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American Renaissance - 1 - February 2005

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

Vol. 16 No. 2 Feburary 2005

The Racial Ideology of Empire

American Renaissance

The roots of our crisisgo deep into our past.

by Jared Taylor

It is not difficult to find expres-sions of racial consciousnessfrom prominent whites who

lived only several generations ago.Colonization and empire-buildingprobably brought out the frankestof these sentiments. British ex-plorer and capitalist Cecil Rhodes,for example, stated at the turn of 20th century: “We are the first racein the world, and the more of theworld we inhabit, the better it isfor the human race.” At about thesame time, British Colonial Sec-retary Joseph Chamberlain ex-plained that “the spirit of adven-ture and enterprise distinguishingthe Anglo-Saxon race has made uspeculiarly fit to carry out the work-ing of colonization.” The Frenchtook a similar view, with even asocialist like Leon Blum noting in1925: “We recognize the right andeven the duty of superior races todraw unto them those which havenot arrived at the same level of culture.” The brief American experienceof traditional empire brought out thesame sentiments. After annexation of thePhilippines in 1899, Senator A.J.Beveridge wrote of “the mission of our

race, trustees under God, of the civiliza-tion of the world.”It would be easy to conclude from

statements like this—and there aremany—that race has been a consistentpart of Western consciousness, and thatonly recently have whites lost their way.That would be a mistake. During the agesof discovery and colonization, whitesrarely held well-considered or consistentviews of race. Their actions and opin-ions varied widely in time and from place

to place. Europeans often felt superiorto the primitive peoples with whom theycame into contact, but during the entire

modern period, there have always beenwhites who held anti-“racist” views of the kind that prevail today. Since theSecond World War, opinion has certainly

shifted in a markedly unhealthy di-rection, but Europeans have neverhad a sound, generally-acceptedunderstanding of race. An exami-nation of some of our past mistakesmay throw light on the mistakes weare making today.

General Principles

Despite a lack of consistencyabout race, a few principles doemerge from the imperial period.The most obvious is that almostwithout exception, it has been thewhites who were most distant fromnon-whites who took the most be-nign view of them. It was alwaysthe metropolitan authorities—whether in Britain, Spain, Franceor Portugal—who pushed for gen-tler and even equal treatment of colonial subjects. The men on the

ground understood that empirescould not be run on egalitarianprinciples. Whites who spent themost time overseas and who knewnon-whites best were the ones whowere least sentimental about them.

At the same time, whites havelong had a tendency to be squea-mish and hypocritical about race.

Even at the height of empire, colonialauthorities were full of false piety,mouthing high-sounding nonsense theydid not believe. Except for people on thefront lines of empire, there has been a

surprising unwillingness of Europeans toassert racial interests, even when theyunderstood and believed in them. Timid-ity about race is nothing new.

It is important to bear in mind thatalthough we tend to think of empire aswhites ruling non-whites, this is only onekind of empire. Anti-“racists” love to talk about overseas empire because it is sucha gratifying example of “white su-premacy,” but whites have had no com-

A recruiting poster from the French colonial service.

“We are the first race inthe world, and the moreof the world we inhabit,

the better it is for thehuman race.”




Letters from ReadersSir — Raising the racial conscious-

ness of white Americans (or perhaps Ishould say white North Americans since

I am Canadian) is a complex task. Euro-peans live in nation-states that have somehistoric ethnic base, but white NorthAmericans are descended from manydifferent European ethnic nations. Theynow live in a single nation-state, whetherthe US or Canada, and many have there-fore lost their ethnic identities. A goodfirst step toward awakening racial con-sciousness is to rediscover ethnic roots.

I come from the Scots-Irish segmentof the wider Scottish nation. When I wasdoing research on my family tree I camein contact with, and joined, the Seattle-

based chapter of the Clan Gregor Soci-ety. From my new found kinfolk Ilearned that in the Pacific Northwestthere is a very active Scottish-Americancommunity. Events like the HighlandGames and Celtic festivals attract largecrowds. Among my ethnic kinfolk I alsofound I can discuss “forbidden” subjectswith greater ease.

The Scots-Irish were originally fromthe Scottish Lowlands, and in the 1600sthey settled Northern Ireland. In the1700s, about 50,000 Scots-Irish crossedthe Atlantic as families or clans and

settled in the back country of Pennsyl-vania, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Laterwaves of this hardy and adventurousbreed loaded up wagons and headedWest. The descendents of those Scots-Irish who remained in Ireland, the Ul-ster Unionists, have recently been mak-ing contact with their American cousins.One result has been a series of culturalexchanges between Belfast, NorthernIreland, and Nashville, Tennessee.

Many scholarly and popular books

about the Scots-Irish have appeared onboth sides of the Atlantic. One of the bestis Born Fighting: How the Scots-IrishShaped America, by James Webb, a re-tired Marine officer, former Pentagon

official, and author of Fields of Fire. Thisbook takes the reader right back to theScottish nation at the time of Hadrian’sWall. As the title suggests, one of thecentral themes is the unruly nature of theScots. Mr. Webb notes that the “unre-constructed redneck” so hated by Ameri-can elites is a Scots-Irish phenomenon.Fearing that knowledge of the Scots-Irish may disappear, Mr. Webb writes,“My culture needs to rediscover itself,and in so doing regain its power to shapethe direction of America.”

This almost sounds like a call for ra-

cial consciousness. Even non-Scots willfind the book intriguing, and may beencouraged to rediscover their English,German, Dutch, Scandinavian or Italianroots, as the first stop on a journey togreater racial awareness.

Alex Greer, Victoria, B.C., Canada

Sir — The current black governmentof South Africa is all set to change hun-dreds of place names. This is not democ-racy but sheer racialism. It is also cheek.Instead of governing the country for all,

it is using its power to transform SouthAfrica into a black republic.

The “Iziko” Cape Town Castle mu-seum (built by van Riebeek’s men in the17th century) now displays “70,000years of South African history.” SouthAfrica is 353 years old, not 70,000; therewas no South Africa before 1652. Theintent is to pass off the idea that SouthAfrica “belongs” to the ANC govern-ment, hence its right to change all theplace names.

If Europeans had not landed here,South Africa would be what it was70,000 years ago—a sparsely-populatedwilderness, ruled by warring black tribes. So to whom does South Africarightfully belong, and who has the rightto change its names? The people whofounded and built the country, or the

people who are stealing it?Ralph Pentecost, Oranjezicht, SouthAfrica

Sir — The articles you published inthe November issue about slavery repa-rations (“What Do We Owe Blacks” and“No, We Owe Them Nothing”) bothfailed to mention that we have alreadyspent trillions of dollars in reparationsin the form of welfare payments thathave overwhelmingly benefited blacksand other non-whites. As of 1998, just

over 30 years into Lyndon Johnson’s“Great Society,” the US had spent morethan $5 trillion on anti-poverty (welfare)programs with precious little to show forit. As Robert Rector of the HeritageFoundation wrote at the time, “For $5.4trillion, you can buy every factory, allthe manufacturing equipment and everyoffice building in the United States. Withthe money you have left over, you canbuy every airline, railroad, trucking firm,every telephone company, every radioand television broadcasting and cablecompany, every power company, every

hotel and every retail and wholesalestore.” Mr. Rector estimated another$2.38 trillion would be spent between1998 and 2003, but God only knows howmuch more good money chased afterbad. Whatever the amount, I’m sure thatthe portion that went to house, feed, andotherwise succor blacks far exceeds thevalue of whatever they produced duringthe slavery era.

As dismaying as it is to read throughthe litany of welfare programs (there areat least 80 at the federal level, from theWeatherization Assistance Program to

the Needy and the Family Foods Distri-bution Program, to Day Care Assistancefor Families “At-Risk” of Welfare De-pendency), what’s even worse is that wewho pay for them never get the slightestgratitude from recipients. That must bewhy they call these programs “entitle-ments.”

A reader in Florida




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Continued from page 1

American RenaissanceJared Taylor, Editor

Stephen Webster, Assistant EditorIan Jobling, Web Page Editor

George McDaniel, Web Page Consultant

punction about ruling each other. Euro-peans ended up with large African andAsian empires only because it was easier

to subjugate non-white primitives thanto conquer fellow Europeans, but the his-tory of the West is of endless effortsby whites to dominate other whites.

Even after the discovery of America, Spain ruled Portugal, andtried to invade Britain. Napoleonmade himself emperor of vast Eu-ropean territories without muchthought of possessions overseas.Even when overseas empire wasmost vigorous, when Chamberlainand Rhodes were glorying in bring-ing British rule to lesser breeds, they

fought their most savage colonialwar against whites—the Boers.When they boasted about the Brit-ish race, they meant the Britishpeople, not the white race. EvenHitler, presumably the most race-conscious empire-builder of the 20thcentury, conquered fellow Europe-ans rather than build an overseasempire, and had an alliance with thenon-white Japanese.

This brings us to another rule thatgoverns the history of race and empire.Even among men who had no illusions

about race—soldiers, for example, whokilled natives to make way for empire—there was nothing remotely like pan-Caucasian solidarity that transcendedEuropean nationalism. From the verybeginnings of colonialism through theSecond World War, Europeans enlistednon-whites in their wars with each other.There was some hesitation about teach-ing imperial subjects how to kill whitemen, but only because it might be harderto keep ex-soldiers as subjects, not be-

cause having them shoot whites was abetrayal of racial loyalty.

Non-white allies went into actionagainst whites as early as the 1580s,

when Francis Drake used Indians in hisraids on the Spanish. During the French

and Indian War, both sides recruitedfriendly natives, and both sides let their

allies torture and mutilate captives, someof whom were white. Torture shockedBritish and French commanders, but itwas the price of alliance.

During the Revolution, the Britishoffered freedom to American blacks whorevolted against their owners, and thefirst principle of colonization meant theBritish were much more successful thanthe revolutionaries in attracting Indianallies. Indians learned very quickly thatit was the people farthest away who liked

them most, and they wanted Britishrather than American rule.

As the young republic expanded, bothSpain and England regularly armed In-dians and set them against Americans.Andrew Jackson wanted Indian lands,but his main reason for shipping tribesWest was to remove potentially danger-

ous populations that could be stirred upby Europeans. Neither Americans northeir enemies had any scruples about en-couraging Indians to kill whites.

Later, the British fielded regiments of Gurkhas and other Asians. The Frenchhad their North African Spahis andHarkis, as well as the famous TirailleursSénégalais, made up of blacks from allover West Africa, not just Senegalese.They used colored troops mainly to con-trol colonies—always deploying them sothey never had to fire on their ownpeople—but during the First World War

they had them fight Germans. Sixty-fourthousand Indian troops died for Britain,

many in Europe. France mobilized555,000 colonial troops, of whom78,000 died. During the SecondWorld War, the British raised 1.8million Indian and 375,000 black soldiers. Although Germany de-feated it early, France still managedto field 160,000 blacks.

Such, then, is the checkered ra-cial history of colonialism. Overseasempire certainly meant whites rul-ing over non-whites, but it was not

based on coherent racial principles.The one great achievement of em-pire was to turn whole continentswhite, but the collapse of empire andthe non-white immigration that fol-lowed, has made it a very bad bar-gain, certainly for Europeans.

The British

All the great European empiresfollowed the same patterns, and the Brit-ish furnish as good an example as anyof racial incoherence and even naïveté.

A surprising example of the latter wasthe establishment of the first permanentsettlement in Jamestown in 1607 (seeAR, Jan. 2004). By then, the Spanish hadbeen in the New World for over a cen-tury, and had a reputation for massacre.The English were determined to do bet-ter, bringing civilization and Christian-ity to what they expected would be grate-ful natives. As one backer of the VirginiaCompany wrote of the Indians he hadnever seen: “Their children when they

Allies of the French . . . or the British or the Spanish.




come to be saved, will blesse the daywhen first their fathers saw your faces.”

The colonists did not consider them-selves superior to the “naturals,” nomatter how primitive. Theyreasoned that the ancientBritons had been savages,civilized by the Romans, and

that this process would berepeated. Although the colo-nists considered themselvesracially different from Afri-cans and “Moors,” theythought the Indians wereborn white and turned dark from exposure to the sun andto skin dyes.

The president of thecolony, Edward-MariaWingfield, was so deter-mined to set a loving ex-ample that he forbade con-

struction of fortifications andtraining in the use of weap-ons. The colony was only tendays old when hundreds of Indians attacked it. If theEnglish had not panickedthem with canon fire, the In-dians would probably havemassacred them all. It wasonly after this edifying en-counter that the colonists built their fa-mous three-sided stockade.

The Indian reaction to colonizationwas the mirror-image of what became

the rule in European attitudes towardsnatives: The tribes that lived closest toJamestown hated the English and triedto kill them. The more distant ones werefriendly and willing to trade.

Despite frequent attacks, the Englishdid not give up hope that benevolencewould win over the Indians. After the

first conversions to Christianity, they setaside 10,000 acres for a college whereIndians would be instructed in the faith.One English leader, George Thorpe, wasespecially insistent on kindness to Indi-ans, and even publicly hanged dogswhose barking had frightened them.

As the years went by, Indians andcolonists began to mingle, with hired

Indians working together with the En-glish in shops and in the field. The ap-pearance of friendliness was false. In1622, Indians carried out a carefully-

hatched extermination plan,turning on the colonists withwhom they worked, killingas many as they could. In

some areas, they lost the el-ement of surprise and there-fore killed only 400 of Jamestown’s 1,200 whites.For Thorpe, the specialfriend of the Indians, they re-served a particularly crueldeath and elaborate mutila-tion. The remaining colo-nists launched a war of re-venge, but after a year or sorelations returned to an ap-pearance of friendliness.

Amazingly, in 1644, Indi-

ans carried out an identicalsneak attack, and managedto kill 400 to 500 people.This time, the English retali-ated mercilessly, and in1646, the Virginia GeneralAssembly noted that the na-tives were “so routed anddispersed that they are nolonger a nation, and we now

suffer only from robbery by a fewstarved outlaws.”

What is remarkable aboutJamestown is the behavior of the

English, not that of the Indians. TheEnglish approached the Indians withas much good will as it was prob-ably possible for colonizers to ap-proach the colonized. It was the In-dians who recognized that coloniza-tion meant dispossession, and theyresisted in every way they could.

Eventually, of course, the Englishlost their illusions. By 1690, Gover-nor John Archdale of the Carolinaswas praising God for the diseasesthat killed so many natives: “TheHand of God has been eminently seen

in thinning the Indians to make room forthe English.” Still, it is sobering to notethat even 400 years ago, whites were ca-pable of dangerous illusions in theirdealings with non-whites, though theydid come to their senses before it wastoo late.

India

The British colonization of India wasa remarkable contrast to that of Virginia,

despite the fact that it began at virtuallythe same time (the East India Companystarted operations in 1613). The men inIndia did not think Asians were bornwhite, and had no desire to change orcivilize them. They were there to trade,make money, and expand British power.For the first 200 years, they would not

even allow missionary work, and yieldedreluctantly to the pressures that arosefrom religious revivals back in England.In 1813, the year missionaries first ar-rived, Governor Thomas Munro of Ma-dras expressed the prevailing view of experienced India hands:

“I have no faith in the modern doc-trine of the improvement of the Hindusor of any other people. When I read, as Isometimes do, of a measure by which alarge province has been suddenly im-proved, or a race of semi-barbarians civi-lized almost to Quakerism, I throw away

the book.”The reforms crusading liberals then

forced on India were a classic exampleof people who knew nothing about acountry overruling administrators whohad lived their all their lives. As the oldhands had predicted, Indians reactedbadly to evangelism, and were annoyedby the abolition of suttee, or the prac-tice of burning widows. Although sla-very was not widely practiced in India,its abolition throughout the empire in

1833 was another instance of reform-minded people from thousands of milesaway meddling in affairs of which theyhad no experience.

Indians appear to have been reason-ably content to be ruled by the British,but wanted their culture and religions leftalone. Men like Kipling, who spent yearsin India, understood that “East is East,and West is West, and never the twainshall meet,” but missionaries and cru-sading liberals thought they could turn

Congolese recruit for theBelgian army during the

Second World War.

For Thorpe, the specialfriend of the Indians,

they reserved a particu-larly cruel death andelaborate mutilation.

Queen Victoria welcomes a colonial subject.




Indians into Englishmen. The Indianmutiny (also known as the Sepoy Rebel-lion) of 1857-1858 was in large part areaction to these fashionable reforms.The attempt to make East and West meetended in blood and tears, and Britishreformers redirected their zeal overnightto putting down the “ungrateful wogs.”

Yet another example of home-coun-try illusions being forced on administra-tors who knew better led to what becameknown as the “white mutiny.” In 1880the liberal Gladstone government ap-pointed George Robinson (later Mar-quess of Ripon) as Viceroy of India. Hearrived brimming with reform, and pro-posed a law that would have given In-dian judges and juries the power to tryEnglishmen accused of local crimes.India men were outraged at this blurringof the line between rulers and ruled thatthey considered essential for doing their

jobs. Resistance was so intense the mea-sure was watered down, and any whitedefendant called before an Indian mag-istrate got the right to demand a jury thatwas at least half British or American.

The huge debate that erupted over thisissue, both in India and England, dam-aged relations between whites and Indi-ans. Until the new viceroy made an is-

sue of it, everyone took it for grantedthat the English were tried by English judges. Forced to defend this tradition,whites had to make racial arguments thatstirred up needless resentment.

Empire required a firm sense of thewhite man’s fitness to rule, but it wasnot usually necessary to express this inexplicitly supremacist terms. It was adelicate balance of confidence, sensitiv-

ity to Indian dignity, and indus-trial power that allowed Britainto rule 250 million Indians withnever more than 900 civil ser-vants and 70,000 soldiers. TheBritish were conscious of thisbalancing act, and understoodthat a ruling race had to maintain

a certain demeanor. As a man inthe Indian Civil Service ex-plained in 1900:

“To the peasant the visit of a‘saheeb’ or a casual meeting withone . . . will be talked of for daysover the village fire and remem-bered for years. The white manwill be sized up shrewdly andfrankly. So take heed unto yourmanners and your habits.”

George Orwell, who served inBurma, noted that “a white manmustn’t be frightened in front of

natives; and so, in general, heisn’t frightened.” Sir FrancisYounghusband, who was born inIndia, and who led a British forceinto Tibet, wrote of the psycho-logical basis of empire:

“No European can mix withnon-Christian races without feel-ing his moral superiority over them. . . .It is not because we are any cleverer thanthe natives of India, because we havemore brains or bigger heads than theyhave, that we rule India; but because weare stronger morally than they are.”

These sentiments were reflected in thesense of duty to which upper-class Brit-ons were bred. By 1880, Britain wasrearing complete generations to stan-dards of “Anglo-Saxon manhood” thatwould prepare them to rule. Fairplay andChristianity were essential ingredients of the master-race mentality, and the menwho could pass the stiff examinationsrequired to join the colonial civil servicewere rightly proud of their incorruptibil-ity.

The empire was a source of greatpride and excitement for ordinary people

who never left Britain’s shores. Publi-cations like Boys of the Empire (startedin 1900) ran articles like “How to beStrong” and “Empire Heroes.” Therewas a Boys Empire League, which pro-moted interest in the colonies, and theBoy Scouts were originally a patrioticorganization. Scouting’s founder,George Baden-Powell, had fought theNdebele in Rhodesia, and expressedstrong views of empire to his youngcharges:

“Your forefathers worked hard,fought hard, and died hard to make thisempire for you. Don’t let them look down from heaven, and see you loafingaround with your hands in your pock-ets, doing nothing to keep it up.”

An ABC for Baby Patriots , publishedin 1899, caught the spirit with rhymeslike:

“C is for Colonies“Rightly we boast“That of all the great nations“Great Britain has most.”In the Victorian era, Pears Soap ad-

vertisements had copy like this:“The first step towards lightening the

white man’s burden is through teachingthe virtues of cleanliness. Pears Soap isa potent factor in brightening the dark corners of the earth as civilization ad-

vances.”

Blacks

One group to whom the British be-lieved they were bringing civilizationwas Africans. Of all the peoples they en-countered, however, blacks (and Austra-lian aobrigines) appear to have struck them as the most alien. Whites couldimagine that American Indians were of the same stock as themselves, and India

The colossus that was Rhodes.




hands admired Indian high culture, butwith only a few exceptions, Africansappear to have struck whites as a lowerrace. The first blacks arrived in James-town in 1619, at the time when the En-glish were still wondering if Indians werenot sunburned white people. There wereno such illusions about the new arrivals,

and the colonists did not hesitate to treatthem as a servile race.

In 1681 on Barbados, Governor Ri-chard Dutton argued that back slavesshould be treated with Christian kind-ness, but “as to make negroes Christians,their savage brutishness renders themwholly incapable.” Another 17th centuryEnglishman wrote of Africans that “themen and women go so alike, that onecannot know a man from a woman butby their breasts, which in the most partbe very foule and long, hanging downelow like the udder of a goat.” One Car-

ibbean planter wrote that when Africanwomen bent over to tend crops, theirbreasts touched the ground, giving theimpression from a distance that theywere six-legged creatures. It would behard to find such harsh descriptions of people of other races.

The impulse to see all races as equalnevertheless survived. British idealistsestablished Sierra Leone in 1787 as ahaven for freed slaves, and its backersbelieved sincerely that with proper in-

struction Africans could be brought upto the level of Europeans. Illusions of this kind might thrive among membersof Christian tract societies back home,but they rarely lasted long under thetropical sun.

The explorer David Livingstone be-gan his career as a missionary with the

London Missionary Society, but gave uppreaching in the early 1840s, because hewas making no progress:

“It must be difficult or ratherimpossible for Christians athome to realize anything like anaccurate notion of the grossnesswhich shrouds their minds. . . .Their ideas are all earthly and itis with great difficulty that theycan be brought to detach [them-selves] from sensual objects.”

Africa was the graveyard of high expectations. Even the

founder of the London Mission-ary Society, Robert Moffat,could not maintain his optimism,writing of Africans that “Indif-ference and stupidity form thewreath on every brow: igno-rance—the grossest ignorance—forms the basis of every heart.”

Civil servants met with thesame disappointments. Activistshad pushed for emancipation,confident that freed slaves wouldbe reborn as ambitious small-holders. Freedom led, instead, to

drunkenness and idleness, while produc-tivity plummeted.

The same metropolitan naïvetégreeted the suppression of a black in-surrection in Jamaica in 1865. Gover-nor Edward Eyre, using methods simi-lar to those adopted during the Indianmutiny just a few years earlier, had about200 people executed. On Jamaica he washeralded as the savior of civilization, andhe was shocked to be summoned beforea commission in England to answer forhis actions. The hearings badly fracturedpublic opinion, with prominent men lin-

ing up on both ides. Eyre was removedas governor but never officially sanc-tioned, and went to his grave a hero towhite Jamaicans and convinced he hadbeen shabbily treated by his country.

It was a classic case of people whoknew of blacks only second-hand sec-ond-guessing people who had livedamong them for years. Eyre’s dismissalmade it hard to take firm action else-where in the empire for fear of the reac-tion back home. Sir Garnet Wolseley, a

tough soldier who saw service in doz-ens of colonial engagements had Eyrein mind when he wrote: “I have to think of the howling Societies at home whohave sympathy with all black men whilstthey care nothing for the miseries in-flicted on their own kith and kin whohave the misfortune to be located near

these interesting niggers.”As with Indians, colonial administra-tors in Africa thought it vital to maintaina certain attitude towards natives. LordLugard, who spent many years govern-ing Nigeria in the early 1900s, held thatwhites should immediately rebuff any“insolent familiarity” from blacks, whowould naturally be subservient if treatedproperly.

Lugard worried that some of the Brit-ish straggling into the colonies did nothave the natural air of superiority em-pire required: “The type of Englishman,

in the shape of the trader, whom we meet

in these parts, is too awful for words todescribe; they are all more or lesscounter-jumpers of the worst type andbiggest bounders into the bargain.”(“Counter-jumpers” are people whosenatural position is subservience—serv-ing behind a counter—who jump overthe counter to mix with their betters.)

Still, the conviction that non-whites—Africans in particular—did not have thecapacity to manage their own affairslasted well into the 20th century. A 1937 National Geographic article caught theprevailing view: “The Baganda are apleasant and courteous people and quick to emulate the white man in clothing andways of living. They train easily, whetheras domestic servants, scouts or seam-stresses.”

In some circles, this paternalist view

Tirailleurs Sénégalais.

Albert Schweitzer: advice disregarded.




continued into the mid-century, espe-cially among men who really knewblacks. The great French Protestant mis-sionary, Albert Schweitzer (1875 - 1965)was the Mother Theresa of his time, aNobel peace prize winner admired for

his saintly qualities. Not long before hisdeath, in his 1961 From My African Notebook , he wrote:

“I have given my life to alleviate thesufferings of Africa. There is somethingthat all White men who have lived herelike I have must learn and know: thatthese individuals are a sub-race.

“They have neither the mental oremotional abilities to equate or shareequally with White men in any functions

of our civilization. I have given my lifeto try to bring unto them the advantageswhich our civilization must offer, but Ihave become well aware that we mustretain this status: White the superior, andthey the inferior.

“For whenever a White man seeks tolive among them as their equals, they willdestroy and devour him, and they willdestroy all his work. And so for any ex-isting relationship or any benefit to thispeople, let White men, from anywherein the world, who would come to helpAfrica, remember that you must main-

tain this status: you the master and theythe inferior, like children whom youwould help or teach.

“Never fraternize with them as equals.Never accept them as your social equalsor they will devour you. They will de-stroy you.”

By this time, of course, people whohad no direct experience of non-whiteswere drowning out the warnings of menwho knew better, and the process of decolonization was well on its way.

What eventually brought about theend of empire? What ended the convic-tion that Anglo-Saxons were “peculiarlyfit to carry out the working of coloniza-tion”? The two world wars undoubtedlyhad a lot to do with it. The agonized soul-

searching that followedthe first great war, espe-

cially, seems to have af-fected the way Europeansfelt about everything theydid. For men who pridedthemselves in their abil-ity to run the affairs of others, it was a terribleblow to have, themselves,blundered into unspeak-able carnage.

The Second WorldWar, following just 20years later, further ex-hausted the metropolitan

powers. The UnitedStates, which emerged as the dominantsuperpower, was aggressively anti-colo-nial despite the explicitly racial laws thatstill governed its internal relations withblacks. (This is just another example of the racial incoherence of empire: JimCrow America opposed European rulein Africa.)

At the same time, at least among In-dians and Asians, a class of Western-trained intellectuals was beginning toarise, whom it was difficult to hold insubservience. Empire always depended

ultimately on force, and as time went bythe British became reluctant to use it.

The 1919 “Amritsar massacre” re-opened the wounds left by the contro-versy over Edward Eyre’s handling of the 1865 Jamaica uprising, and showedhow the British were changing. Duringa period of nationalist disturbances,General Rex Dyer—an India man bornin the Punjab—banned “all meeting andgatherings” in the province. When20,000 people flouted his order anddemonstrated in Amritsar, he marched50 Gurkha and Baluchi troops into the

town square and ordered them to fire onthe crowd, killing 379 and wounding1,500. Demonstrations immediatelystopped, and Dyer was a hero—at leastat first. The Sikhs, who hated thePunjabis, made the general an honorarySikh at the Golden Temple.

Horror mounted back home, however,and Dyer was hauled before a commis-sion. He explained that he wanted to“strike terror into the whole of thePunjab” in order to forestall rebellion.

The British no longer had the stomachfor striking terror, and Dyer was forcedto resign his commission. (An interest-ing sidelight of the Dyer investigationwas the interrogation of the Baluchis andGurkhas who did the shooting. They saidthey enjoyed mowing down plainsmen.)As in the Eyre case, prominent people

split over the Amritsar action, with menwho knew India backing the general.Churchill condemned the shootingswhile Rudyard Kipling contributed to asympathy fund that raised more than£26,000.

Earlier men who fought for Britain—Robert Clive (1715–1774), Lord Kit-chener (1850–1916), and John Nichol-son (1821–1857), who helped put downthe mutiny)—probably would have actedas Dyer did. The difference was thatBritain would have backed them.

Until the waning days of empire, most

Britons had a high sense of national des-tiny, and believed their nation was a pow-erful force for good. However, when in-

creasingly well-educated subjectswanted self-rule it became difficult todeny them. The British certainly had themeans to silence colonial elites but nolonger had the will. In 1937, Hitler ex-plained to Foreign Secretary LordHalifax how to control Indian national-ism: “Shoot Gandhi, and if that does notsuffice to reduce them to submission,shoot a dozen leading members of [the]Congress [movement]; and if that doesnot suffice, shoot 200 and so on until

Gurkha troops: At Amritsar Nepalesesoldiers enjoyed shooting Indian plainsmen.

Lord and Lady Mountbatten, together wthher Indian lover.




order is established.”Britain was no longer capable of mea-

sures like this, which was probably justas well. By the time India became inde-pendent in 1947, the exhaustion of twoworld wars, pressure from the UnitedStates, and the sophisticated tactics anddemands of Indian activists left Britain

little choice. One incident from the finaldays of the Raj showed just how far theformer rulers had fallen. While the lastviceroy, Louis Mountbatten, was nego-

tiating the final withdrawal, his wifeEdwina was carrying on an affair withJawaharlal Nehru, the most prominentnationalist after Gandhi, and India’s fu-ture prime minister.

Independence has, of course, led toresults that any student of race couldhave predicted: Moderate success for

some Asian and Middle-Eastern peoples;chaos for most Africans. It is now thebackwash of empire in the form of non-white immigration that is the most un-happy legacy for the European powers.If, indeed, the loss of confidence that ledto decolonization lead inevitably to mas-sive non-white immigration—and itseems to have done so without excep-tion—empire was a catastrophic mistakefor the imperial powers.

Hypocrisy and Failure of Will

Given the aftermath of empire, itshould perhaps not be surprising to learnthat its history is one of constant tensionbetween frank assertions of white su-premacy and the insistence that all menare brothers and equals. It is probably areflection on the nature of whites thatthe latter view has always assumed asheen of high morality. For at least twocenturies, race has been a subject onwhich the more one ignores both the sci-entific evidence and the testimony of

experts, the more enlightened one canappear. No doubt this is why even withempires at their most powerful, men whoknew better shrank from blunt assertionsof racial interests.

Immigration policy—the very policythat is today determining the future forwhites everywhere—seems always to

have been fertile ground for hypocrisyand evasion. In light of the current de-bate over efforts to stem the Third-Worldinflux, it is instructive to note that onlyrarely have whites had the stomach tosay openly that they wanted to keep theircountries white.

Surprising as it may seem, in the Vic-torian era the British tried to maintainthe fiction that all imperial subjects, of all races, were on an equal footing.Therefore, when the whites who ran theSouth African colony of Natal wantedto pass laws preventing immigration

from India, the colonial ministry over-ruled them. The British understood thedesire to keep out Indians, but would notpermit outright exclusion. In 1897, bothsides reached a compromise, accordingto which immigrants had to arrive withat least £25 sterling and be able to speak a European language. This law success-fully excluded the vast majority of In-dian immigrants by means of regulationsthat appeared to be race neutral. Indi-rect measures of this kind became knownas “the Natal formula.”

In the years before it became an in-

dependent commonwealth in 1901, Aus-tralia had considerable autonomy, butdid not have complete control over im-migration. Its leaders wanted laws toexclude Asians, but Joseph Chamber-lain—the secretary of state for the colo-nies who was so insistent on the virtuesof the “Anglo-Saxon race”—explainedthis was impossible. In 1897, he askedAustralians to:

“. . . bear in mind the traditions of theEmpire, which makes no distinction infavor of, or against race or color; and toexclude, by reason of their color or by

reasons of their race, all Her Majesty’sIndian subjects or even all Asiaticswould be an act so offensive to thosepeople, that it would be most painful, Iam quite certain, to Her Majesty to haveto sanction it.”

Chamberlain wanted a “white Austra-lia,” but would not approve overt racialrestrictions, writing of the importance of “legislation that will prevent undesirableimmigration without making distinctionsbased entirely on color.” Australia there-

fore worked out its own version of theNatal formula: Any immigrant wouldhave to write a passage of 50 words dic-tated in a European language by an im-migration officer.

There was no secret about the law’spurpose. An official of the AustralianDepartment of External Affairs ex-

plained how the test was supposed towork:“It is not desirable that colored per-

sons should be allowed to pass the test,and before putting it to anyone the Of-ficer should be satisfied that he will fail.If he is considered likely to pass the testin English, it should be applied in someother language of which he is ignorant.”

A non-white who seemed likely topass the test in English, could be madeto take it in French or Polish!

Australia passed other evasive legis-lation. In 1855, it had already kept out

Chinese immigrants who came tightly

packed in the lower decks of ships. Pre-tending to take an interest in the com-fort of shipboard accommodations, co-lonial authorities ruled that no vesselcould bring in immigrants at a ratio of more than one person to every ten tonsof displacement. In 1888, they raised the

requirement to every 500 tons of dis-placement. These were apparently race-neutral laws designed to keep out peopleof a specific race—a Natal formula be-fore the phrase was even born.

The Canadians also resorted to sub-terfuge. In 1908, when there was no di-rect steamer service from India toCanada, legislation required that immi-grants come “from the country of theirbirth” on “a continuous voyage onthrough tickets.” The provision was

Joseph Chamberlain wanted a discreetWhite Australia Policy.

Gunnar Myrdal: one of the Scandinavianswho lectured us.




aimed at Indians, but lawmakers couldnot bring themselves to write their realintent into law.

Lessons for Today

What is perhaps most instructiveabout studying racial policies of the past

is to discover how little has changed.When whites leave Southern California,complaining about “crime,” or whenthey claim to be looking for “goodschools” and somehow end up buyinghouses in white neighborhoods, they arereinventing the Natal formula. They areusing ostensibly race-neutral grounds toachieve racial results, whether they re-alize it or not.

Something else that has not changedis the desire to downplay or even obfus-cate the racial consequences of policy—except that the anti-“racists” are now

doing it. The backers of the Immigra-tion Reform Act of 1965 claimed itwould have no racial impact, and wouldleave the makeup of the country un-changed. Racial preferences for non-whites get the anodyne name “affirma-tive action” or even the frankly decep-tive “equal employment opportunity.”Transfers of wealth to blacks are “anti-poverty programs.” The dispossession of whites is “diversity” or “enrichment.”

Something else has changed evenless: People who know nothing aboutnon-whites still think they are experts on

race relations. The less whites actuallyknow, the more confidently they lectureother whites who have spent yearsamong blacks or Asians. From the 1940sto the 1990s, Scandinavians who hadnever clapped eyes on a black toldAmericans and South Africans how tobehave. Northerners berated Southern-

ers with equal authority. Even today, thepoliticians and editorialists who bray theloudest about Southern or redneck “rac-ism” live in gilded white ghettos andsend their children to private schools.There is probably no other subject forwhich mouthing clichés passes for learn-

ing, and moral fervor trumps a lifetimeof experience.

The preponderance of opinion hascertainly shifted over time, but whitesseem always to have had a predisposi-tion to tread lightly when it comes to

race, to hide racial interests behind non-racial generalities, and to be stronglyattracted by the appearance of generos-ity and broad-mindedness that attachesto egalitarianism and the renunciation of racial loyalty. When non-whites werecolonial subjects and not in a positionto push their way into Europe, these ten-

dencies had only local consequences—one is reminded of the Jamestown mas-sacre of 1622. Now, they are potentiallyfatal.

Even on racial matters, however,whites are capable of learning. Just asthe Jamestown colony eventually lost itsillusions, liberals can abandon racial

romanticism in the face of hard experi-ence. The current ferment in Belgiumand Holland over immigration is a signthat romanticism is dying. When Ameri-cans actually have a chance to expressthemselves—in referenda on racial pref-erences or benefits for illegal aliens—they invariably show good sense.

Today, with the possible exception of Iceland, no white nation is free of non-white immigration. Scandinavians canno longer wrap their denunciations of Americans or South Africans in the con-viction that if they were in our places

they would work miracles of reconcilia-tion and uplift. They are in our placesnow, and the first-hand experience of race is sobering.

If this were empire, it is as if thepeople back home now have an inklingof what Edward Eyre faced in Jamaicaor of why Rex Dyer opened fire inAmritsar. Far fewer people can sheltertheir illusions behind walls of ignorance.

Will whites wake up in time to savetheir civilization? If they do, they willlook back in gratitude to the men whoknew the world best, who thought about

it hardest. They will wonder why, dur-ing the 20th century, Europeans ignoredthe warnings of men like Albert Schweit-zer, and did not listen to Rudyard Kiplingwhen he wrote: “A man should, what-ever happens, keep to his own caste, raceand breed. Let the white go to the whiteand the black to the black.”

Rudyard Kipling’s advice was ignored too.

Rehabilitating (and Denaturing) theWhite Australia Policy

Keith Windschuttle, The White Australia Policy, Sydney: Macleay Press, 2004, 370 pp.$Aust. 34.95 (soft cover)

A leftist defense of Asianexclusion.

reviewed by Andrew Fraser

Racial realists who would like tobring common sense to the Aus-tralian debate over race and im-

migration will be disappointed by a re-cent book that claims to defend the“White Australia Policy.” It promisesmuch but delivers little because the au-thor refuses to take race seriously. In thisbook, Keith Windschuttle, a formerMarxist academic turned independentneo-conservative, counters the orthodoxleftist charge that the “White Australia

Policy”—which, until it received thecoup de grâce in 1974, limited immi-gration largely to whites—was “racist.”

This is a direct assault on the aca-demic establishment. Over the last 40years, New Left historians have routinelyportrayed Australia as a racist pariahnation, comparable to South Africa. The“dispossession” and allegedly “geno-

ΩΩΩΩΩ




cidal” treatment of the Aborigines fol-lowing British settlement in 1788 is com-monly cited as the principal count in theindictment against Australia, but theWhite Australia Policy adopted in 1901by the newly-federated Commonwealthcomes a close second. Ever since the“Sixties” generation began its long

march through the institutions, Austra-

lians have learned to approach their pastin a self-hating mood of enthusiasticshame.

Mr. Windschuttle is no stranger tocontroversy or to issues of race. He posesas a fearless foe of the academic estab-lishment, but his targets are often sittingducks. Two years ago, he launched thefirst serious scholarly assault on theclaim that British colonists carried outsystematic genocide against the nativesof what is now the state of Tasmania.His book, The Fabrication of Aborigi-nal History, carefully combed throughthe documentary evidence, easily refut-ing that charge and provoking a stormof more or less ineffectual outrage within

university history departments.Standard historical accounts of race

relations in Tasmania have been pre-mised on the leftist fiction that whiteAustralians always hated and despisedAborigines. By going back to the origi-nal sources, Mr. Windschuttle over-turned the conventional wisdom. His in-vestigations revealed that “only” about120 were killed by white settlers. Mostdamaging of all to the reputation of thehistorical profession, he demonstrated

that the “genocide” story was based onthe misrepresentation and outright fab-rication of documentary evidence.

Now, hot on the heels of his contro-versial revision of the “black armband”view of Aboriginal history (everythingwhites ever did was bad), Mr. Winds-chuttle has set out to upset yet another

academic applecart.On a formal level, it is easy to absolvethe “White Australia Policy” of “rac-ism,” since the policy did not explicitlyprohibit non-white immigration. Instead,prospective immigrants were required topass a dictation test by writing out 50words in a European language selectedby immigration officials. However, boththe intent and the practical effect of thedictation test were sharply to limit col-ored immigration. Mr.. Windschuttlemaintains that the White AustraliaPolicy, far from being the reactionary

spawn of a racist nation, grew out of along-established, progressive programintended “to extend both the freedomand the dignity of labour.”

How can this be? Mr. Windschuttleargues that the policy was really a cam-paign to prevent importation of cheapcoolie labor from Asia, and that it grewout of earlier movements to end sla-very and the transportation of con-victs to Australia. Therefore, oppo-sition to Asian immigration was notgrounded in fears of “racial con-tamination.” Instead, politicians

wanted to protect the standard of living of Australian workers andprevent the emergence of “a ra-cially-based political underclass”that would undermine Australia’segalitarian democracy.

This argument strains credulity.Australians were determined to cre-ate a new Britannia. For most, it wasself-evident that antipodean Brit-ons, too, were white Europeans,bound by what Alfred Deakin de-scribed as the “crimson ties” of kinshipto the mother country. Mr. Windschuttle

would have us believe that they wereproto-Boasian anthropologists, confi-dent that, once liberated from their his-torically-conditioned culture of servility,Chinese and Indian laborers would beindistinguishable from white Australiansof British stock.

Mr. Windschuttle concedes that some“unequivocally racist” elements sup-ported the restriction movement. Indeed,he savors the irony that, in the early 20thcentury, the most sympathetic audience

for racial nationalism were the bohemianwriters, artists and intellectuals of theleftist intelligentsia. He notes that thisélite, then famously associated with the Bulletin magazine, bears an “uncanny re-semblance” to the “chattering classes”now: “[T]hey agree on almost every-thing, with the conspicuous exception of

immigration policy, where their positionsare reversed.”By contrast, Mr. Windschuttle insists,

mainstream Australians have never sub-scribed to biological theories of race.Influenced instead by the universalisticprinciples of both evangelical Christian-ity and the Scottish Enlightenment, theyhave refused to treat white Europeansas superior and other races as inferior.

Mr. Windschuttle also argues thatbecause the White Australia Policy wasnever based on racial nationalism, itcould be—and was—readily jettisoned

once the original, legitimate justifica-tions for it lost their potency: “The proof that Australia wore the policy lightly wasthe ease with which it discarded it.” Heemphasizes that dismantling the policyin the 20 years from the mid-1950s on-ward “required no major cultural up-heaval and was accomplished with a

minimum of fuss by liberal politicians

with values similar to those held by theoriginal sceptics and critics when immi-gration restrictions were introduced in1901.”

Faulty Assumptions

Unfortunately, Mr. Windschuttle’s re-habilitation of the White Australia Policyis premised on a familiar, if pernicious,tenet of neo-conservatism: Like thosewho claim that the United States is a

The original inhabitants.




“creedal” or “concept” nation, Mr.Windschuttle maintains that the operat-ing premise of Australian society is theproposition that all people are equal inprinciple and in potential. Accordingly,Australia’s national identity is “based ona civic patriotism,” thereby fostering“loyalty to Australia’s liberal democratic

political institutions rather than to raceor ethnicity.”

Mr. Windschuttle’s argument with theacademic establishment is pitched as amatter of historical fact: Was the WhiteAustralia Policy “racist” or not? But onthe issue of race itself, there is no differ-ence between the two camps. Both Mr.Windschuttle and his leftist antagonistsagree that race “is an unscientific cat-egory,” a thoroughly modern, bad idea,

and that “races” have no biological orgenetic foundation.

Mr. Windschuttle even suggests thatto take any other view “is to betray one’signorance of the subject.” In fact, to any-one familiar with the rapidly expandingliterature on the genetic character of ra-cial differences, Mr. Windschuttle’s dog-matism classes him among what SteveSailer of UPI calls “race flat-earthers.”

Race matters for a lot of reasons andit is of particular relevance to any analy-sis of the White Australia Policy. But notfor Mr. Windschuttle. He recognizes the

seemingly insuperable cultural barriersalienating mainstream Australians fromother racial groups, particularly the Chi-nese. Nevertheless he asserts that it is afundamental error “to slide from the con-cept of culture to that of race.” Humans,he would have us believe, are infinitelymalleable.

But what if racial differences are, inlarge part, biologically or geneticallygrounded? What if cultures, too, are notsimply social constructs but instead have

a substantial biological component? Aracial realist looking at the historicalfacts provided by Mr. Windschuttlecould easily conclude that the decisionto abandon the White Australia Policywas a potentially catastrophic error thatought to be reversed as soon as possible.

Mr. Windschuttle does demonstrate

that explicitly racialist ideologies havehad little appeal to opinion leaders inAustralia. But that may mean only thatAustralians, like other ethnic groupstracing their ancestry to Europe, are pre-disposed to individualism, exogamy andsmall nuclear families and, as a conse-quence, show little ethnocentrism.

What Mr. Windschuttle describes asa creedal commitment to racial egalitari-anism may be a defining characteristic

of a distinctive European racial identitynot shared by other peoples. KevinMacDonald of UC Long Beach explainsWestern “cultural” traits as an evolution-ary adaptation to the rigors of life in cold,difficult climates. Natural selection fa-vored the reproductive success of indi-viduals capable of sustaining “non-kin-ship based forms of reciprocity,” not justthose who were loyal to the tribe. Overtime, individualistic social structuresencouraged the emergence in Englandof the common law of property and con-tract and, later still, the emergence of

impersonal corporate forms of businessenterprise, all requiring cooperation be-tween strangers rather than tribalism andrestricted loyalties.

The distinctive culture that emergedfrom the interaction between the geno-type of the English people and their en-vironment can be understood as whatRichard Dawkins calls an “extendedphenotype,” an extension of biology intobehavior and culture. Like the spider’sweb or the beaver’s dam, the extended

phenotype of Western civilization is partof a biocultural feedback loop linkingour genes with our environment overcountless generations.

Other races have produced their owndistinctive extended phenotypes that caneasily conflict with the biocultural inter-est Western societies have in their own

survival. The Chinese, for example, took an evolutionary path favoring central-ized, authoritarian regimes, placing apremium on clannish behaviour anddownplaying the worth of individual cre-ativity. The result has been a peoplemarked by high average intelligence—but more conformity and hierarchy thanin Northwestern European societies—aswell as rampant xenophobia and ethno-centrism.

Faced with competition from suchhighly cohesive ethnic groups, individu-alistic Australians remain oblivious to

the threat to their own genetic interests.Unlike Mr. Windschuttle, fellow Austra-lian Frank Salter (see “What We OweOur People,” AR, Jan. 2005) has not be-come a darling of the local media, de-spite (or, more likely, because of) hiswork showing the connection betweenethnicity and trust. White Australiansnow find themselves outgunned: West-ern-style “old boy” networks are notori-ously permeable, and no match for thesystematic in-group solidarity practiced

by other groups that manage to gain ac-cess to and work within the extendedphenotypes of Western societies.

Westerners ignore this competition attheir peril. Mr. Windschuttle, of course,is confident that immigrants will lose

their racial identities and take on the in-dividualistic norms of Western culture,and is not worried by the replacementof white Europeans by Chinese or ArabMuslims. Like most fashionable Austra-lians, he has “accepted this with equa-nimity,” perhaps even “with a sense of self-congratulation.” For him, Racialconsciousness is an embarrassing socialdisease, not an essential ingredient of collective identity.

Racial realists who read his book will

Early exclusionist cartoon. Caption reads: Piebald possibilities—a little AustralianChristmas family party of the future.

Western-style “old boy”networks are notoriouslypermeable, and no match

for the systematic in-group solidarity prac-ticed by other groups.




discover ample evidence that if all whiteAustralians are as tender-minded as Mr.Windschuttle they certainly will be dis-placed by immigrant groups much lesssensitive to charges of racism. One ex-ample: Mr. Windschuttle writes thatthe most violent race riots in Austra-lian history were led, not by murder-

ous white racists, but by Japanesepearl divers determined to eliminatecompetition from Timorese rivals.There were three such riots in Broome,Western Australia, in 1907, 1914, and1920. The last lasted a week, and in-volved more than half the town’spopulation of 5,000. Seven peoplewere killed and more than 60 seriouslyinjured, dwarfing the casualty figures forthe worst of the anti-Chinese goldfieldriots of the mid-nineteenth century.

Almost every immigrant group in Mr.

Windschuttle’s book, not to mention theAboriginal population, shows just sucha strong sense of racial solidarity and an

aggressive determination to advance itscollective interests. By contrast, “edu-cated” white Australians, leftist “ideal-ists” and even right-wing “ratbags” (a

common Australian term of abuse forconservatives) remain strangely indiffer-ent to the survival of their ethno-nation.

Mr. Windschuttle is right to defendthe White Australia Policy againstleftist attack, but does it for the wrongreasons, claiming that it really was notan expression of white racial interests.

It is, of course, precisely on thegrounds that it did defend the geneticinterests of the founding stock that theWhite Australia Policy should be re-habilitated. By failing to tackle themythology of racial egalitarianism,Mr. Windschuttle’s book has becomepart of the problem.

Andrew Fraser is associate professor in the Department of Public Law, Macquarie University, Sydney, Austra-lia.

Immigrants arrive at Sydney airport.

O Tempora, O Mores!

Border-Jumper’s Guide

The Mexican government is handingout a guide that tells Mexicans how toimmigrate illegally to America. Firstpublished in December by Mexico’sForeign Ministry, the 32-page booklet,called The Guide for the Mexican Mi-grant , is in comic book format and isdistributed as a free supple-ment to El Libro Vaquero,a popular cowboy comicbook. Mexico plans tohand out 1.5 million cop-ies in five Mexican statesthat send many migrants toAmerica, and in consulatesin the US. An illustratedEnglish translation of theguide is on the AR homepage at www.amren.com.The book offers advice onhow to cross the RioGrande and the desert. Ittells migrants that thick clothing will increase theirweight when wet and make it hard toswim. Border-crossers should avoidwalking in the desert when the heat isintense and follow power lines or traintracks if they get lost. They should addsalt to their water because it will helpthem retain liquids.

The book also gives advice on howto deal with Border Patrol officers:

“Don’t throw stones or other objects atthe officers, since this is considered aprovocation.”

Once they have reached the US, theyshould lie low. “Avoid attracting atten-tion, at least while you are arrangingyour stay or documents to live in theUnited States. The best formula is not toalter your routine of going from work to

home.” “Avoid family and domestic vio-lence. This is a crime in the UnitedStates, just as in Mexico.”

The book contains a disclaimer say-ing it is not intended to promote illegalimmigration and warns against crossingthe border illegally. However, it offersno information about how to apply for a

visa.Mexican authorities say the book is

intended only to keep border-jumperssafe. “We are not inviting them to cross,but we’re doing everything we can tosave lives,” says Elizabeth Garcia Mejiaof Grupo Beta, a Mexican governmentagency concerned with the welfare of Mexican migrants.

The reaction of the USgovernment to the book has been mixed. A Bor-der Patrol spokesman de-fended the book. “If they’ve already goneahead and made that de-cision to cross illegally .. . then anything thathelps protect their livesis worth it.” However, aHomeland Security offi-cial said his agency wasshocked to hear of thebook and that the US wasseeking an explanationfrom Mexico.

The reaction among immigration-control groups was not mixed. Accord-ing to John Vincent of Americans for Im-migration Control, “It really looks likethe Mexican government is encouragingillegal immigration. It shows the con-tempt Mexico has for our laws.” Othershave pointed out that Mexico encouragesillegal immigration because the $15 bil-

From the Mexican migrant’s guide.

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lion migrants sent home from the US lastyear was Mexico’s second biggest rev-enue source, after oil. [Chris Hawley,Mexico Publishes Guide to Assist Bor-der Crossers, Arizona Republic (Phoe-nix), Jan. 1, 2005. Guía del MigranteMexicano (Mexican Migrant Guide),Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Rela-

tions website.]Mexico has produced other guideswith tips for border-crossers, though notin comic book form. Grupo Beta alsohas agents at the border telling illegalssuch things as how much water to takeand what clothing to wear. These lecturestypically end with, “Have a safe trip, andGod bless you!” This summer GrupoBeta put water barrels for illegals in thedesert just south of the Arizona border.[Mexico Puts Water Barrels in Desert forMigrants, Reuters, Jun. 9, 2004. Solo-mon Moore, Mexico’s Border-Crossing

Tips Anger Some in U.S., Los Ange-les Times, Jan. 4, 2005.]

Three Grupo Beta members wereamong the 42 Mexican governmentworkers arrested in March by Mexi-can authorities for smuggling illegalaliens into the US. Police officers andemployees of the National Immigra-tion Institute, Mexico’s border en-forcement agency, were also part of thegang. They told border-crossers aboutpolice raids, illegally freed captives,and let others cross with false docu-ments. Most of the immigrants were

Brazilians, Cubans, Central Americansand Asians. [Louie Gilot, Mexican Of-ficials Accused of Trafficking Immi-grants, El Paso Times, Mar. 25, 2004.Dudley Althaus, Mexico Casts Net OnHuman-Smuggling Trade, HoustonChronicle, Mar. 24, 2004.]

Mexico also sponsors the Instituto delos Mexicanos en el Exterior, or the In-stitute of Mexicans Abroad. This groupuses databases of Mexicans in the US togather crowds to pack the galleries of state legislatures and city councils when-ever there is a vote on immigration. Such

a crowd was on hand during the Califor-nia legislature’s debates in 2003 overwhether to give driver’s licenses toillegals. When an assemblyman com-plained, “This bill paves the way toAztlan!” everyone in the gallery stoodup and applauded. When the city coun-cil of Holland, Michigan debatedwhether to accept Mexican consular IDs,a Mexican official brought a mob of hiscompatriots to the meetings. The meet-ings became so contentious that the city

council postponed the decision. [MattHayes, Is Mexico Thwarting U.S. Im-migration Enforcement? FOXNews.com, Mar. 18, 2004.]

Burka Bandits

Police and the FBI in Philadel-

phia are looking into armed robber-ies by a gang dressed in burkas, thetraditional head-to-toe robe Muslimwomen wear. Police say the burkabandits have struck conveniencestores, restaurants and gas stationsat least ten times, and have held upfour banks. Police aren’t sure if there is a single gang, or copycats.Although it is hard to identify a rob-ber in a burka, police are lookingfor a black man and a black woman, anda third person of unknown sex and age.They think there may be as many as five

people in the gang. [G.W. Miller III,Burka Bandits, Philadelphia DailyNews, Dec. 22, 2004, p. 3.]

One to Miss

Warner Brothers is filming a movieversion of “The Dukes of Hazzard,” apopular ABC television series that ranfrom 1979 to 1986. It was about two“good ole’ boys,” Bo and Luke Duke,and their comic adventures in fictionalHazzard County, Georgia. The program

is perhaps best known for the car drivenby the heroes: a bright orange 1969Dodge Charger called the General Lee,with a big Confederate Battle Flagpainted on the roof and a horn thatplayed a few bars of “Dixie.” The carbecame a pop-culture icon; fans boughtmore than $100 million worth of Gen-eral Lee licensed products.

Despite the enduring popularity of theGeneral Lee, studio executives are afraidthat if they keep the flag on the car they

will be accused of promoting “racism.”They want fans of the television programto watch the movie, and are afraid theywill be angry if the flag is gone. There-fore they will keep the flag, but point

out that it is an “inappropriate symbolof the dark past.”

In a draft version of the script, a me-chanic paints the flag on the roof whilerepairing the car. The Dukes do not no-tice, and are surprised when somepeople cheer as they drive around andothers boo. It takes a run-in with black college students for the Duke boys tounderstand that the battle flag is not“cool.” When they insist they “don’twant to oppress anyone,” the blacksleave them alone.

DaimlerChrysler, which plans tobring back the Dodge Charger nextyear, considered doing a cross-promo-

tional tie-in with the film, but decidedagainst it, fearing the Battle Flag would“elicit a negative response.” [JohnLippman, Flag-Wavering: Adapting‘Dukes of Hazzard’ Proves Tricky forNew Film, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 24,2004.]

A Profile in Madness

Ethnic advocacy and civil libertiesgroups have used claims of racial pro-filing to try to stop private companiesand government agencies from enforc-

ing the law against non-whites. For ex-ample, due to lawsuits filed by the De-partment of Transportation (DOT), air-lines are almost powerless to keep ter-rorists off their flights. The man mostresponsible for the suits is DOT secre-tary Norman Mineta, who once said thata grandmother from Vero Beach, Floridashould get the same scrutiny as a youngSaudi man. DOT has brought lawsuitsagainst American, Delta, United, andContinental Airlines for screening poten-

Part of the $100 million.




tial terrorists. Though American keptonly 11 passengers out of 23 million off its planes in late 2001 and early 2002,DOT still charged them with discrimi-natory conduct that would “result in ir-reparable harm to the public” if notstopped.

American took these precautions dur-

ing government warnings of imminentterror attacks. The airline appears to haveacted sensibly: in Paris, it tried to keepshoe-bomber Richard Reid from board-ing the flight he tried to bring down. If French authorities had not forced theairline to let him on, he might have beenadded to the list of discrimination vic-tims in DOT’s lawsuit. American keptothers off flights because their nameswere similar to those on terroristwatch lists. American settled its gov-ernment lawsuit for $1.5 million, tobe spent on employee “sensitivity

training.” The other airlines also hadto spend money for “sensitivity.” Dueto “disparate impact” laws, the courtscan judge even race-neutral securityregulations discriminatory if they af-fect people of one race more than oth-ers.

The risk of being charged with ra-cial profiling prevents the governmentfrom taking basic steps to protectAmericans. Before the attacks of Sept.11, intelligence agents were so tied downby civil rights lobbies they could not in-vestigate what was going on in a radical

mosque until someone associated withit committed a crime. Government agen-cies have more freedom to investigateArabs now, but operate under severe re-strictions. Last year, when the Depart-ment of Homeland Security (DHS)asked the Census Bureau to produce areport on the demographics of Arabs,Arab organizations and civil libertarianssaid this could lead to discrimination. Al-though the information the Census gavethe DHS was publicly available andcould have been put together by anyonewho understands computers, DHS prom-

ised to ban such requests in the future.The civil rights brigade has struck

such terror into immigration agenciesthat they are afraid to do their jobs. Thissummer, when the Border Patrol con-ducted sweeps in Hispanic neighbor-hoods in California, the Los AngelesTimes, La Raza, and other pro-immigrantgroups complained of “racism.” AsaHutchinson, the Department of Home-land Security undersecretary in chargeof borders, agreed, denouncing the

sweeps as racial profiling. He sent amemo to Border Patrol agents explain-ing that “preventing racial profiling is apriority mission of this department,” andeven announced a special training classto stamp out profiling. [Heather Mac-Donald, Homeland Security? Not Yet,City Journal, Autumn 2004.]

White Political Prisoner

Roy Bennett, a farmer in Zimbabwe’sChimanimani district, won a seat in par-liament in 2000 as a candidate of theMovement for Democratic Change(MDC), the country’s main oppositionparty. He is a moderate and was popular

among blacks as well as whites. He wasone of three whites in parliament, andhe persistently protested the injustices

of Robert Mugabe’s regime (See AR,July 2003).

The government is hostile both towhites and to the MDC, and shortly af-ter the elections, supporters of Zanu-PF,Mr. Mugabe’s party, attacked Mr.Bennett’s farm. They killed two farmworkers, raped others, slaughtered cattle,and made Mr. Bennett’s pregnant wifesing ZANU-PF songs in the rain. Shemiscarried her child. Zimbabwe courtsordered the attackers to stop, but the stateand police ignored them. [Judi McLeod,Zimbabwe’s Loneliest Prisoner, Canada

Free Press, Dec, 13, 2004.]On May 19, 2004, Zimbabwe’s Jus-

tice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, toldMr. Bennett in parliament that he wouldnever return to his farm because he wasbeing punished for the sins of his ances-tors, who were “thieves and murderers.”Mr. Bennett lost his temper and hit Mr.Chinamasa—though no one was injured.[Zimbabwe MP’s Brawl in Parliament,BBC News, May 19, 2004.]

Normally, a minor assault would be

punished by a small fine, if at all. How-ever, a parliamentary committee domi-nated by Zanu-PF members tried thecase and sentenced Mr. Bennett to a yearin prison with hard labor. He currentlyshares a filthy, lice-infested cell with 38other convicts and his skin is blisteredfrom working in the searing sun. Initially

his guards forced him to work bare-headed, but now he is permitted to weara hat. [First Score for ‘Free Bennett’Campaign, Sunday Argus (Cape Town),Dec. 19, 2004.]

Mr. Bennett’s friends and family haveorganized the Free Roy Bennett Cam-paign to publicize his plight. Accordingto the campaign website (www.free

roybennett.com), “Free Bennett” graf-fiti is appearing throughout the coun-try, and the campaign has received e-mail and letters of support from thou-sands around the world, including

some foreign governments. [WilliamSaunderson-Meyer, Graffiti High-lights Rough Deal for Roy, SundayArgus (Cape Town), Dec. 18, 2004.]

NAACP Felons

On May 24 police arrested Rev. JoeBuckner, Sr., president of the RapidesParish, La. chapter of the NAACP, on

charges of drug possession, firearmspossession by a felon, and conspiracyto produce crack cocaine. (The natureof Rev. Buckner’s previous felony con-

viction is not public information.) Rev.Buckner said he was “looking forwardto my day in court to prove I am inno-cent of all charges.” The state NAACP

president, Ernest Johnson, claimed thearrest was police retaliation. In a radiointerview, he said Rev. Buckner had been

Robert Mugabe and his pal, Kofi.




involved in controversies with the po-lice. “So we know that whenever youstand up for what’s right, you have to beprepared for whatever comes at you be-cause, you know, for every actionthere is a reaction.” Rev. Buckner’ssupporters held a march in front of theRapides Parish Courthouse. [Bill

Summrall, Area Has Drug Problem,‘But We’re Working On It,’ Town Talk (Alexandria, La.), May 27, 2004.]

At trial in December, police playedtapes of conversations between Rev.Buckner and an undercover officerwho sold him cocaine. At first, Rev.Buckner was defiant, turning his back to the prosecutor when she questionedhim, but finally, he broke down andcried, threw up his hands and said,“Whatever the questions, the answer isyes.” His lawyer persuaded him to pleadguilty to all charges, and Rev. Buckner

will serve seven years in prison. [MandyM. Goodnight, Buckner Pleads Guilty,to Get 7-Year Sentence, Town Talk (Al-exandria, La.), Dec. 17, 2004.]

Police arrested Lettie Malone, presi-dent of the Mobile chapter of theNAACP, for assault and reckless endan-germent on Dec. 22, after witnesses sawher pistol-whip Sheletha Dailey and fireshots at her and her mother. Police founda handgun in Miss Malone’s home likethe one witnesses say she used. MissMalone claims it was just an argument,and that police are retaliating because

she filed a complaint against an officerfor using racially insensitive language—a charge police say is “absolutely false.”[Mobile NAACP President Chargedwith Assault, AP, Dec. 22, 2004.]

A federal court convicted MonroeSaulter, president of the Rio Grande,Tex. chapter of the NAACP, of Medi-care fraud on Oct. 22. Mr. Saulter ownedQuality Therapy Services, a rehabilita-tion and physical therapy company. Headmitted that he defrauded Medicare bycharging for phony business expensesand spending the money on himself. He

will serve a one-year prison sentence.[Valley Man Sentenced to Prison forDefrauding Medicare, KGBT 4-TV(Harlingen, Tex.), Oct. 22, 2004.]

Unringing the Bell

In 1871, the Reconstruction-era gov-ernment of North Carolina ordered theUniversity of North Carolina at ChapelHill (UNC) to admit blacks. Instead theUniversity closed its doors for four

years, until Reconstruction ended. Tosignal the reopening of the all-whiteUniversity, Cornelia Phillips Spencer, aConfederate widow, writer, historian,

and daughter of a prominent facultymember, tolled the bell in UNC’s SouthBuilding. For years, UNC students have

re-enacted the bell ringing, and in 1994the University introduced the BellAward, given each year in honor of Mrs.Spencer to the woman who has made thebiggest contribution to UNC.

Two years ago, Yonni Chapman, ablack graduate student researching“black freedom and the university” be-gan protesting the Bell Award, saying ithonored a “white supremacist.” (Likemost Southerners at the time, Mrs. Spen-cer did not think blacks and whites couldlive together as equals.) Mr. Chapmanalso says the campus is littered with

buildings named for Ku Klux Klanmembers and segregationists, andeven has a statue of a Confederatesoldier.

Last fall, UNC held a sympo-sium to examine its past, and UNCChancellor James Moeser decidedto retire the Bell Award. He says hetook a survey, asking several poten-tial recipients if they would acceptthe award, now that its backgroundwas better known. “Their answer was‘no,’ ” he says. “A university-wide awardought to be an unalloyed honor and joy.

With our current understanding of Mrs.Spencer, the Bell Award is no longer that.As someone said, we now have an awardwith an asterisk beside its name.”

Chancellor Moeser says he hopesending the award will stop further effortsto sanitize the campus. Mr. Chapman of course thinks “the victory is incompleteand flawed,” and he would be “dis-mayed” if UNC did not purge the cam-pus of other “white supremacists.” [AnneBlythe, UNC-Chapel Hill Ends Bell

Award, News and Observer (Raleigh),Dec. 17, 2004. Spencie Love, UNCDenigrates Campus Champion’s Mem-ory, Chapel Hill News, Dec. 21, 2004.]

Coasties on Guard

In 1999, the economy of Ec-

uador nearly collapsed, prompt-ing a mass exodus of illegal im-migrants to the United States andEurope. The Ecuadoran govern-ment estimates as many as onefourth of it 13 million people fled,and more are leaving all the time.

Since the attacks of Sept. 11,the US Coast Guard has been“pushing our borders out” to the

coast of Latin America, interceptingboats trying to smuggle illegals. Sincelate 2001, the Coast Guard has seized37 Ecuadoran boats and detained 4,575

illegal aliens. Officials say the sweepshave caught illegals from dozens of countries all over the world. For the lasttwo years, the guard has been sinkingunseaworthy boats it seizes—it sets themon fire and blasts them with .50-calibermachine guns.

This upsets people who make a liv-ing smuggling people, and annoys theEcuadoran government. Segundo Mor-iero-Vegos owned a fishing boat sunk bythe Coast Guard in Feb. 2004. He sayshe “unknowingly” rented it to smugglerswho loaded it with 103 illegal aliens and

says the Americans “should havebrought my boat back here and put it inthe hands of Ecuadoran authorities.” His

government has protested the sinkings,prompting the US to withhold $7 mil-lion in aid. The Ecuadorans say that if the US doesn’t stop, it will end the leaseon an American military base used tofight the drug trade.

Other critics note that if another coun-try seized and sank American boats onthe high seas we would call it an act of war. They also point out that the best wayto keep illegals out is prosecute theAmerican companies that hire them. “As

South Building.



long as we aren’t willing to close ourown internal border by pursuing interiorenforcement how can we go into othercountries?” asks Robert Leiken of theNixon Center. [Bruce Finley, US TakesBorder War on the Road, Denver Post,Dec. 19, 2004.]

Carr Bros. Escape Death?Jonathan and Reginald Carr, the black

killers sentenced to death for torturingand killing five whites in December 2000(see “The Wichita Massacre,” AR, Aug.2002), may not have to face executionafter all. On Dec. 17, the Kansas Su-preme Court invalidated the state deathpenalty law under which the Carrs weresentenced. The justices ruled that the lawunfairly favored a death sentence be-cause it required jurors to impose capi-tal punishment when the reasons pros-

ecutors gave to justify it merely equaledthe arguments against it. Under the law,a tie meant the death penalty.

“It puts a thumb on the death side of the scale,” says public defender RebeccaWoodson, who challenged the law. Shebelieves the 4-3 decision means the“death penalty is gone” in Kansas.Sedgwick County District Attorney NolaFoulston, who prosecuted the CarrBrothers, agrees. “This is an enormouslysignificant decision that, unless over-turned by the United States SupremeCourt, will invalidate every death sen-

tence in Kansas,” she says. Miss Foul-ston plans to appeal. [Ron Sylvester andSteve Painter, Kansas High Court RulesDeath Penalty Unconstitutional, WichitaEagle, Dec. 17, 2004.]

Revisionism in SA

Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa, was named in 1855 inhonor of Andries Pretorius, the hero of the Battle of Blood River, one of themost significant events in Afrikaner his-tory (see “The Great Trek,” AR, June

2004). White South Africans celebratedDec. 16, the date of the battle, as the Dayof the Covenant, a sort of AfrikanerThanksgiving, until the black ANC gov-ernment changed it to ReconciliationDay. Now blacks want to renamePretoria itself.

The 142-member city council wantsa new name—Tshwane—by the end of this year. Tshwane reportedly means “weare the same” or “we are one becausewe live together.” It is also the name of

a Ndebele chief whose people lived inthe area until they migrated north in themid-1800s. Mayor Smangaliso Mkhat-shwa says that while he understands thatwhites and businessmen object to thenew name, if a majority wants it, oppo-nents will have to live with it.

Pretoria is just one name the ANC

government wants to sacrifice in orderto promote black identity. Its GeographicNames Council examines thousands of place names it considers racist, insult-ing, or outdated. Eastern Cape Province,for example, may rename itself KwaNtu,

Ekhaleni or KwaXhosa. Western CapeProvince may keep its old name, but isthinking of changing 11,000 placenames. The resort town of George,named after King George, would be-come Outeniqua. Northern Province al-ready calls itself Limpopo, and has re-named many cities and towns. It has now

started on airports and hospitals. Manyblack South Africans want to change thename of the whole country to Azania.[Michael Wines, All Together Now:Make It ‘Marching to Tshwane,’ NewYork Times, Jan. 4, 2005.]

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Chicagoland Friends of ARgardless of location, to visit our site. If you know of anyone who might be will-ing to link to us, or have any other sug-gestions or comments, please contactus. And if you’re interested in settingup your own local AR enthusiasts’ site,we’ll be glad to help as time permits.

Jonathan E. Ardleigh [email protected]

Note from AR

We do not give out contactinformation for AR subscrib-ers but we can help you meet

them. Send us notification by post or e-mail that you want to meet other ARsubscribers in your area, along with acopy of an introductory letter with yourcontact information. If all the subscrib-ers have e-mail addresses, we can for-ward your e-mail to them, and they willcontact you if they wish. If some of the

subscribers can be reached only by post,we will tell you how many there are,and you can send us the same number

of stamped envelopes containing cop-ies of your introductory letter, which wewill address and mail. The introductoryletter should not just tell people youwant to get together. Rather, it shouldexplain who you are, and why you wantto meet.

We encourage you to make an effortto contact other subscribers. Not onlydo they make congenial company, butgroups of AR subscribers can form abasis for local political activism.

The motto of the ChicagolandFriends of American Renais-sance is “Think racially, act lo-

cally.”Our group got started at the Febru-

ary 2004 AR conference, when four of us discovered we were from the Chi-cago area. We wanted to keep the spiritof the conference alive—especially thesense of being among the “living,”rather than the brain dead. So we de-cided to meet informally on a regularbasis. Since then, our group has grownto over 30 members, with about half attending each meeting.

We’ve come up with two ways tokeep growing. First, in November, weinvited a guest speaker: Dr. SergeTrifkovic, author of The Sword of theProphet: A Politically Incorrect Historyof Islam and Foreign Affairs Editor of Chronicles magazine. The meeting was

a big success, especially since one of our members passed out flyers for it atthe FAIR (Federation for American

Immigration Reform) conference justthe day before.Also, we have our own Website:

www.chicagoamren.com. The site is an“online brochure” to which memberscan direct potential members. In thefuture, we hope to get wider exposureby encouraging other sites to link toours. The Council of Conservative Citi-zens of Charleston, SC has already doneso. (Their site is www.heritagelost.org).

We encourage all AR readers, re- ΩΩΩΩΩ

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