of our day is bigotry. Surely, faith-based intol-erance, particularly when combined with

threats of violence, is a matter of con-cern to the community at large. Our rec-ognition of Martin Luther King’s birth-day as a national holiday is intended tounderscore this country’s commitment toend bigotry, private as well as official.”

This position is inconsistent on itsface. If “bigotry” is a matter of such ur-

gent concern that engaging in it auto-matically strips a private person of theusual protections against libel, it is for that reason such a serious matter that theaccusation can be extremely damaging.False accusations should therefore be

punished with particular vigor. The ADLwants it both ways: to make “bigotry”out as uniquely damaging, and yet ex-

pect private persons to cheerfully laughit off if they are falsely accused. Theywant a special exemption from libel laws

for the kinds of accusation they make ittheir business to bring.

Other leftist “watch-dogs” want thesame thing. The LAMBDA Legal De-fense and Education Fund, the NOWLegal Defense and Education Fund, theAmerican Jewish Committee, and other mud-slingers filed friend-of-the-court

briefs promoting the same exemption.They, too, must want to be able to makedamaging and false accusations withoutfearing the consequences.

This case, and the substantial judg-ment a Colorado jury handed down,could not have come at a better time. Itwill be a warning to those who impugnothers’ motives, and will encourage thevictims of witch hunts to take their ac-cusers to court. It is a clear victory for free speech and common sense. ΩΩΩΩΩ

O Tempora, O Mores!More Success for BNP

After achieving its first electoral suc-cesses in nearly a decade last year, theBritish National Party ran a record num-

ber of candidates—221—in this year’slocal government elections. When thecount was over, the BNP more thantripled the number of council seats itheld, going from five to sixteen. It’sgreatest success was in the northwest En-glish city of Burnley, where it added five

more seats to the three it won last year,making the BNP the second largest partyin the city. BNP spokesman SimonBennett says of the Burnley results, “I’mdelighted. . . . I just hope other partieswill accept that we are a part of the po-litical landscape in Burnley and work with us.”

Such cooperation is unlikely. Labour MP Peter Pike, who represents Burnley

in Parliament, calls the BNP “racist” and“divisive.” Shahid Malik, a former mem-

ber of the Commission for Racial Equal-ity, notes that the BNP holds only a smallfraction of council seats nationwide.Still, he says, “One BNP councillor inthis country is one too many.”

“It’s not a question of them beingracist or us being racist. It’s just sayingthings as they are,” says one local sup-

porter. Winnie Hales, a former Labour voter, feels no qualms about voting BNPfor the third straight election. “Whyshould I?” she asks. “All I want is fair-ness. . . . It’s only the BNP who are stick-ing up for us.”

In addition to the seats in Burnley, theBNP picked up two seats in nearbySandwell, and one each in Calderdale,Dudley, Stoke-on-Trent, as well as onein Broxbourne, a district in Hertfordshirenear London, well outside the regionwhere the party has enjoyed most of itsrecent success.

The BNP did suffer some disappoint-ments. It ran candidates for all 25 coun-cil seats in the city of Sunderland, in thehope of gaining a foothold in the north-east of England. It came in second in fivewards, but won no seats. BNP leader

Nick Griffin also lost his bid for a seatin Oldham, scene of the 2001 race riots,coming in second behind the Labour candidate. [British PM Survives Local,Regional Polls Despite Some Labour Losses, AFP, May 2, 2003. Philip

Johnston and Paul Stokes, BNP GainsGive Party First Taste of Power, Tele-graph (London), May 2, 2003. SimonParker, BNP Trebles Seats, Guardian(London), May 2, 2003. Nigel Bunyan,BNP Built Success on White Voters’ Re-sentment, Telegraph (London), May 3,2003.]

King of the RoadOn April 13, a police officer in the

LA suburb of Rialto spotted a 2003 FordExpedition SUV travelling at nearly 100mph and weaving in and out of traffic.Before the officer could begin pursuit,the driver lost control. He hit a tree anda utility pole, went through a fence, andcrashed into a house with such force

police assumed the crash was fatal. Theygot two surprises: the driver was alive,and turned out to be habitual black crimi-nal Rodney King. At last report, he wasin the hospital in fair condition with a

broken pelvis. No one else was hurt inthe crash.

Mr. King has had numerous brusheswith the law since he received a $3.8million settlement from the city of LosAngeles in 1994 for his well-publicized

beating in 1991. In 1999, he served 90days in jail for a conviction of spousalabuse. In 2001, he was arrested twicefor suspected PCP use, and sentencedto a year in a drug treatment facility.[Rodney King Injured After Smashing

Not a supporter.




Car Into House, Reuters, April 15, 2003.King Recovering After Slamming HisVehicle Into House, AP, April 15, 2003.]

The Dangers of CandorOn March 13, a 17-year-old white girl

and her mother complained to Cedar

Grove, Florida, Police Chief JohnFerrick that the girl’s black former boy-friend had beaten her. The girl’s mother,Cherry Sherman, says Chief Ferrick toldher daughter, “Let me give you someadvice—you need to stay away from

black boys. You are lucky that you didn’tget your throat cut, because that’s whatthey do to white girls.”

The girl took offense, and filed a writ-ten complaint. On April 9, the city’s CivilService Board ordered Chief Ferrick towrite letters of apology to the girl, her mother and a friend who also heard him.

Chief Ferrick, 67, admits he advised thegirl to stay away from blacks, but de-nies he said anything about getting her throat cut. [Police Chief Must Apolo-gize, Orlando Sentinel, April 12, 2003.]

Elsewhere in Florida, Republicanstate Rep. Fred Brummer was forced toapologize for joking that an upcoming

basketball game between Democrats andRepublicans in the state legislaturewould be unfair “because all the blacksare Democrats.” “It was not my inten-tion to be insensitive,” he now says. [CityLink Magazine (Ft. Lauderdale), News-

watch: Quotes, Apr. 16, 2003, p. 10.]

Out of Gas Nigeria exports two million barrels of

oil a day, and is the fifth-largest supplier to the US, but imports some of its gaso-line. When the international supplydropped just before the Iraq war, Nige-ria ran short. Many motorists had to waitup to three days in gas lines that stretchedfor miles, and often got into fights over line-cutting. In the southern city of Asaba, a police officer shot and killedtwo people who told him he had to waitin line like everybody else; the angrycrowd then attacked the policeman and

beat him to death. Nigerians often take justice into their own hands.

Black market sales made the short-age worse. The official government pricefor gasoline is about 80 cents a gallon,

but fuel-hungry Nigerians were preparedto pay up to ten times that much—in acountry where 70 percent of the popula-tion earns less than $1 per day. Some

gas station owners diverted fuel to the black market, and made huge profits byshorting their customers.

Many sellers on the black marketwere soldiers, policemen and govern-ment officials. Men driving cars withgovernment license plates were seentrading barrels of gasoline in the park-ing lot of the Public Enlightenment De-

partment, which is part of the Indepen-dent Corrupt Practices and Other Re-lated Offenses Commission. [DavanMaharaj, Oil-Rich Nigeria Plagued byGasoline Shortage, Los Angeles Times,May 1, 2003.]

More on SomalisThe federal government likes to send

refugees to Clarkston, Georgia, a sub-urb of Atlanta with a population of 7,200. Its foreign-born population in-creased 350 percent in the 1990s, and is

sure to rise, since Clarkston will getmany of Georgia’s initial 620-650 allot-ment of the 12,000 Somalis the feds are

bringing in (see May issue). With one inthree residents already foreign-born,townspeople worry their city is turninginto a resettlement camp.

On March 31, Mayor Lee Swaneyhosted a public town meeting with rep-resentatives from refugee and resettle-ment agencies. The public was not al-lowed to question the representativesdirectly; Mayor Swaney asked preparedquestions, based on inquiries from con-stituents. They wanted to know whochose Clarkston for resettlement, whythe town wasn’t reimbursed for costs,and whether refugees would get job andlanguage training.

The bureaucrats weren’t happy. Jas-mine Majid, Georgia state refugee co-ordinator, says the questions “reflect avery sad and negative aspect of Clarks-ton.” Many residents didn’t like the an-swers. Greg Perry, who lives just out-side Clarkston, thinks the refugee agents

dodged questions and gave “canned”answers, evading queries about costs bysaying refugees are an asset because they

pay taxes and run businesses. He thinksresidents should have asked questionsthemselves. “Everything was skewed theway they wanted to present it,” he says.“They weren’t really interested in the

concerns of the community.” [Mark Bixler, Agencies Try to ReassureClarkston, Atlanta Journal-Constitution,April 1, 2003, p. B5.]

Just over 600 Somalis live in Char-lotte, North Carolina. Some were origi-nally resettled there but most came fromother cities for jobs. In 2000, Somalileaders formed a non-profit group calledthe Somali Community of North Caro-lina, to help new arrivals and lobby cityhall. Later, Charlotte’s economy slowed,and many Somalis lost their jobs. In2002, Somali Community was evicted

from its office for failing to pay rent, andnow meets in a grocery store. It is ask-ing for $100,400 from the city to rent anew office, hire a director, and buy com-

puters, hinting Somalies might take their lovely diversity elsewhere. City officialssay they’ve never heard of an immigrantgroup making demands like these, and

point out that Charlotte faces an $11million deficit and doesn’t have themoney. [Christina C. Breen, SomalisStriving to Retain Identity, CharlotteObserver, Apr. 20, 2003.]

Race Is What MattersOn March 10, 2003, two policemen

died in a shootout at the StapletonHouses in New York City. Almost ev-eryone who lives there is black. GraceWatkins, an 18-year-old resident, ex-

plained that when most people learnedabout the killings they said they thoughtthe policemen got what they deserved.“I think a lot of people out here weren’tworried about [the shootings] becausethey thought they were white cops, butwhen they heard the cops were black,their attitude changed totally,” she said.“And they started expressing concern for the police officers’ families.” [DouglasMontero, Surprising Sympathy Dawnsin Projects, New York Post, March 12,2003.]

Costly ForeignersDuring the first six months of 2002,

56 Florida hospitals spent $40.2 millionon unreimbursed medical care for non-

Nigerian gas line.



citizens, many of them illegal aliens.These institutions represent only onefourth of the acute-care hospitals in thestate. There were 705 indigent, foreign

patients found in a study of those hospi-tals. The average bill for each was$63,155 and the average stay was 22days. Eleven patients were hospitalized

for six months or longer, and the mostexpensive patient was a Jamaican whohad run up a $3.3 million bill and spentmore than a year in bed. Hospitals aredesperate to get these people out, but arerequired by federal law not to turn themaway, and once they are in they can bevery hard to discharge. Government pro-grams pick up only a small part of thetab, so the job of paying for patients whostiff hospitals falls mainly on people un-der age 65, who face higher insurance

premiums for themselves. [Liz Freeman,Hospitals Wrestle With How to Handle

Millions in Unpaid Bills of Noncitizens, Naples News (Florida), Jan. 12, 2003.]

Racial Quotas in BrazilMore blacks live in Brazil than in any

other country outside of Africa. Forty-five percent of its 175 million people aresaid to be black to some degree. Brazil-ians often claim their country is free of “racism,” though blacks are at the bot-tom of a society in which wealth and

power are almost exclusively white. Thenew leftist government of Luiz Inácio

Lula da Silva plans to change this, andis pushing a law that would set strict ra-cial quotas in university admissions, hir-ing, and even in television programming.Quotas have already been established attwo public universities, which recentlyset aside 40 percent of their freshmanclasses for blacks. In the highly competi-tive Brazilian system, which admits stu-dents on the basis of test scores, onlythree percent of college students are

black. White students are fighting quo-tas, claiming they are being denied equalaccess to education. The Supreme Courtis likely to rule on the question, but sincethe Chief Justice recently ordered hir-ing quotas for the court, black activistsare confident of a favorable ruling.

There is considerable public opposi-tion to the campaign. “Do they want ra-cial war in Brazil?” asked a recent ar-ticle in the daily O Estado de São Paulo ,which has complained in an editorial thatthe government was “officializing racialdiscrimination.” Some black activistsrealize that an immediate push for 40-

percent quotas might fail, and are ask-ing for 20 percent to start with. Also,there is some question as to who is actu-ally black. In Brazil there are more than300 terms to describe different mixturesof black, and light-skinned blacks oftendo not consider themselves black as theydo in the United States.

In university admissions, preferencesgo to people who claim African ances-try, so many people are suddenly claim-ing to be black. Some people have pro-

posed a scientific criterion for determin-ing blackness, but Justice Minister Márcio Thomaz Bastos disagrees. “A

black person is someone who feels black and lives as a black,” he insists. “I don’t

believe there is any objective, scientificcriteria.” As in the United States, activ-ists are essentially unopposed when they

point to racial differences in education,earnings, and arrest rates as proof of ra-

cial discrimination for which quotas arethe only remedy. [Larry Rohter, RacialQuotas in Brazil Touch Off Fierce De-

bate, New York Times, April 5, 2003.]

Race-Mixing and Mar-riage

People who cohabit without marriageare twice as likely as married couples tocross racial lines. According to the 2000census, 15 percent of the nation’s 4.9million unmarried heterosexual couplesare racially mixed, compared to aboutseven percent of the 54.5 million mar-ried couples. Slightly fewer than 15 per-cent of the 600,000 same-sex couples areracially mixed. Just over five percent of

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America’s 105.5 million homes have anunmarried couple living in them, and justover 50 percent are headed by marriedcouples; single people head the remain-ing 44 percent. Race-mixing is mostcommon in Hawaii, where more than onethird of married couples and more thanhalf of cohabiting couples are interra-

cial. For the nation as a whole, about ten percent of couples who live together areunmarried. The figure is lowest in Utah,where only five percent of cohabitingcouples are unmarried. Rates are high-est in Alaska, Nevada, and Vermont,where more than 12.5 percent of couplesare unmarried. [Census: InterracialCouples Married and Unmarried, AP,March 13, 2003.]

Shades of Black There are now 1.7 million blacks liv-

ing in the United States who are of Car-ibbean origin. Seventy percent are first-generation immigrants. They stay inschool longer than American blacks, andearn more money (see table). The500,000 Africans now living here, of whom 85 percent are foreign-born, doeven better. A large number of themcome to go to college, and they averagemore years of education than even whitesand Asians. It is generally agreed that

black immigrants from Africa and theCaribbean are of considerably higher ability than the countrymen they leave

behind.Yrs. Household

of School Income

Asians 13.9 $64 , 000

Whites 13.5 $52,000

Africans 14.5 $40,300

Afro-Caribs 12.8 $40,000

Hispanics 10.7 $37,600

US Blacks 12.5 $33.500

This table is in descending order of median household income, with Asianswell in the lead. There is a correlation

between years of schooling and income, but it is hardly perfect. Africans have themost education but not the highest in-comes. Hispanics have the least educa-tion but do not have lowest incomes.[Darryl Fears, Disparity Marks Black Ethnic Groups, Report Says,” Washing-ton Post, March 9, 2003.] ΩΩΩΩΩ

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200306 American Renaissance