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I

To claim that we are a“universal nation” is todeny the past.

by Samuel Francis

n December, 1991, as Pat Buchananannounced his candidacy for the Re- publican presidential nomination, theRepublic was edified by the reflec-tions of columnist George Will. Mr.Will quoted from a column by Mr.Buchanan to the effect that “No onequestions the right of the Arabs tohave an Arab nation, of China to be aChinese nation. . . . Must we absorball the people of the world into our society and submerge our historiccharacter as a predominantly Cauca-sian Western society?” and then pro-ceeded to explain what was wrongwith the candidate’s reasoning. Mr.Buchanan, he wrote, “evidently doesnot understand what distinguishes

American nationality—and shouldrescue our nationalism from nativism.Ours is, as the first Republican presi-dent said, a nation dedicated to a proposition. Becoming an American isan act of political assent, not a matter of membership in any inherently privi-leged group, Caucasian or otherwise.The ‘Euro-Americans’ who foundedthis nation did not want anything likeChina or Arabia—or any Europeannation, for that matter.”

Mr. Will’s bald assertion that

America is a “nation” defined by no particular racial or ethnic identity andindeed by no particular content what-soever is not unique. The best-knownformulation of the same idea is the phrase popularized by Ben Watten- berg, that America is the “first univer-sal nation,” and indeed only this year the new Washington editor of Na-tional Review, John J. Miller, has pub-

lished a book, The Un-Making of Americans, in which he too asserts theuniversalist identity of the nation anduses that concept as the basis for en-dorsing virtually unlimited immigra-tion. “The United States can welcome

immigrants and transform them intoAmericans,” Mr. Miller writes,“because it is a ‘proposition country.’“ The proposition by which theAmerican nation defines itself, thesentence fragment from the Declara-

tion of Independence that all men arecreated equal, means that the “verysense of peoplehood derives not froma common language but from their adherence to a set of core principlesabout equality, liberty, and self-government. These ideas [Mr. Miller writes] . . . are universal. They apply

to all humankind. They know no racialor ethnic limits. They are not bound by time or history. And they lie at thecenter of American nationhood. Be-cause of this, these ideas uphold anidentity into which immigrants fromall over the world can assimilate, solong as they, too, dedicate themselvesto the proposition.”

Nor is the idea of America as a uni-versal nation confined to the contem-

porary right. Historically, it is basedon a core concept of the left, born inthe salons of the Enlightenment andunderlying the French Revolution’scommitment to a universal “liberty,equality, and fraternity”— which wassometimes imposed at the points of rather unfraternal bayonets. Today itcontinues to inform the American leftas well as the right. Bill Clinton him-self last year cited the projected racialtransformation of the United Statesfrom a majority white to a majority

non-white country in the next centuryas a change that “will arguably be thethird great revolution in America . . .to prove that we literally can livewithout in effect having a dominantEuropean culture. We want to becomea multiracial, multiethnic society.We’re not going to disintegrate in theface of it.” More recently, in remarksat commencement exercises at Port-land State University in Oregon inJune, Mr. Clinton praised the prospectof virtually unlimited immigration as a

“powerful reminder that our Americais not so much a place as a promise,not a guarantee but a chance, not a particular race but an embrace of our common humanity.”

The idea of America as a universalnation, then, is an idea shared by andincreasingly defining both sides of the political spectrum in the United States.

Continued on page 3

Samuel Francis

We are seeing the emer-

gence, not just of a One

Party State in the

United States, but also

of a Single Ideology.

American Renaissance - 1 - December 1998

Vol. 9, No. 12 December 1998

Race and the American Identity (Part I)

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

– Thomas Jefferson





Continued from page 1

The fact that the right, in such personsas Mr. Will, Mr. Wattenberg, and Mr.Miller, to name but a few, does sharethat idea with Mr. Clinton helps explain why the right today can think of nothing better to criticize the presidentfor than his sex life and his aversion totelling the truth. Any substantial criti-cism of his globalist foreign policy,his defense of affirmative action, his policy of official normalization of ho-mosexuality, his support for mass im-migration, and in particular his“national dialogue on race” would in-volve a criticism and a rejection of theuniversalist assumptions on whichthose policies are based.

The common universalist assump-tions of both left and right, then, are amajor reason for the rapid conver-gence of left and right in our politicallife. They are the reason why, to coina phrase, there is not a dime’s worthof difference between them on somany issues and a major reason whywe are seeing the emergence, not justof a One Party State in the UnitedStates, but also of a Single Ideologythat informs the state and the culture.As I discovered myself, those who

dissent from the Single Ideology of aUniversal Nation or Proposition Coun-try are not allowed to express their views even in self-proclaimed conser-vative newspapers [Dr. Francis wasfired as staff columnist for the Wash-

ington Times because of his speech atthe 1994 AR conference], and it ishardly an accident that Mr. Miller ac-cuses me in his recent book of what he

calls “racial paranoia.” Prior to hiselevation to National Review, he ad-mitted that he had “wanted to run [me]out of polite society for months, if notfor years.” Nor am I the only journal-

ist to discover that you get “run out of polite society” for departing from theSingle Ideology of Universalism. JoeSobran, the New York Post ’s ScottMcConnell, and National Review’sPeter Brimelow have all met the samefate for essentially the same reason,

though all of them remain in circlesrather more polite than the ones Itravel in.

But the most casual acquaintancewith the realities of American historyshows that the idea that America is or has been a universal nation, that it de-fines itself through the propositionthat “all men are created equal,” is amyth. Indeed, it is something less thana myth, it is a mere propaganda line

invoked to justify not only mass immi-gration and the coming racial revolu-tion but also the erosion of nationalityitself in globalist free trade and a OneWorld political architecture. It also justifies the total reconstruction andre-definition of the United States as amultiracial, multicultural, and transna-tional swamp. Nevertheless, the mythof the universal nation or proposition

country is widely accepted, and todayit represents probably the major ideo-logical obstacle to recognizing the re-ality and importance of race as a so-cial and political force.

In the first place, it is not true, asMiller writes, that the “Proposition”that “all men are created equal” andthe ideas derived from it are universal

and “not bound by time or history.” If that were true, there would never have been any dispute about them, let alonewars and revolutions fought over them. No one fights wars about thereally self-evident axioms of Euclid-ean geometry. Mr. Miller’s proposi-tions are very clearly the products of avery particular time and place—late18th century Europe and America— and would have been almost incon-ceivable fifty years earlier or fiftyyears later. Nor have they ever appeared in any other political society at

any other time absent their diffusionfrom Europe or America. They are based on concepts of anthropologyand history, including an entirely ficti-tious “state of nature,” a “social con-tract,” and a view of human nature asa tabula rasa, that no student of hu-man society or psychology took seri-ously after the mid-19th century.

Secondly, it is by no means clear what the proposition that “all men arecreated equal” does mean, either ob- jectively or in the minds of those who

drafted and adopted it in the Declara-tion. Assuming that “men” meanswomen and children as well as men,does it mean that all humans are bornequal, that they are equal, or that theyare created equal by God? If they are born or created equal, do they remainequal? If they don’t remain equal, whydo the rights with which they are sup- posedly endowed remain equal, or do those rights remain equal? If they arecreated equal by God, how do weknow this, and what does it mean any-

way? We certainly do not know fromthe Old Testament that God created allmen equal, because most of it is aboutthe history of a people “chosen” byGod and favored by Him above oth-ers. Does it mean that God createdhumans equal in a spiritual sense, andif so, what does that spiritual equalityhave to do with political and social or even legal equality? Or does it mean


American Renaissance

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The equality clause of the

Declaration is one of the

most arcane—ans one of

the most dangerous—

ever written.



that we were created equal in somematerial or physical sense, that we allhave one head and two legs and twoarms and so forth? If it means the lat-ter, it is true but platitudinous.

In short, taken out of the context of the whole document of the Declara-tion and the historical context and cir-cumstances of the document itself, the“equality clause” of the Declarationopens so many different doors of in-terpretation that it can mean virtuallyanything you want it to mean. It has been invoked by Christians and free-thinkers, by capitalists and socialists, by conservatives and liberals, each of whom merely imports into it whatever his own ideology and agenda demand.Taken by itself, it is open to so manydifferent interpretations that it has to be considered one of the most ar-cane—and one of the most danger-ous—sentences ever written, one of

the major blunders of American his-tory.Yet, if the sentence is taken to im-

ply that race and other natural and so-cial categories are without meaning or importance, it ought to be clear thatAmerica as a historic society hasnever been defined by that meaning.The existence of slavery at the time of the Declaration and well after, and thefact that no small number of the sign-ers of the Declaration were slave-owners and that some parts of Jeffer-son’s original draft denouncing the

slave trade were removed becausethey were objectionable to Southernslave-owners ought to make that plainon its face.

The particularism, racial and other-wise, that made the American people anation was very clearly seen by JohnJay, in a now famous passage of The

Federalist Papers, No. 2, that:“Providence has been pleased to

give this one connected country to oneunited people—a people descendedfrom the same ancestors, speaking thesame language, professing the same

religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar intheir manners and customs. . . .”

The racial unity of the nation isclear in Jay’s phrase about “the sameancestors,” and with respect to the U.S. Constitution, although the words“slave” and “slavery” did not appear in the text until the 13th Amendment,the Constitution is, as historian Wil-

liam Wiecik of Syracuse Law Schoolwrites, “permeated” with slavery:

“So permeated was the Constitu-tion with slavery that no less than nineof its clauses directly protected or re-ferred to it. In addition to the threewell-known clauses (three-fifths, slavetrade, and fugitive slave), the Consti-tution embodied two clauses that re-dundantly required apportionment of direct taxes on the federal-number ba-

sis (the purpose being to prohibit Con-gress from levying an unapportionedcapitation on slaves as an indirectmeans of encouraging their emancipa-tion); two clauses empowering Con-gress to suppress domestic insurrec-tions, which in the minds of the dele-gates included slave uprisings; aclause making two provisions (slavetrade and apportionment of directtaxes) unamendable, the latter provid-ing a perpetual security against some possible antislavery impulse; and twoclauses forbidding the federal govern-ment and the states from taxing exports, the idea being to prohibit an in-direct tax on slavery by the taxation of the products of slave labor.”

Moreover, Professor Wiecik notes,with respect to the changes in theConstitution after the Civil War,

“Only by recognizing the extent to

which the constitutional vision of Lin-coln and the Republicans was a depar-ture from the original Constitution canwe understand the long strugglesthrough the war, Reconstruction, andafter to incorporate black Americansinto the constitutional regime. Free-dom, civil rights, and equality for them were not the delayed but inevita- ble realization of some immanentideal in the Constitution. On the con-

trary, black freedom and equalitywere, and are, a revolutionary changein the original constitutional system,truly a new order of the ages not fore-seen, anticipated, or desired by theframers.”

But even aside from slavery, the persistence of clear and widespreadrecognition of the reality and impor-tance of race throughout Americanhistory shows that Americans never considered themselves a universal na-tion in the sense intended today. His-torian David Potter writes:

“The ‘free’ Negro of the northernstates of course escaped chattel servi-tude, but he did not escape segrega-tion, or discrimination, and he enjoyedfew civil rights. North of Maryland,free Negroes were disfranchised in allof the free states except the four of upper New England; in no state before1860 were they permitted to serve on

juries; everywhere they were either segregated in separate public schoolsor excluded from public schools alto-gether, except in parts of Massachu-setts after 1845; they were segregatedin residence and in employment andoccupied the bottom levels of income;and at least four states—Ohio, Indi-ana, Illinois, and Oregon—adoptedlaws to prohibit or exclude Negroesfrom coming within their borders.”

Nor were blacks the only non-white racial group to be excluded fromcivic membership. The first naturali-

zation act passed by Congress under the Constitution in 1790 limited citi-zenship to “white men,” and even af-ter citizenship was granted to blacksthrough the 14th Amendment, natu-ralization continued to be forbidden toAsians: to Chinese until World War II,and to Japanese even later. Racial andethnic restrictions on immigration re-mained in federal immigration lawuntil 1965, when they were removed,as Larry Auster has shown, after spon-sors of the reform assured opponentsthat removing them would not alter

the ethnic and cultural composition of the nation—an assurance we nowknow to have been false. ●

Samuel Francis is a syndicated col-umnist and author of Beautiful Losersand Revolution From the Middle. This

article, which will conclude in the next issue, is adapted from his remarks at the AR conference held in August,

1998 .




T

A first-rate account of the

European conquest of Africa.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

he colonization of Africa was oneof the most colorful chapters in thehistory of European expansion. It iscommon to think of it as a period of greed tempered by occasional flashesof Christian idealism, but it was agreat deal more than that. Just howmuch more is recounted clearly anddivertingly in this excellent history

originally published in Dutch, in 1991.Prof. H.L. Wesseling of the Universityof Leiden presents the crucial 35 yearsof African partition in a way that is both accessible to the layman and en-tertaining to the specialist. Divide and

Rule is an ideal introduction to a geo- political adventure that dates from thehigh-water mark of European self-confidence, but that sowed the seedsfor the massive immigration of ex-subjects that now plagues the former colonizers.

As Unknown as the Moon

As Prof. Wesseling points out,Europeans had been colonizing Amer-ica, Asia, and the antipodes for centu-ries before they set their sights on Af-rica. This was because the continentwas so disease-ridden, and because theonly useful things it produced—ivoryand slaves—could be had by trade.Until the mid-nineteenth century theinterior was as unknown to Europeansas the surface of the moon. With better medicine it became possible for atleast a few hardy white men to trampthe jungle and survive, and onceEurope began to take an interest inAfrica it carved the whole continentinto colonies and protectorates in amatter of a few decades.

What started the scramble? Prof.Wesseling suggests that it was a com- bination of French ambition and Brit-ish reluctance to be left out. Once the

rush was on, though, everyone else

seemed to think he had to have part of Africa, too.For the French, defeat in the

Franco-Prussian War in 1871 was animportant catalyst. Having lost Alsaceand Lorraine to the Germans, theyhoped to rebuild national prestigethrough overseas exertion; some poli-ticians even dreamed of getting back the lost provinces by offering chunksof Africa to the Germans. Also, after the socialist uprising of the ParisCommune immediately after the war,French politicians thought distant bits

of empire would be useful whenever itwas necessary to banish trouble-makers. There was also much publicenthusiasm for empire, so France had both a clear strategic purpose in Africaand the will to carry it out.

The British were more restrained. No one in government thought Afri-can colonies would be anything but afinancial drain and administrativeheadache, and for years, Britain turnedcolonies away. For example, Prof.Wesseling reports that Lovett Cam-eron was the first explorer to cross thecontinent from East to West. He spenttwo years at it, staggering out to themouth of the Congo in 1875. In the process, he claimed everything he sawfor the queen but the queen wasn’tinterested. The Foreign Office explained that Britain had no need for “more jungles and more savages.”

In 1882, when a British consul in

West Africa argued for a protectorate,

the secretary for the colonies turnedhim down with the laconic explana-tion: “The coast is pestilential; the na-tives numerous and unmanageable.”The previous year, Zanzibar had askedBritain to make it a protectorate, butthe Foreign Office declined.

The British Prime Minister for most of the time between 1885 and1902, when much of the partition took place, was Lord Salisbury. Prof. Wes-seling credits his diplomatic skill with preventing serious disputes among theEuropeans. Salisbury thought of him-

self as born to govern—his ancestorshad been running the country for cen-turies—and he viewed foreign affairswith humor and detachment. “British policy is to drift lazily downstream,occasionally putting out a boat-hook to avoid a collision,” he once explained. He thought Africa was a side-show and joked about the horsetradingthat went into drawing colonial bor-ders: “We have been giving awaymountains and rivers and lakes to eachother, hindered only by the small im- pediment that we never knew exactly

where the mountains and rivers andlakes were.” He also complained that“constant study of maps is apt to dis-turb a man’s reasoning powers.”

The British hated having to managenatives, but did not want to be leftwithout influence. As one consul putit, “so long as we keep other Europeannations out we need not be in a hurryto go in.” It was the ambitions of the pesky French that made it necessary to“go in.” As Percy Anderson of theForeign Office complained in 1883,West Africa was “a question between

British Protectorates, which would beunwelcome, and French Protectorates,which would be fatal.” However, by1887, the new Colonial Secretary Jo-seph Chamberlain (father of Neville)was an ardent imperialist, who lovedto plant the flag as much as the Frenchdid.

One of the principles of coloniza-tion was that of the “hinterland,” the


Africa’s early exports.

“Jungles and Savages”H.L. Wesseling, Divide and Rule: The Partition of Africa, 1880-1914, trans: Arnold Pomerans,

Praeger, 1996, 446 pp., $29.95 (soft cover).



idea that settling the coast entitled aEuropean power to inland territory.Some countries were more ardenthinterlanders than others. As one Brit-

ish undersecretary complained, “If theFrench or Germans have a strip of coast they claim, and claim success-fully, everything behind it to the NorthPole.”

French West Africa

For the French in West Africa,though, it was the natives who werethe main problem, not the British. Theareas France was after had been pene-trated by Islam, which brought with itstrong government and anti-infidelfervor. There may have been littlechoice in the matter, but the men onthe ground tended to think all prob-lems had military solutions.

One of France’s toughest problemswas Samory Touré, West Africa’smost talented military organizer andempire builder. He fought the Frenchoff and on for 17 years before he was

finally captured and exiled to Gabon.The king of Dahomey also put up astiff fight, with the help of his famoustroop of Amazons. These women werewives of the king and were not al-lowed to have relations with other men; Prof. Wesseling reports that en-forced chastity was said to explaintheir ferocity.

Actually, the greatest killer of the

French was disease. When soldierscould actually find their enemies,Western fire-power usually won theday. The French also discovered that

natives could be turned into usefulsoldiers, and Senegalese infantry wonmany battles for them. All in all,French imperialism was a martial sortof business, and many of the famousnames on the French side of the FirstWorld War first saw action in WestAfrica.

It was in East Africa, though, at theface-down at Fashoda in 1898, thatFrance nearly came to blows withEngland. One of the few things Britainreally cared about in all of Africa wascontrol of the Nile, and the Frenchthought they could steal a march andclaim the headwaters in the Sudan.Jean-Baptiste Marchand had been rais-ing French flags along the White Nilewhen Lord Kitchener marched intotown and told him to clear out. Kitch-ener was fresh from a victory in Khar-toum, where he had killed 11,000 re- bellious Sudanese (Kipling’s “fuzzy-

wuzzies”) at a loss of only 48 of hisown men. Marchand, badly out-gunned, took down his flags and wenthome. This was mortification for theFrench, who even considered declar-ing war. Prof. Wesseling tells the fa-mous story—as he does so many oth-ers—with just the right combinationof economy and piquant detail.

Colonization was not, of course,

without its catastrophes for the British,and it was one of the these that had brought Kitchener to the Sudan in thefirst place. Britain had stumbled intocontrol of Egypt in 1882, at a pointwhen Egypt had just taken over theSudan. The Sudanese were not keenon either the British or the Egyptians,and the fuzzy-wuzzies (properlyknown as the mahdists) were making

trouble. Charles George “Chinese”Gordon, the copy-book model of theeminent Victorian, went to Khartoumin 1885 to restore order but was killedin a siege. Gordon’s death was a tre-mendous shock; it was hardly as-suaged when the leader of the victori-ous mahdists later wrote to QueenVictoria, inviting her to come to theSudan, submit to him, and convert toIslam. It took the British 14 years toavenge the death of Gordon, but theytook care of the French on the sametrip.

The Congo

One of the most amazing of themany amazing adventures Prof. Wes-seling recounts is the establishment of the Belgian Congo. This was the do-ing of a single man, King Leopold IIwho was, in the professor’s words,“the constitutional ruler of a small butrespected country which wanted no part of colonies, and at the same timea colonial conquistador in his privatecapacity and before long sole ruler over a gigantic colony.”

Leopold was a huge man with hugeappetites, who toured the capitals of Europe looking for good food and un-derage women. He was also the sortwho gave colonialism a bad name. Hethought colonies were good for onething—exploitation—and before hesank his hooks into Africa, he lookedall over the world for prey. At onetime he wanted to buy the Philippinesand he even considered a pirate rateon the Japanese treasury.

However, he knew enough to drapehis avarice with talk of philanthropy,and by the time he got serious aboutAfrica, he was full of pieties aboutmissionary work and putting down theslave trade. The king fell in with an-other man who was, in his own way, just as colorful: Henry MortonStanley. Together, they founded anAfrican empire that was several times


Africa in 1914



the size of Europe.Stanley, Prof. Wesseling tells us,

was born in Wales to unmarried par-ents, sent to a workhouse, escaped toAmerica, fought on both sides in theWar Between the States, and finallyfound his niche as a war correspon-dent. The New York Herald packedhim off to Africa to find David Liv-ingstone. Finding Livingstone ensured

Stanley’s fame and gave him a tastefor Africa. He was exceptionallyhealthy, and was often the only whiteman to survive an expedition. He didnot believe in roughing it, though, andalways traveled with a portable bed, asilver toilet set, and plenty of cham- pagne.

He was all set to claim greatchunks of Africa for his native Eng-land, but ran into two obstacles.Queen Victoria didn’t like him—shecalled him “a determined, ugly, littleman”—and the Foreign Office stillwasn’t interested in more jungle andsavages. Desperate to claim the Congofor someone, Stanley went to work for Leopold. The Belgian government didnot want the bother of running colo-nies, so the king set about acquiringEurope’s only privately-held empire.

Treaties With Chiefs

One of the great curiosities of Afri-can colonization was its sham legal-ism. Stanley could not simply wander around staking claims for Leopold. Hehad to find some local chief, get himto sign over sovereignty, and get thetreaty recognized by the European powers. Stanley went back to Africawith sheafs of pre-printed treaties with blanks for chiefs to make their marks.All told, he and his men brought homethree or four hundred of them. At thetime, Pierre de Brazza was trying tosign up some of the same territory for France, so the years 1879 and 1880saw a great deal of crashing throughthe jungle and looking for chiefs.

As Prof. Wesseling points out, onecan well wonder what the Africansthought about this. Some chiefs wereapparently coerced into signing butmany were glad to make a mark inreturn for a few bottles of gin or asnappy uniform. Back in Europe therewas much skepticism about treatiessigned with people who could notread. Bismarck once pointed out that it

was suspiciously easy “to come by a piece of paper with a lot of Negrocrosses at the bottom.” Nevertheless,since all the colonizing powers werecollecting treaties, no one scrutinizedanyone else’s too closely for fear hisown might be found to be worthless.

In the end, King Leopold got theCongo, but at a price. Empire bledKing Leopold white. He sold the liv-

ery off his servants’ backs, skimpedon meals, and eventually had to bor-row money from the Belgian govern-ment to keep the colony going. In1908 Belgium had to take over despiteits reluctance to manage natives.

Another less-than-enthusiasticcolonizer was Germany. After theFranco-Prussian War, it found itself agreat power at a time when great pow-ers were acquiring colonies. Bismarck was not convinced colonies wereworth the trouble, but the people wereclamoring for them. “That whole colo-nial business is a sham,” he once said,“but we need it for the elections.”

Germany was more or less pushedinto empire. Carl Peters, for example,was a private citizen who defied theopposition of the German governmentand set off for East Africa with a bun-dle of treaties. In 1884 he went on asigning jag, picking up in about amonth 55,000 square miles of what isnow mostly Tanzania. His methods, asProf. Wesseling describes them, were pretty typical: “The signing ceremonywas usually preceded by a merry-making session, during which guns

were fired, German songs sung,schnapps was drunk . . . .”

He came home brandishing histreaties, and tried to whoop up publicsupport for ratification. He said EastAfrica was “sublimely beautiful,” andin his enthusiasm even claimed partsof it were really rather like Heidel- berg. The German government swal-lowed hard and bowed to the popular

will.Bismarck, still deeply skeptical,

was determined to run colonies with-out spending money. He appointed“chartered companies” and gave themcommercial monopolies in return for governing the colonies. Empire on thecheap didn’t work. Chartered compa-nies floundered and the Reich had totake over; Bismarck cursed the veryidea of Africa.

Interestingly, the British tried char-tered companies and failed, too. Onlythe French, who were serious aboutempire, never fooled themselves intothinking it would be cheap or could beleft to businessmen.

South Africa

There is no denying that Europeanexpansion was sometimes unpleasantfor Africans, and it is certainly truethat Europeans sometimes treated Af-ricans more ruthlessly than they wouldhave treated each other. For example,the French Voulet-Chanoine missionof 1899, which was supposed tomarch to Lake Chad, requisitionedsupplies from the natives in a most bloodthirsty manner. However, thiscaused a huge scandal in France, andthe government was relieved to learnthat Paul Voulet and Julien Chanoinehad managed to get themselves shot. Nevertheless, it could well be arguedthat the worst colonial excesses werecommitted against a white popula-tion—the Boers.

As Prof. Wesseling points out,what the Dutch-descended Boers

cared about most was freedom. Theyset out on the Great Trek in 1835 toescape from British rule, find an unin-habited part of the continent, and builda country. They built two—the Trans-vaal and the Orange Free State—butfreedom did not last long. The Britishwere feeling expansive and wouldn’tleave the Afrikaners alone. The resultwas a brisk little war, which the Boers


East African Village?



P

by Ray Batz

roposition 209 was the 1996 Cali-fornia voter initiative that prohibitedthe state from practicing "affirmativeaction," or racial preferences. I wasthe Marin County chairman for 209and I attended a debate between Prof.Ron Takaki, the founder of the UCBerkeley Ethnic Studies Department,and Ward Connerly, the former Prop.209 spokesman. Midway in the debateProf. Takaki, who was arguing for ra-cial preferences, was caught in a lie.

To support his claim that the SanFrancisco Police Department (SFPD)was "racist," he said there were noAsian faces on the force 20 years ago.Retired SFPD officers in the audiencek n e w o t h e r w i s e : t h e f i r s tAsian-American joined 41 years ago,and the present Chief of the SFPD,Fred Lau, a Chinese-American, joined

the Department in the early '70s along

with a number of other Asians.Lying to substantiate charges of

racism isn't uncommon or usually so benign. A recent exchange of letters between California State University atChico African History professor Charles Geshekter, and John HopeFranklin, Chairman of the President'sCommission on Race, illuminates an-other fabrication.

To support his claim that schoolsare becoming "resegregated," Prof.

Franklin told a San Francisco Ex-

aminer reporter of a young black stu-dent who worked hard on an assign-ment, only to have his white teacher ask, "Where did you get this paper?"According to Prof. Franklin, "the boywas destroyed," quit school, and nowlives on the street.

Appalled to learn of the incident,Prof. Geshekter, a graduate of Howard

University, a member of the ACLUand the Southern Poverty Law Center,wrote to Prof. Franklin, asking for par-ticulars: the name of the school, the

student, and what was done to theteacher.

Repeated requests to Prof. Franklinwent unanswered for ten months be-fore he finally explained that his du-ties on the Race Commission, "as wellas my usual professional responsibili-ties" delayed his reply. Dr. Franklincontinued, "I can provide no more de-tails about the incident . . . . I do notwish to expose either him or his fam-ily to further unauthorized disclosure."

Prof. Geshekter persisted: "Unless

you provide such elementary facts youleave the putative `incident' devoid of any corroboration and hence it should be dismissed as a misleading and un-verifiable story." Professor Franklinhas not responded.

Another artful anecdote was repu-diated early this year when reportersfound that the disturbing tale consis-

surprised everyone by winning. In1881, Britain recognized the independence of the two Boer states.

All might have been well had notgold been discovered in the Transvaal.The British appear to have been will-ing to let their defeat go unavenged, but they could not bear to let unman-nerly Afrikaners get all that gold. In1899, on the pretext that Boer authori-

ties were mistreating Englishmen inthe Transvaal, Britain started the sec-ond Boer War. This was a hard slog,which took three years and half a mil-lion British soldiers to win. The entireBoer population was armed and hos-tile, and the British resorted to terror tactics and concentration camps. Bywar’s end, 30,000 Boers had died incamps, 20,000 of them children under age sixteen. All of Europe was re-volted by British tactics, but no onewas willing to fight England to savethe Boers. It would be hard to think of another major war that was fought for so purely mercenary reasons.

By the end, therefore, Britain wasas resolutely imperialist as the French.Although the cost of acquiring eachadditional British subject had been

about 15 pence a head elsewhere inAfrica, each Boer cost about £1,000 tosubjugate.

Lessons of Empire

Colonization was full of drama andadventure—much of Divide and Rule reads like a novel—but, as Prof. Wes-seling points out, it all ended with a

fizzle. Although at the turn of the cen-tury Britain was willing to kill thou-sands of white men for gold and coun-try, only 60 years later virtually all of Africa was independent. In Prof. Wes-seling’s words it “reverted to what ithad been before the partition: a conti-nent of little importance to Europe.”

Blunt assessment of this kind isone of the book’s great strengths. Prof.Wesseling tells us the story—and tellsit well—but does not moralize. To besure, not everything he describes re-dounds to the glory of Europe, but hehas no illusions about the sweetness of African folkways either. He notes thatmany Europeans devoted their lives tofighting slavery, cannibalism, childsacrifice, illiteracy, and witchcraft.

Aside from the liveliness of the

subject and of Prof. Wesseling’s style,this is an extraordinary record of amentality that is today almost impossi- ble to imagine. The West was su- premely confident, and no Europeandisputed the white man’s right, evenduty, to rule the world. It was also atime of deep patriotism. Many Euro- peans risked leaving their bones inAfrica because they believed they

were doing something great and noblefor their countries.

Today the left criticizes imperial-ism on moral grounds while national-ists criticize it because it gave rise toreverse colonization. Nevertheless, itis a mistake not to recognize in it theexuberance of a strong and dynamic people. In its deepest origins it was nodifferent from the voyages of discov-ery, the establishment of science, andthe industrial revolution. If todayEurope is paying a high price for empire, it is because of the across-the- board loss of nerve of which decoloni-zation—and subsequent Third-Worldimmigration—was only a part. What-ever the cost of empire, Europe withcolonies was far healthier than Europewithout them. ●


Lying About Race



Crimes You May HaveMissed

The beating death of MatthewShepard in Wyoming duly turned intoan orgy of homosexual self-righteousness. Here are a fewcrimes that, somehow, didn’tget quite as much attention.

A few days before the attack in Wyoming, three black teen-agers beat a white homosexualto death in Buffalo, New York.They attacked Gary Trzaskaafter he left a bar, damagingnearly every internal organ in his body. Witnesses say the blacks

jumped on Mr. Trzaska’s head with both feet and pounded him with achair.

“Whether it was racial, or becausehe was gay, or for whatever reason,we refuse to believe this was a routinerobbery,” says George Boos, a friendof Mr. Trzaska. William P. Conwall, aBuffalo assistant detective chief saysat this point it would be “alarmist” tocall the murder a hate crime. (FamilyAsks if Death Hate Motivated, LasVegas Sun, October 19, 1998.)

In Madison County, Alabama, a

group of black jailbirds beat a retardedwhite inmate to death. Robby Sevignywas 19 but his adopted parents say hehad the mental capacity of a twelve-year-old. He had been held in a singlecell and had only recently been re-leased into the general population.(Wendy Reeves, Beaten Inmate ASlow Learner, Remembered As a NiceKid, Huntsville Times, September 10,

1998, p. A1.)In Torrance, California, three

weeks after a black woman bought ahouse in a Hispanic area, her

neighbors greeted her with a molotovcocktail. “We were asleep and weheard gunshots and we happened to

look out the window and thecar was on fire,” said MariaWalker. She is not stickingaround in the hope that His- panics will begin to appreci-ate diversity. “We have togo,” she says. “I can’t standall this stress.” (Hate Crimesare Driving a Family of Four

Out of Their Home, www.ABCNews.com, October 26, 1998.)

In Burlington, North Carolina,three black teenagers have beencharged with murder, kidnapping, andrape in the case of a ten-year-oldwhite girl, Tiffany Long. One of thesuspects is reported to have tried tostrangle Tiffany with television cablewhile another pulled off her under-wear. They eventually beat her todeath. The badly-beaten body of theoutgoing fifth-grader was found in a pool of blood after a short search. Thesuspects did not live far from Tiffanyand had known her for about a year.

One of them may have attended her church.

No one can think of a motive. Ala-mance County District Attorney RobJohnson says “I’m somewhat at a lossto explain that.” However, he is sureof one thing. The fact that Tiffany waswhite and her killers were black “isabsolutely no evidence this was a hatecrime.” (Taft Wireback and Nancy

McLaughlin, 3 Teens Charged in Bur-lington Girl’s Death, News & Record(Greensboro), October 22, 1998.Kerry Hall, Suspects Saw Tiffany

Long Killed, Court Records Show, News & Record, Oct. 27, 1998.)

Legal Robbery

A Richmond, Virginia, jury has punished Nationwide Insurance Co.with a $100 million fine because of alleged discrimination against black homeowners. The case was brought bysomething called Housing Opportuni-ties Made Equal (HOME), which re-ceived federal money to help it inves-

tigate insurers. Nationwide will appealthe verdict —rendered by a jury of six blacks and one white—to the VirginiaSupreme Court.

The HOME activists argued thatthere were several kinds of evidencethat Nationwide was reluctant to writehome insurance for blacks. First, it pointed out that Nationwide did more business in the white suburbs than inthe black parts of Richmond, and thatit directed its publicity to the suburbs.It also claimed that the companyquoted higher rates in the city than inthe suburbs. HOME also used entrap-ment: It sent mixed-race pairs of “testers” to Nationwide to see if “equally qualified” customers gotequal treatment. They claimed that inseven cases out of 15, the black tester was not offered a policy.

A verdict like this is an outrage onany number of grounds. First, private businesses should have the right tochoose their customers for whatever

tently delivered to gullible audiences by black Wisconsin educator JamesHood was also a lie. For years Mr.Hood had claimed his uncle washanged and burned by "a gang of whites." Local reporters researchingthe story discovered Hood's fabrica-tion-which he eventually confessed.

In California, San Jose federal dis-

trict judge James W. Ware withdrewhis candidacy for an appellate court judgeship when his story of the mur-der of a brother was also exposed as alie. He had altered the death of his

half-sister at the hands of a black andhad blamed it on whites.

An account of race lies would not be complete without President Clin-ton's heart-tugging recollection of therash of black church arsons he claimedto remember from his youth. Digginginto newspaper files, Little Rock reporters found there were no such inci-

dents at that time in Arkansas.What prompts these digressionsfrom truth? Faulty memory, a genuinewish to right old wrongs, or deviousattempts to further a cause so lacking

in substance it must be supported withlies?

One is reminded of the words of Lenin: "We can and must write in alanguage which sows among themasses hate, revulsion, scorn, and thelike, toward those who disagree withus." ●

Mr. Batz was a San Francisco fire-man for 30 years. He retired from the

department in 1996 and lives in San Rafael, Califomia.


O Tempora, O Mores!



reasons they see fit. If Nationwidedoesn’t want to do business with blacks no one should force it to. Sec-ond, businesses rarely pass up profits just because customers are black. If Nationwide was not writing much business in shabby black neighbor-hoods, it was probably because it was

not profitable. If Nationwide reallywas turning its back on profits someother company would have been doingthe business. Third, “testers” are unre-liable. They cannot be perfectlymatched for qualifications, and thedesire of the blacks to uncover “racism” cannot help but taint their performances as applicants. Fourth, it

makes no sense to give an activistgroup this kind of money, becausethey are not the “injured” party. Fi-nally, the chance of getting a virtuallyall-black jury to understand any of thisis close to zero.

Secretary for Housing and UrbanDevelopment Andrew Cuomo said theverdict was “good news.” HOMEspokesmen said they would spend themoney in neighborhoods that havesuffered discrimination. (AP, Nation-wide Ordered to Pay in Bias Case,Oct. 27, 1998.)

AIDS and Africa

The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs is revis-ing its population estimates for Africa because of AIDS. South Africa, for example, is projected to have a popu-lation of 43.3 million but would have

nine million more were it not for AIDS. Zimbabwe is likely to have13.6 million but without AIDS wouldhave 3.2 million more. The UN notesthat in the worst-hit countries, a lifeexpectancy that would have been 64years without AIDS is now 47.

Reducing population estimates bymillions does not mean that Africa isactually shrinking. No matter how

high the death rates from AIDS, fertil-ity in Africa is higher. (IPS, AIDS is“Devastating” Africa’s Population,Oct. 29, 1998.)

Useful Idiots

White liberals in the “new” SouthAfrica find they are not appreciated bytheir black former comrades. Profes-sor John Dugard was one of SouthAfrica’s most prominent intellectuals.He is a world authority on interna-tional law and was an architect of the“progressive” post-apartheid constitu-tion. He recently left South Africa af-ter he was passed over for a judicial post, apparently because he is white.He now imparts liberalism to studentsat Leiden University in Holland.

Mandi Smallhorne was a member of “Black Sash,” a group of whitewomen who crusaded against apart-heid. She recently wrote in a Johan-nesburg newspaper that “in the oldSouth Africa a significant number of people of darker hues accepted andwelcomed me because of my anti-apartheid views. In the new South Af-rica I am treated with contempt andhatred, for no other reason than that Ihave white skin.” Referring to BishopDesmond Tutu’s description of SouthAfrica as a “rainbow nation” she says,“What kind of rainbow is it whereevery colour is acceptable as long as itis black?”

The stress of living under black rule is taking its toll on South Africa’swhites. A poll last month shows 74 percent of those with skilled jobs arethinking of leaving. (David Beresford, No Room in the Rainbow for Liberals,The Guardian News Service, Septem- ber 17, 1998.)

Rays of Light I

Insight magazine has begun towonder what the future holds for America if Miami is any guide. It

finds that the city is “a microcosm of cultural diversity . . . plagued by cor-ruption, racism, poverty and drugs.”The article finds that Miami is rated“the most unfriendly city in America,” by Travel and Leisure. Fodor’s Inter-national calls it the nation’s, “mostunsafe” destination, and George saysit is “the most corrupt city in Amer-ica.”

Insight actually understands theimplications of this: “Unless you’reliving or traveling there, none of thismight seem to matter except that Mi-ami also may be the nation’s capital of multiculturalism, a showcase for thedemographic bouillabaisse the countryseems destined to become—and a har- binger of the consequences of dra-matic change.”

If multiculturalism is the future,what can we anticipate? In Miami cor-ruption is widespread, thanks mainlyto the Cubans who control govern-

ment and business. Politicians, includ-ing former mayor Xavier Suarez, have been convicted of voter fraud as wellas bank and mail fraud. A grand jurycited the Miami-Dade building depart-ment for taking kickbacks for permitsand failing to enforce building codes.The Miami Herald reports that“phantom road projects” that werenever built have swallowed up onemillion dollars, and contractors over-charge and double bill. The city hasthe second-lowest credit rating in thecountry, just above Washington,

DC’s.And there is crime: “By now it’s

violent-crime rate is legendary, high-lighted by brutal attacks upon tourists,and so wanton that Miami’s ‘perps’have helped add new crimes— including carjacking, drive-by shoot-ings, home invasion—to the national police argot.”

Miami’s population is 55 percentHispanic, 24 percent white and 21 per-cent black. Insight calls the mix “alargely segregated melting pot thatoften seems on the verge of boiling

over.” Retired people who came to thecity thirty years ago have noticed thechange. Mary Cohen, who is in her seventies, says, “My God! I no longer live in America.”

Insight goes on to draw the onlysensible conclusion: “The implicationsare ominous not just for Miamians, but for all Americans who may see inthis city’s turmoil the dark mosaic of a




troubled future.” (Ellen Sugarman, AMiami Vision of Our Future?, Insight,September 28 - October 5, 1998, p.16.)

Rays of Light II

In its September issue, the libertar-ian magazine Liberty published an

article about South Africa that couldhave come right out of AR. Some ex-cerpts:

“One world atlas reports: ‘SouthAfrica is the world’s most dangerouscountry (besides war zones), with40,000 murders a year.’ It wasn’t thisway four years ago, before the ANCtook power. But the government saysthe murders are a ‘legacy of apart-heid.’ That’s part of the problem. Eve-rything that goes wrong is ‘a legacy of apartheid.’ The violence in the rest of Africa is a ‘legacy of colonialism.’ It’sa legacy that has gone on for almost40 years. Every time something goeswrong (and that happens constantly),the same litany of excuses are recited.‘We inherited this problem from thecorrupt apartheid regime.’ “

“In the northern suburbs of Johan-nesburg, citizens are fighting back [against crime]. In some areas theyhave put security guards at the en-trance to a subdivision. Entrances areclosed off with gates to control whocomes in and who goes out. Criminalscan no longer simply load their carswith stolen goods and speed out whensecurity guards stop them at the gate.These areas have seen dramatic reduc-tions in crime. But the ANC has or-dered the gates removed. It claimsthese efforts force crime away fromwhite areas and are therefore racist.”

“You turn on the television . . . andhope you get the right sound with theright picture. Sometimes you get thesound of one show with the picture of another. Sometimes it’s just the one or the other. Or a radio station instead of the soundtrack. . . . [A] large number of the ‘old’ employees have walkedout of the broadcasting studios. Theycouldn’t take it any more. And sincetelevision is an arm of the govern-ment, their replacements are appointed politically, not because of their experi-ence or ability.”

“The hospitals in South Africahave become nightmares. Two yearsago Mandela announced free medical

care for children. The hospitals arenow filled with unemployed womenand their children. They sit there for hours to have a cough or a runny nosechecked.”

“In America, you don’t see what’shappening. I know; I watch CNN. Itdoesn’t even come close to telling thetruth about the decline and death of South Africa. The American media

can’t tell the truth now—they haveinvested too much in telling everyonewhat a saint Mandela is.” (Jim Peron,Die the Beloved Country, Liberty,Sept. 1998, p. 30.)

Kinshasa on the Potomac

The World Bank, which lendsmoney and gives aid to “developingcountries,” is forbidden to lend to in-dustrialized countries. However, it hasdecided to help Washington, DC. Itwill give the city $1 million in grantsand services and let the city use its professional staff. A bank employeeexplains that “the District has highrates of unemployment, crumblinginfrastructure, an unfriendly businessenvironment—in other words, issueswe face in our regular business.”

Some Washington officials do notlike being compared to the ThirdWorld, but George Grier, a demogra- pher who has studied the district for 38 years, notes, “Some of our childwelfare indicators are right up therewith what you would expect in a ThirdWorld country.” Infant mortality inthe District was 16.2 per 1,000 birthsin 1995, worse than the 16 per 1,000in Sri Lanka.

“This has always struck me as be-ing much more a Third World citythan many other cities I’ve been to,”says Deepali Tewari, a former bank official who has worked in Vietnamand Pakistan. She now heads a com-munity agency called DC Agenda.“Everybody here is pretty horrified atthe way this place works. It’s not thatthings are run poorly for lack of m o n e y — t h e y ’ r e j u s t r u n poorly.” (Michael Phillips, The WorldBank, Third World Savior, AidsWashington, The Wall Street Journal,August 27, 1998, p. 1.)

Hit and Run

Michael T. Brophy is an 80-year-

old white man from up-state NewYork who stopped in Washington, DCfor a night on his way home from atrip to Florida. He was driving througha black neighborhood when he hit ateen-aged girl. When the frail Mr.Brophy got out of his car to help, aman emerged from the crowd,knocked him down, and disappeared.Mr. Brophy suffered a broken jaw anda concussion. He and the girl weretaken to the hospital, where he was in

“critical” condition; she was listed as“fair.” One of the witnesses complained that the incident “perpetuatesthe negative stereotypes that some people have about Southeast [a largely black part of Washington].” (CherylThompson and Avis Thomas-Lester,Attack on Driver Who Hit WomanStuns Witnesses, Washington Post,Oct. 31, 1998.) It is common in Africato beat or kill a driver who is foolishenough to stop after an accident.

Times Flubs

The following is excerpted from aletter that appeared last summer in the

New York Times:“Not only was there an American

Eugenics Society, but the NationalSocialist party in Germany drew uponthe work of American scientists likeDr. William B. Shockley and Dr. Ar-thur Jensen, who argued for the ge-ne t ic infe r ior i ty of minor i -ties.” (Stephanie Olson, Eugenics inthe U.S., Letters, New York Times,Aug. 23, 1998.)

Notes From the Third World

An Air Myanmar (Burma) planerecently crashed in Burma’s Shanstate, and all 39 people on board wereinitially reported dead. In fact, at leastfive adults and a baby survived. Theywere found by Shan tribesmen, who




hate the Burmese junta that runs thecountry. The tribesmen left the babyto starve, tortured the men, and rapedthe air hostess for several days. Theyalso looted the luggage and cargo, andcut off fingers and ears for rings andearrings. Authorities did not find thewreckage until four days after thecrash, and speculate that the tribesmenmay have been especially provoked by

the sight of passengers wearing Bur-mese military uniforms. The govern-ment says reports of rape and torturehave been “exaggerated.” (LewisDolinsky, Notes from Here and There,San Francisco Chronicle, September 25, 1998, p. A12.)

School Board Baffled

Officials in Orange County, NorthCarolina cannot understand whywhites keep outperforming blacks onannual “end of grade” tests. For 1997-1998, 77.1 percent of white third grad-ers were “proficient” in math compared to 48.4 percent of blacks. Inreading, the figures were 73.4 percentand 51.2 percent.

“I don’t understand this,” saysDelores Simpson who chairs the Or-ange County school board. “These[African-American] students have thesame teacher, are in the same class-room, and are learning the same subjects [as white students]. But they stilldon’t do as well.” The gap is evengreater in the district’s model school, New Hope Elementary, which hascomputers and uses the Internet. Only25 percent of black fourth graderswere “proficient” in reading comparedto 91 percent of whites. “This is agreat cause of concern for me,” says New Hope principal Barbara Chap-man. “I don’t know what happened.”

New programs for “low-achievingstudents,” don’t seem to work. “Wekeep coming back to the same prob-lems,” said Miss Simpson. “It seemsw e h a v e n ’ t c o r r e c t e d a n y -thing.” (Deborah Robiglio, BlacksGain On Tests, Still Trail Whites, Ra-leigh News & Observer, October 7,1998, p. 1B.)

An Ill Wind

Hurricane Georges killed three people in Puerto Rico and caused anestimated $2 billion in damage, andyou and I will pay the bill. Because

the Spanish-speaking island is a U.S.territory, the Federal Emergency Man-agement Agency (FEMA) will givehomeless people up to $25,000 plus a

maximum of $13,500 for new appli-ances and furniture. This could swal-low a quick $1 billion.

Governor Pedro Rosello has a planto use Housing and Urban Develop-ment (HUD) money to build newhouses that were better than the shacksmany people lost. He wants to offer houses worth $65,000 for $15,000,with mortgage payments of $100 amonth. “We’re talking megabucks,’’says Michael Colon, the Caribbeancoordinator for HUD.

Many of the people who are now

crowded into temporary shelters weresquatters, bums, and welfare recipi-ents. (Steven Gutkin, AP, U.S. Pays toRebuild Puerto Rico, Oct. 4, 1998.) Afew years from now many are likely tothink that Georges was the best thingto blow into their lives in years.

Rotten Boroughs

The 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are redistributedevery ten years according to censusdata. Congressional districts are basedon number of inhabitants—not number of citizens—so large influxes of aliens, legal or not, mean more con-gressmen for some states. About threeout of four of the approximately800,000 legal and 400,000 illegal im-migrants who enter every year settle in just six states: California, New York,Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illi-nois. The reallocation of seats on the

basis of the 2000 census will probablygive California nine new congressmenit would not have gotten without thearrival of non-citizens. New York will probably get two and Texas and Flor-ida one each.

Which states are the losers? After the 1990 census, because of the flowof immigrants to other states, Louisi-ana, Michigan, Montana, and Ohio

lost seats, and Georgia and Kentuckyfailed to get new seats. The effect of immigration, therefore, is to take con-gressional representation away fromstates with few immigrants and turn itover to states with lots of them.

Because non-citizens can’t vote butare counted for the establishment of congressional districts, it takes fewer votes to win in immigrant-heavy dis-tricts. In 1996, 200,000 votes werecast in typical congressional races inMichigan, where virtually everyone isa citizen, but in districts in California

and Texas an election may draw only50 or 60 thousand votes. When immi-grants become citizens they will alsoensure more safe seats for Democrats.(AP, Study: Immigrants AffectingHouse Seats, Oct. 9, 1998.)

Cabinet Material

Cardell Cooper is a black man whowas mayor of East Orange, New Jer-sey, from 1990 to 1997. He appointedas police chief a black who placedsixth on the examination. RichardWright, the white who placed first,sued for discrimination and has justwon the position of chief and about$180,000 in back pay and legal fees.East Orange decided to pay up, just asCaptain Wright’s case went to a juryfor deliberation. The current black chief will go on immediate leave.

During the trial, Mr. Cooper saidhe chose a black because he was the best qualified, but admitted he never considered anyone else. Two East Or-ange police officers testified theyheard Mr. Cooper say the city wouldnever have another white police chief,and the chief who was replaced by the black testified that Mr. Cooper toldhim he would be the city’s last whitechief.

President Clinton recently nominatedMr. Cooper as Assistant Secretary at theEnvironmental Protection Agency. (AP,City Settles Police Bias Case by NamingWhite Chief, Oct. 7, 1998.) ●


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199812 American Renaissance

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