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Fighting the Bell Curve: Why Affirmative Action is an inevitable disaster

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Affirmative Action (AA) started out as a well-intentioned effort to increase the representation of black, then other minorities and women, at the higher levels of the American educational system. Well-intentioned, but ill-founded because it was based on the article of faith that the only reason there were fewer blacks in colleges, universities, and professional schools is the legacy of racism and discrimination.

Initially AA was first defined as making every effort to find qualified minority members. The search was expanded to include even the “potentially qualified,” but when that failed, the program transmogrified into one of “goals and timetables” — a euphemism for quotas based on race, etc. This is the antithesis of the supposed objective of the Civil Rights movement, namely judging on “the content of character.”

Well, AA could have benefited from some advice from the other AA — Alcoholics Anonymous, one of whose admonitions to family members of recidivist abusers is “you didn’t make ’em that way, you can’t fix ’em.”

While fair-minded commentators and the public at large  have had their fill of reverse discrimination, ethnic activists continue to make every effort to enforce more and more AA until some critical mass of minorities inhabits every desirable sector of American society.  

In California, citizens led by former University of California Regent Ward Connerly (who happens to be African American) passed Proposition 209, which banned “preferential treatment” of race, sex or ethnicity in admissions to California’s public universities. The box score: by fall 2006, only 250 of the 12,189 students admitted to UCLA’s freshman class were African American, roughly 2%. This is the lowest number since at least 1973 — results that could have been predicted right out of the tables and graphs in The Bell Curve.

The Bell Curve, the outstanding tome by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, shows that African Americans have a mean IQ of 85, one whole standard deviation below the white mean of 100. Even more disconcerting to AA advocates is that Richard Lynn has summarized findings that sub-Saharan Africans have a mean closer to 70.

And the devil in the bell curve is not only in the details but in the tails of the curve. The normal or bell curve describes continuous biological variation that is the result of many genes. The classic case is height, but IQ is almost the same: Most individuals fall at the middle or closely around it. The further one goes either up or down from the average, the fewer the number of individuals. The further out one goes, the greater the effect.

And this applies with a vengeance when two groups differ in their average score. The further out you go in either direction — up or down, good or bad — the greater the differences between the groups. What this means in terms of education is that as one goes from high school to junior college to college to graduate/professional school, the percentage of qualified blacks goes steadily and increasingly down. And the ratio of qualified whites to qualified blacks goes up dramatically.

The figure shows what happens if you have two IQ distributions that differ by a standard deviation — whites on top, blacks on the bottom. If the test is made so that 50% of whites pass, then 16% of blacks will pass. This would mean that if we consider a population of 1000 people taking the test in a population that is 10% black and 90% white, then 16 blacks would qualify, compared to 450 whites—a ratio of around 28 to 1 — much higher than the population ratio of 9 to 1.

The 28 to 1 ratio is pretty steep — exactly the sort of thing that gives the affirmative action industry fits. And it explains why even tests for fire fighters and policemen — which are geared for the middle of the IQ distribution — have to have lower standards for blacks. Here’s a case where white firefighters who scored high on an employment test successfully sued the city of Boston for favoring lower-scoring blacks.

But if the test is made more difficult, it gets way worse. The figure shows what happens when only 16% of whites pass. (This would make the test more like a law school admissions test.) In that case, only 2% of the blacks pass. This means that if we consider a population of 1000 people, 10% black and 90% white, only 2 blacks of the 1000 would qualify, compared to 144 whites—a ratio of over 70 to 1. Hence the desperate need for affirmative action.

And imagine what happens when one adopts the standards of an elite law school like Harvard where the average of successful white applicants approaches the 99th percentile. Finding a black that can compete on the basis of mental ability in a situation like that is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Which reminds us, we’d love to see Barack Obama’s grades and test scores at Harvard Law. In fact, Stanford Law Professor Richard Sanford has already shown that black lawyers have no difficulty being hired by elite firms but are much more likely to leave these firms without making partner. Just recently he filed suit to obtain the records of the Bar Exam of California to replicate previous findings that black law school grads are over 6 times more likely to fail the bar exam even after multiple attempts than whites. His thesis is that blacks are being set up for failure: They are admitted into schools where they cannot hope to compete with those admitted on the basis of intellectual ability.

Maybe that’s why Obama became a “community organizer” instead of trying to compete in the world of big time law.

But Affirmative Action advocates and ethnic minority activists rarely allow fact to disturb their attempts at social engineering. In a recent article, we compared advocates of the No Child Left Behind law to King Canute commanding the tides to behave. It’s the same here. The realities of the two different racial bell curves are such that any would-be affirmative action King Canute who commands that blacks be admitted to law school at the same level as their percentage of the population would have to override not just the tide, but a tsunami tidal wave.

Not that that will stop them. They remain undeterred, seated in their thrones, or at least in their endowed academic chairs.

Case in point: one Darnell M. Hunt, professor of sociology at UCLA and director of the university’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies.Pontificating in a recent LA Times OpEd, he decries the effects of Prop 209, while heaping praise and hosannas upon a new “holistic” admission policy implemented at UCLA which considers applicants’ grades and test scores more fully in the context of their life experiences.

Technically, admissions officers would not consider race, gender or ethnicity as a plus, which remains illegal under Prop 209. But they do consider “all available information about a student.” Whereas previously the files of applicants were divided into academic and personal areas and read by separate reviewers, reviewers now consider “the total package.” Although racial preferences per se remain forbidden, “socioeconomic and other factors” can be taken into account. Race by any other name…. (Remember those bad old days when prospective students were required to submit a photograph?)

Prof. Hunt is wholly happy with the results of the “holistic method.” The number of African American freshmen admitted to UCLA in 2007 climbed to 407, and this year it climbed again to 453 — nearly double the 2006 number. He expresses no concern that many of these holistic admissions will either drop out or graduate with meaningless degrees in subjects devoid of market value. To Hunt, that smells like, “important progress”!

While African American activists like Prof. Hunt are gloating about these results, others are not even mildly impressed. Just the opposite. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear have noted that this increase in the relatively small number of African American freshmen admitted constitutes clear evidence of “illegal admissions practices.”

Anti-affirmative action crusader Ward Connerly, for example, called a spade a spade, accusing the university of trying to “rig the system,” while political science professor Tim Groseclose resigned from the UCLA’s admissions oversight committee. Groseclose declared that UCLA is “cheating” on admissions and is engaging in a “cover-up” to keep it from being discovered.

Either outraged by the candor of Connerly and Groseclose or willfully ignorant of the totality of scientific evidence, Prof. Hunt offered up the usual litany of anti-testing mantras (e.g., “test scores are not objective,”), all of which have been tested and disproven, tried and failed. We’d love to see Prof. Hunt make a serious attempt to dispute Arthur Jensen’s massive data on the validity of IQ tests.

Over 100 years of research in mental testing and genetics has established that IQ is measurable and predicts not only academic, but other life outcomes that are critically important to maintaining a complex, technological society. IQ is heritable, culturally fair, and not tractable to any significant degree.

Fortunately, Heather MacDonald has provided readers of the LA Times with the lowdown on the low down machinations of the AA activists.

Ms. MacDonald tells it as it truly is: “The University of California has tried to engineer admissions systems that would replicate the effect of explicit racial quotas while appearing color-blind.”

She then makes public the dirty laundry dumped out of the AA hamper by Prof. Groseclose. In somewhat Stalinist tactics, the university has refused to give him access to the data that would prove the point, thus causing his resignation.

Despite the stonewalling, enough info has leaked out to establish not only the facts, but the motive. When Prop 209 reduced the number of unqualified African Americans admitted to campuses across the state, UC officials resorted to a bit of academic chicanery to sneak underqualified blacks and Latinos back into the system’s most demanding campuses, and they did it without officially “making race a factor.” Rather than race, they introduced a preference for low-income students. But alas, they were hoist on their own petard: Rather than blacks and Hispanics, poor whites (especially Eastern Europeans) and Vietnamese filled up the slots — not the sort of diversity the university had in mind.

This is because whites outperform blacks at every social class level (once again showing that the black/white IQ gap is not caused by social class.)

Administrators cut the low-income preferences in half and went back to the drawing board.

One scheme was to reduce the weight given to academic qualifications in ranking students. For example, in 2002, the law school at UC-Berkeley admitted only 5% of white students in a low academic rank, but it admitted 75% of black applicants in the same range. At UCLA, from 1998 to 2001, black applicants were 3.6 times as likely to be admitted to its undergraduate college as whites, and Latinos 1.8 times as likely, even after controlling for economic status and school ranking, according to an unpublished study by statistician Richard Berk.

The next finagle factor introduced to subvert the will of the people and simple fairness was what is euphemistically termed a “comprehensive review” which, it is claimed, “broadens the conception of merit.” Translation: Students’ academic qualifications are cranked up or knocked down based on their “life situation.” (Guess what that means.)

Even that didn’t do the trick. UCLA still had a dearth of qualified black students. You just can’t beat the bell curve if you take any objective and valid measure into account. Enter acting Chancellor Norman Abrams and the more radical — “holistic” review, so beloved by Darnell Hunt.

But even that’s not enough. UCLA’s Associate Vice Provost for Student Diversity (doubtless a well-paid sinecure for a person with appropriate non-white skin tone) also decreed the admissions committee must increase the number of blacks who read and rate student applications. This resulted in a 25% black representation among readers, which is three times the percentage of blacks in California’s population! Presumably this is a hope that ethnic favoritism will succeed where all else has failed. They’re probably right.

Those interested in the entire sad saga of the UC “Educational” system and the courageous efforts of Prof. Groseclose to restore it should consult Heather MacDonald’s wonderful summary. Suffice it to say the future of the Golden State, once praised as the high tech center of the globe and with the best kindergarten to college educational system in the  nation, is being sacrificed to the gods of political correctness.

The 2008 election will increase the racial polarization in the US

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The 2008 election is shaping up to be a watershed event—or at least that is a strong possibility. First, the Democrats nominated Barack Obama as the first black nominee for a major political party. During the Democratic primaries, it was obvious that white working class people supported Hillary Clinton rather than Obama.

Obama’s nomination meant that blacks would be even more inclined to vote Democrat than usual, and Republicans had no motivation to reach out to black voters. The result was that the racial breakdown at the convention was 2% black, 5% Hispanic, and 93% white. This compares with 85% white in 2004 (due to outreach by George Bush) and 89% white in 2000. The breakdown for the Democrats was similar to previous conventions: 65 percent white, 23 percent black and 11 percent Hispanic.

Meanwhile, McCain was the model neocon candidate (i.e., favoring whatever the Israeli right wants and a poster boy for massive legal and illegal immigration to the US). He became the Republican nominee after über-Zionist Joe Lieberman jump started his moribund campaign with a ringing endorsement that was picked up by the mainstream media, propelling him to the nomination.

But McCain, who has been a strong advocate for the ill-fated bill that would have granted amnesty for illegal aliens and a variety of other liberal causes, had a problem: Lack of enthusiasm from the grass roots of his own party and from leading Republican opinion makers like Rush Limbaugh. The Democrats had all the momentum of an historic candidacy, a bad economy, an unpopular war, and lots of brain-dead whites hoping for racial absolution.

The (rather brilliant) solution was to select Sarah Palin for McCain’s running mate—a solution that has energized the Republicans but will also further the racial polarization of American politics—a prospect that is certainly welcome for us atThe Occidental Observer. The image of Palin endorsing small town values and surrounded by her white children on stage at the Republican convention is absolutely nauseating to the hegemonic left. Gloria Steinem expressed her outrage in the L.A. Times. Steinem’s ideal woman is doubtless someone like herself: a childless post-modern intellectual railing against male hegemony and other injustices.

Needless to say, this image of white fertility and small town values is not going to appeal to blacks or Latinos either. Indeed, Palin’s  speech reminded Whoopi Goldberg of a German-American Bund rally(!). Way too many happy white people in one place.

German-American Bund Rally, Madison Square Garden, 1939

German American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden. New York, United States, February 20, 1939.

Palin is a personification of what I term implicit whiteness. She has a white political and cultural affiliation even if there are still taboos about saying so explicitly. As she stressed in her acceptance speech, she is unabashedly proud of being a small-town American—an advocate of hunting, fishing, hockey moms, and serious Christianity. (The downside is that Palin’s Christian beliefs seem to be the Dispensationalist variety. Dispensationalists believe that the preservation of Israel is a Biblical imperative and they have become closely allied with the neocons.)

And there’s a strong dose of populism—a word that strikes fear and loathing in the hearts of American elites. (Remember Pat Buchanan’s “peasants with pitchforks”?)

The prediction is that an even greater percentage of whites will vote Republican in the 2008 election than in 2004. In 2004, 58% of whites voted Republican, and their votes constituted 88% of all the Republican votes.

If and when this occurs, there will be much weeping and gnashing in the media. In fact, it’s already happening. Writing in the Washington Post, Harold Meyerson is particularly blunt, claiming that the Republicans are using identity politics in a last gasp effort to hold on to political power:

The GOP’s last best hope remains identity politics. In a year when the Democrats have an African American presidential nominee, the Republicans now more than ever are the white folks’ party, the party that delays the advent of our multicultural future, the party of the American past. Republican conventions have long been bastions of de facto Caucasian exclusivity, but coming right after the diversity of Denver, this year’s GOP convention is almost shockingly — un-Americanly — white. Long term, this whiteness is a huge problem. This year, however, whiteness is the only way Republicans cling to power. If the election is about the economy, they’re cooked — and their silence this week on nearly all things economic means that they know it.

This of course is ridiculous. Identity politics is what multiculturalism is all about. Meyerson doesn’t seem to notice that blacks are much more likely to engage in identity politics than whites: Well over 90% of blacks will vote for Obama. And he would never complain about Jewish identity politics in which the great majority of Jews vote Democrat (74% in 2004, 79% in 2000) despite their elite economic status and despite the fact that the Bush II administration was dominated by foreign policy operatives whose main allegiance is to Israel. Just imagine the angst of people like Meyerson if 75% of whites voted Republican.

Meyerson’s scorn and contempt for “the American past” is a scorn and contempt for white people—not at all surprising in a member of the ethnic group responsible for opening the flood gates of immigration to the US. He would doubtless agree with fellow Jewish intellectual activist Ben Wattenberg that “The non-Europeanization of America is heartening news of an almost transcendental quality.”

Unlike the explicit ethnic identifications of blacks and Jews, white ethnic identification remains implicit. But white ethnic identification is bound to become increasingly explicit as the election returns show whites stubbornly attempting to cling to political power —not to mention the other signs that most whites—like Sarah  Palin—still pledge allegiance to the traditional culture of America.

The danger, of course, is that this artful move by McCain in selecting Palin will not have any effect on policy should McCain be elected—that a McCain administration would be yet another neoconservative administration with all the dangers (war and massive legal and illegal immigration) that that implies. McCain has surrounded himself with neoconservative Jews, and there is a real possibility that Joe Lieberman could become Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense in a McCain administration.

(My favorite of these Jewish McCain supporters is Marshall Wittmann: “A former self-confessed Trotskyite, radical Zionist and labor organizer, Wittmann served in the elder George Bush’s administration, then went to work in the mid-1990s for the Christian Coalition of America despite being Jewish.” We’ll take a wild guess that he still has a Jewish identity and is pursuing Jewish interests—a crypto-Jew by any other name.)

This was certainly the strategy of the Bush administration: Rally the white base of the Republican Party by appealing to implicit whiteness and then do absolutely nothing to advance the interests of white people. But that sort of tactic can’t work forever. It’s like the immigration amnesty act of 1986: When people realized that the amnesty law did not stop illegal immigration, they couldn’t be fooled a second time and overwhelmingly rejected a (McCain-sponsored) amnesty law.

McCain himself may well be absolutely cynical about all this, but sooner or later, the Republican appeal to white identity will have to actually do something to advance the interests of whites. And they will have to be explicit about it. Right now, it looks like the election of 2008 will bring that day closer.

Fantasizing about the Palin–Buchanan connection

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The prospective nomination of Sarah Palin has made everyone a bit curious about where she stands—none more than among the organized Jewish community. The Jerusalem Post—a neocon outpost in the neocons’ favorite country—agonized about the topic in an article titled “‘McCain VP choice unknown to US Jews’.” Palin is indeed little known to the Jews. She hasn’t been on the national scene long enough to have been on a trip to Israel (gasp!), and she has never spoken publically about Israel (horrors!).

There is also the fascinating possibility that she is an admirer of Pat Buchanan. She showed up at a Buchanan fund raiser in 1996, and Buchanan himself claimsthat she was a “Buchanan Brigade” member.

Such a possibility raises red flags with serious Jews. Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida was livid:

John McCain’s decision to select a vice presidential running mate that endorsed Pat Buchanan for president in 2000 is a direct affront to all Jewish Americans…. Pat Buchanan is a Nazi sympathizer with a uniquely atrocious record on Israel, even going as far as to denounce bringing former Nazi soldiers to justice and praising Adolf Hitler for his ‘great courage’.

Palin is denying she supported Buchanan, and the Republicans are doing their best to distance themselves from all this. But let’s engage in a bit of fantasy for a moment.

What’s intriguing about Palin is that she hasn’t been vetted by the usual process that gets politicians to high status in the US. She hasn’t been to an elite law school, nor has she achieved office in a state where fealty to the Israel lobby is asine qua non. She is governor of the last frontier state in the union—far from the power centers of the East Coast and the large urban areas and therefore far from their pervasive influence. Her attitudes on religion, abortion, and guns are anathema to the mindset of these elites. And her husband is a white blue collar guy—exactly the type of guy that has been left behind in the vast changes that have transformed the country. White working class voters were notable for their lack of support for Obama in the Democratic primaries.

Is it too much to hope that she really is exactly the type of person that the organized Jewish community abhors—that is, someone like Pat Buchanan who is steadfastly against the mass immigration that will result in the death of the West? Could she really have Buchanan’s populist inclinations and use her influence to attempt to preserve the  traditional peoples and culture of the US? Is it too much to hope that she might really subscribe to a view of US foreign policy that is not yoked to whatever the Israel Lobby dictates to its underlings in the US Congress? And can we dream that having once attained high office and with a national audience she could galvanize a movement to take back America?

Probably not. But if she really does have these tendencies, she had best keep them under wraps. The powers that be have made an uneasy peace with Christian religiosity, but certainly not with any attempt to preserve the traditional peoples and culture of America. (This includes the neocons for whom support of some of the trappings of traditional America is seen as a convenient way to advance their Israel-centric foreign policy interests and their commitment to mass immigration.)

Admittedly, the possibility that Palin in her heart is a Buchanan clone is only a small possibility. Even if she were, it’s very difficult to imagine that anyone could actually be elected president without the blessings of the political establishment somewhere between the confines of the far left (think Barack Obama) and the neoconservative right (think John McCain). But given McCain’s age, it is certainly possible that she might accede to the presidency without being elected, and this adds to the angst among the powerful.

It’s more than likely that with her background she really does not have very sophisticated beliefs about much of anything. If so, she would be a babe in the woods—much like George W. Bush when he entered the White House only to become the prey of the neocons. (Jacob Heilbrunn has a nice section on how Perle, Wolfowitz et al. were thrilled at Bush’s lack of foreign policy knowledge and his willingness to admit he didn’t know anything.)

And for her to achieve the vice-presidency would mean that we would have to put up with the very real likelihood of further wars for control of the Middle East in a McCain presidency—a very big downside, but scarcely worse than an Obama presidency.

In any case, her candidacy likely means that a whole lot of people who were at best lukewarm about McCain will vote for him, just like his strategists intend. Palin is like a Rorschach test: Because we don’t really know what she really believes deep down, we see what we want to see. For those of us without power (like admirers of Buchanan), that raises tantalizing possibilities. For those with power (and that includes the Israel Lobby), it’s clearly a very large negative—an unnecessary risk to be taken only if they really think that Obama would be a disaster for their interests.

In fact, Obama’s flimsy track record and his leftist proclivities (given that honest leftists like Jame Petras and Alexander Cockburn typically oppose Israel) are exactly why serious Jews need constant reassurances about him. Because he hasn’t been around for long, he doesn’t have a tried and true track record on the issue that is so near and dear to their hearts. Sure, he made the pilgrimage to the AIPAC convention, but did he really mean it? Could he possibly be aMuslim masquerading as a Christian?

In the same way, many on the far left are doubtless fantasizing that an Obama presidency would bring on a socialist revolution, while some of his black supporters likely dream of sudden riches or violent revenge.

In fact, AIPAC is doing all they can to find out about what Palin thinks about Israel. Within days of the announcement that Palin would be nominated, AIPAC securedan interview with her where, in the words of AIPAC spokesman John Bock, she “expressed her deep, personal, and lifelong commitment to the safety and well-being of Israel.” The clincher was that she displays an Israeli flag in her office.

Looks like Palin may not be any different from the sociopaths who currently run the country. She seems to know what politicians have to say to be elected to high office in the US. Her speech to the Republican convention will doubtless be tailored to demonstrate her fealty to the Israel Lobby and to show that she is a good neocon at heart.

So let’s not get carried away about Palin. But we can dream that her apparent support for Buchanan really meant something and that her gut feelings really would mean a dramatic change from politics as usual in the US if she attained power.

Media Watch – The Gray Wall of Silence: What White New York Times Readers Should Know About What’s Fit To Print

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Earlier, I wrote about the New York Times’ newly announced policy of censoring racially conscious reader comment on the internet and the New York Times’ Magazine’s nearly all-Jewish editorial content, and how whites are excluded from the conversation.

But the big paper itself — sometimes called “The Old Gray Lady” — has erected an impenetrable wall of silence around the vast swath of American life occupied by white people. What’s more, in this essay, you’ll get some inside information on attempts by the Times’ own staffers to breach that wall, and the results.

In a story typical for its baffling refusal to account for white people, Times reporter Sam Roberts gave us a front-page story on Nov. 17, 2007 about how Hispanic names are beginning to outnumber “Anglo,” or white, names, in America.

Beyond the statistics, reporter Roberts offered several crowing quotes from Hispanics who were tickled to be beating out the whites:

“It shows we’re getting stronger,” Roberts quoted a banker named Luis Padilla. “If there’s that many of us to outnumber the Anglo names, it’s a great thing.”

Whites — or “Anglos,” as Roberts calls them — were not quoted at all. Did a Wilson or a Taylor have a thought on being displaced by the Garcias and the Rodriguezes? Not that you saw in the New York Times. One might reasonably ask: If it’s acceptable for Hispanics to be enthusiastic about outnumbering whites, are whites correspondingly entitled to be concerned about the trend? Again: the Times isn’t asking.

The Times might have justified itself by running a story about this demographic trend without quoting any random individuals, Hispanic or white, about their feelings. But that’s not what they chose to do. They deliberately included quotes from Hispanics, thereby setting up the question about why they didn’t talk to whites in big, bold, neon letters.

Could Mr. Roberts have secured such a quote, only to have it edited out later? You won’t find out. Try telephoning him at the Times, and you will be told that he does not speak to the public. Which is odd, considering that he’s ostensibly writing about it in his capacity as a demographics reporter for the nation’s leading newspaper. But the Times’ attitude toward the public — especially the white public — is worse still.

This writer penned a short and reasonable letter to the editor complaining about this fairly obvious omission. (I know that complaints about un-run letters to the editor fall on the ears as desperate, so please bear with me for a second.) Having seen several similar letters run in some of the nation’s top newspapers, I thought this one might stand a chance, despite the fact that I am not writing from Cambridge and do not hold an ambassador post.

Unable to restrain myself, and not wanting to cross in the mail with this blog essay, I telephoned the desk to check. The woman who answered the phone returned after digging for a few minutes and said that “you may well hear from us” about my letter. I was tantalized. But when the standard period of a week passed and the letter did not run, I knew it would never. A follow-up call confirmed it.

Convinced, however, that the issue of the media’s ignoring of whites was more important than my own satisfaction at seeing a letter run, I tried contacting the public editor, Clark Hoyt. Mr. Hoyt’s position as “public editor” is more theoretical than real, because, as with reporters, he does not speak to the public. You must send an e-mail, which is almost certainly not read by Mr. Hoyt himself. While I certainly understand that open lines might make for time on the phone with lunatics, why have a position as “public editor” if that person won’t speak to the readers?

Alas, attempts to contact the public editor were fruitless. And you will almost certainly never see Mr. Hoyt address these issues in his column.

So, not only does the New York Times refuse to speak to whites in news stories about which they’re half the topic, it won’t even speak to white readers who seek to comment about that practice. I would say that it’s harder to imagine how much more thoroughly whites could be shut out, but as the essay linked to above shows, it’s even willing to censor the comments they do have that make it past the front door.

It all raises the question: what would have to happen for a New York Times reporter to speak to a white person as a member of the white race, and quote him or her? Read on: it almost happened.

About ten years ago, I had emerged from a successful challenge to a journalism internship at the Boston Globe that excluded whites. I did not pursue the internship because I was employed as a reporter elsewhere, but one reporter took notice of all this: Seth Schiesel, then covering the communications industry for the New York Times. Mr. Schiesel, who I believe is biracial, was intrigued enough by my story to invite me to lunch, at which we discussed my challenge to the internship, affirmative action, and journalism.

He told me that he was considering doing a story about my challenge, perhaps along with other whites kept from jobs by affirmative action. He also suggested that it didn’t stand a good chance of running, for several reasons, one of which was that it may have been too self-referential: The Times owns (and I think then owned) the Boston Globe, and papers are wary of covering themselves. He also hinted that he had come along as a reporter himself through the very internship I’d been denied, or a similar one, and had worked for a time on the Globe’s editorial desk. But I was in turn intrigued that a reporter from the Times would have taken notice at all.

Again, needless to say, Mr. Schiesel’s story did not see the light of day. But my encounter with him serves as a useful piece of information for white media consumers: the media’s black hole of political correctness is so powerful, almost nothing escapes. If a reporter inside goes against all odds and indulges a little curiosity about the plight of whites, it will not be “fit to print,” as the Times says.

What we do see, however, are the inevitable disasters, like the saga of Jayson Blair, a young black reporter for the Times fired for concocting stories from whole cloth. It is hard to imagine that a collection of people as well-educated and inquisitive as the staff of the New York Times doesn’t look at the Jayson Blair episode and wonder whether there isn’t something deeply wrong with the whole multiculturalism project. But no. It carries on.

In Coloring the News, a 2001 book on the devastating effects of multiculturalism on journalism, writer William McGowan’s references to the New York Times in the index go on for so long, they seem to cover half the book. Occidental Observer readers looking for detailed information on this topic would do well to take a look at this book. What’s especially interesting are the repeated instances in which, when McGowan sought to talk to journalists about these problems, they begged off — or asked for anonymity — because of the career-ending risks of saying the wrong thing. Such is our “free” press.

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In a 1993 special publication of National Review called “The Decline of American Journalism,” writer Daniel Seligman recounts how an in-office “diversity” team at the New York Times had such internal divisions it had to retire to Tarrytown, NY for a two-day retreat in which members were subjected to psychological testing. What was the issue? Whether white journalists should be whipped in public — or in private?

I suspect there is one overriding reason for the New York Times’ — and the rest of the media’s — refusal to speak to white Americans as members of a group. The minute such a thing happens, whites, as a group, will be recognized as America’s newest, and biggest, interest group. This would be cataclysmic — a virtual warping of America’s political space-time continuum. With a few strokes of the keyboard, one writer will have changed the course of history.

For the Times to voluntarily reach out like this, something incredible would have to happen. It’s more likely to be forced along by overwhelming current events. The question is, how much longer can it keep whites as a group at bay?

Christopher Donovan is the pen name of an attorney and former journalist.

Eye on Hollywood: Letter of termination to the white race

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If an insightful document is found to be a forgery, does that totally negate its value as an analytical tool or source of useful information? In the case of history’s most infamous forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the argument is that the document is worthless—or worse. No matter how accurate or useful the information contained therein might be, The Protocols is consistently dismissed as not only a fraud, but as an anti-Semitic fraud at that.

This week I happened across a much shorter example in the form of a brief letter written to whites of the world. Called “Letter of Termination to the White Race,” it was almost certainly not composed by the envious non-white who claims to have penned it.

The letter tersely describes why the white race is toast. The 92% of the world’s population who are not white and have not succeeded in building successful civilizations are now demographically swamping every last white homeland. And they are being led by an “out group” that has been using our own “media and government, academia, and law enforcement organizations” to “terminate” us. 

Perhaps the most perverse aspect of this dispossession is this passage:

By carefully controlling and managing the schools, universities, media, and press, this “out group” has managed to convince the great bulk of your racial kinsmen that not only is resistance futile, but that it is immoral, barbaric, depraved, and unworthy of a “thinking” individual. By promoting the stereotype of a “racist redneck resistance”, they have made the idea of a struggle for White Identity a veritable sin in the minds of nearly every White person. In short: they have convinced European-derived peoples that a prolonged suicide is preferable to the unmitigated evil of “racism”.

The author most certainly gets it right when he says that “you Whites have become a neutered, egoless herd of cattle, easily manipulated and posing no threat to the Out Group.”

There is no escaping the fact that the details contained in the letter are perfectly true. For instance, who can think of The Wichita Massacre or The Knoxville Horror without realizing the truth of a statement such as, “We will beat and murder your sons; we will rape your wives and daughters.”

Though we whites are the victims, “the Out Group will use their media to label you with shocking epithets and broad smears: racist, hater, bigot, neo-Nazi, nativist, White supremacist, domestic terrorist, etc.” I’ve written about this very thing previously in this blog, and Kevin MacDonald has shown how white identity has became pathologized by the  success of several Jewish intellectual and political movements.

What makes this all so demoralizing is the fact that, as the author so cruelly reminds us, a good portion of the white population welcomes our demise. “Adios, White man! You had a good, long run, but your day is over . . . and your race is no longer wanted here. . . . Besides, many of you are even anticipating this with something akin to sick glee. After all, that’s how the TV set told them to feel. The brainwashing is almost complete, and the sheep are in line to shear.”

Provocative blogger Birdman makes some good points regarding the letter:

Is the following essay serious? It is in at least one sense: There can be little doubt that the future it portrays for the white man is true. Whether it was written by an arrogant Jew dripping with vengeance, burning with white hatred and animated by near-victory, or else one who was feigning arrogance in hopes of shocking us and getting us off our duffs in hopes that we might save the civilization that has been so good to Jews, is anyone’s guess. I can only hope we will take it as a much-needed lesson.

Go ahead and read the entire letter. It’s not long. You will see how correct the author is, no matter who that author might actually be or why he wrote it.

Edmund Connelly is a freelance writer, academic, and expert on the cinema arts. He has previously written for The Occidental Quarterly.

Breaking Bottles Underfoot: The Continuing Jewish Takeover of the New York Times’ Wedding Announcements

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As TOO readers are aware, one of my favorite targets for white advocacy critique is The New York Times.  There are many good reasons for this, one of which is the Times’ standing as America’s pre-eminent newspaper.  Sometimes, one can tell a lot about the direction of American society simply by looking at what the Times chooses to highlight (or not), even in seemingly innocuous areas.

Take wedding announcements.  The New York Times wedding announcements are famous for their exclusivity.  Once the domain of WASPy Ivy Leaguers, it is now heavily Jewish.  Of the 35 announcements to make the cut for the July 6, 2008 Sunday Styles section, 13 were Jewish couples.  That’s more than a third, for a population that does not claim to constitute more than three to six percent of American society.  It’s also more than double the 12 percent seen about 10 years ago (see below).

Of course, the Ivy League — or any connection to it — remains important as a criterion for admission, as do the medical and legal professions, finance, and of course, journalism.  The working class need not apply.  But instead of the white gentile Ivy League, it now features the Jewish Ivy League.

The Times surely congratulates itself on its “inclusivity” otherwise.  For instance, there was a Shinto wedding, a Muslim wedding and a Hindu wedding, three homosexual couples (including a black lesbian couple, one of whom was described as a self-employed carpenter), Hispanic couples, and several Asian couples.  How does a self-employed carpenter get a wedding announcement in the New York Times?  By being a black lesbian, of course. This is contra Slate writer Timothy Noah’s prediction that no such thing would happen.

Amusingly, Noah, whom I believe is Jewish, admits to pulling strings to have his own wedding announcement run.  In his piece, Noah cites a 1997 article by David Brooks — also Jewish — who leads off with an anecdote about the marriage of a Jewish Ivy League couple.

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Brooks is frank about the replacement of Episcopalians with Jews on the pages, and even references The Bell Curve in doing so.  The article is loaded with clever speculation and insight on the whole business of wedding pages demographics. But Brooks puts a Jew-positive spin on the trend by saying it’s now brains over birth, or merit over heritage.  In other words, the white WASPs once featured didn’t deserve to be there, but the new smart Jews do.

I don’t see it that way.  WASPs once ran America not because it dropped in their laps, but because they had the strength to forge a new society in America, and the ethnic cohesion to run it.  Jews now run America because they had the strength to take it over, and the ethnic cohesion to hold and expand their position.  Meanwhile, WASPs were easy targets because their own will to survive died long ago.

There are obvious differences between WASPs and Jews — one being that Jews aren’t running America to the benefit of whites.  But from way up high, it’s a simple replacement of one power group with another.  Even for whites whose modest unions will never grace the pages of the New York Times’ wedding announcements, this is something to pay attention to.  We whites should be asking:  who holds power in America, and is it good for us?

Christopher Donovan is the pen name of an attorney and former journalist.

Eye on the Media – NYT’s Kristof Admits: A White Mugabe Would Get Attention

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The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof is a bit of an enigma:  an apparently white gentile male with solidly liberal leanings who occasionally flirts with the reality of genetic differences.  His big concern, as with many white liberals, is Africa.

But Kristof is not quite the apologist that Walter Duranty was for the Soviet Union.  He lays bare the atrocities of African regimes and does not reflexively blame whites for Africa’s messes.

In his Sunday column, he actually reports that many black Africans in Zimbabwe preferred the rule of white leader Ian Smith to its present leader, black African Robert Mugabe, because under Smith, food was available.

Says Kristof, “If only Mr. Mugabe were a white racist! Then the regional powers might stand up to him. For the sake of Zimbabweans, we should be just as resolute in confronting African tyrants who are black as in confronting those who are white.”

The attacks on white farmers by Mugabe and his goons — as well as horrifying violence committed against fellow blacks — should be known to white advocates.  The latter has started to get attention from the Bush administration and even Britain, which recently stripped Mugabe of his “knighthood” (what it says about the West that he ever got this in the first place is too depressing to consider.)

But for Kristof, the fate of whites shouldn’t enter into the moral calculus at all. He states, “Britain squandered its influence partly by focusing on the plight of dispossessed white farmers. (That’s tribalism for Anglo-Saxons.)”

Those tribal British! All they care about is people like themselves when they should really be finding ways to help out the blacks. Of course, the sad fact is that the British have lost the normal human sense of tribalism to the point that both major parties officially endorse Britain as a multicultural, multiethnic state.

Kristof is correct that a white Mugabe would get attention.  But he’s wrong if he thinks the West should or will drop its double standard.  The truth is that we expect such madness from black Africans, because it’s perfectly in line with their past behavior.  The lower IQ, quickness to violence and higher rates of pathology among blacks are a compelling explanation for that behavior, but beyond that, the madness of Africa is not the business of whites (with the exception of the attacks on whites, for which I recommend military intervention and refugee status in white countries).

Africa is a hellhole not because of the legacy of colonialism, “racism” by the white West or “failures of leadership,” but because it is populated by the lowest-IQ human beings on Earth.  Their evolutionary trajectory simply does not equip them to live in or make the civilized societies of the West.  This is no cause for mockery or condemnation, but simple understanding and acknowledgment.

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But this understanding is crucial, because whites have saddled themselves — with the prodding of men like Kristof — to feel that Africa’s situation can be remedied if we simply take the right actions.  Of course, it won’t.

Even if the case could be made that whites should make humanitarian gestures toward Africa, this would be immoral given the present crisis facing whites. Whites need to be attending to their own people, who are quickly vanishing from the Earth.  If Kristof wants a tragedy to cover, he should look into this.

Christopher Donovan is the pen name of an attorney and former journalist.